Parallels Mac For Gaming

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Dec 30, 2010 Hello there! I'm planning to buy Parallels strictly for gaming, there're some games that just run on Windows and this is my chance. I guess if Parallels consumes too much memory or resources so games run smooth and nicely, like there's Parallels consumption plus the game itself. Note: Parallels Desktop 14 for Mac brings a new feature: CPU Usage Monitor. Look at VM window tray and CPU Usage Monitor will light up in red when CPU usage in Windows is above 70%. Look at VM window tray and CPU Usage Monitor will light up in red when CPU usage in Windows is above 70%.

You may not immediately think 'gaming' when you think 'Mac,' but there are tons of games for the Mac these days, and some of the most popular PC games are also available for OS X. Let's take a look at a few ways to make those games run as smoothly as possible.

Thanks to Steam, Humble Bundles, and developers who are just more open to releasing their games on multiple platforms, owning a Mac doesn't mean you're resigned to watching your Windows friends get their game on. Plus, if you're like me and use a Windows PC as your primary gaming machine but travel with a Macbook Pro, you don't necessarily want to leave your video games at home just because you're headed out of town. Here's how to tweak your Mac to make the most of your games.

Free Up some Disk Space and Clean Up System Clutter

One of the best ways to keep your Mac in speedy shape is to clean up your app clutter, disable resource-hogging startup apps, and uninstall unwanted apps (especially menubar utilities that run in the background all the time). We covered some of these tricks in our guide to speeding up and reviving your Mac, but it's even more important when it comes to games. Some of those games may grab some disk space for scratch while you're playing, and if you're short on it, you'll feel it. As a byproduct, the last thing you want, especially if you're playing Steam games, is to cut Steam off from valuable disk space while you're playing.

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Beyond that, you can always use some of our favorite tools to clean up and spruce up your Mac, like Onyx, our favorite system tweaker for the Mac, or iBoostUp, another fast and free Mac tweaking tool. Windows users will be familiar with CCleaner, which also works a treat on OS X.

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Disable OS X Features You Never Use

Additionally, you can kill off some of OS X's features that you know you never use, like Dashboard or Notification Center, if you never use them. They're generally always running in the background, and when it comes to gaming, every bit of added horsepower you can get it useful. This tutorial from MacTuts+ is a great how-to for both if you'd like to turn them off entirely, but here's how to turn off Dashboard:

Open a Terminal Window (Applications > Utilities > Terminal).
Enter this command to disable Dashboard:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES
Enter this command to restart the Finder:
killall Dock
The Finder will automatically restart, with Dashboard disabled.

To disable Notification Center, follow these steps:

Open a Terminal Window (Applications > Utilities > Terminal).
Enter this command to stop Notification Center from re-launching:
launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui.plist
Enter this command to stop Notification Center:
killall NotificationCenter
Notification Center should immediately go away. If you get a 'process not found' error while running one of the above commands, that's okay—it should work regardless.
If you ever need Notification Center back again, open a terminal window and enter this command:
launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui.plist
Then press Command+Shift+G in Finder (Go To Folder) and type in /System/Library/CoreServices/. Find “Notification Center” and launch it.

Since both processes run all the time in the background, you may be able to free up some system resources for your games to run a bit more smoothly, especially if you have integrated graphics.

Let Steam Finish Its Work Before You Play

If the bulk of the games you play on the Mac are Steam games, your best bet before you fire up your favorite games—or before you hit the road with your Mac—is to let Steam do everything it needs to do long before you feel like playing anything. Patches, updates, new game installs, do it all before you play, and don't trust Steam or your Mac to manage that stuff in the background while you're trying to game.

In Windows, if you have a powerful enough gaming PC, you can freely let Steam work while you do other things. In OS X, it just doesn't seem to work quite as well. (Edit: Someone pointed out to me that Steam suspends downloads and patches while you're playing - that's true, and that's a good point. It should settle down when you launch a game.) Personal experience here, but if you're planning a trip and you want to game on your Mac, even if you know you'll have reliable internet access where you're going, let Steam update itself and all of your games before you even leave the house. Then you won't have to worry about any of them when you get where you're going.

Learn Your Graphics Settings Inside and Out

You may not think about it because OS X assumes most of the duties when it comes to managing your system's graphics, drivers, and other settings, but there are some things you can do to get familiar with how your Mac handles video and how you can improve it. While you can't just go and install your own drivers (usually), previously mentionedgfxCardStatus
gives you some insight as to when your Mac is using integrated graphics, and when it's switched over to a dedicated card. You can even force OS X to use one card or another using the app (although you probably won't want to).

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Similarly, you'll be able to make smarter tweaks to your games' graphics settings if you learn what all of those toggles and options mean. Check out our guide to graphics settings to get familiar with everything from anti-aliasing to v-Sync. Once you understand what each option does, you'll be more comfortable tweaking and making changes in your games in a way that actually improves performance without sacrificing quality, instead of doing the big things that may even compromise both.

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Try Windowed Mode versus Full-Screen and See Which Works Better

Obviously, adjusting the graphics settings for your game is one of the best ways to make sure it runs a little more smoothly, but another thing you can try is switching between full-screen and windowed mode. Even windowed mode taking up the entire screen can sometimes smooth things out for you, and which one will work better depends heavily on the games you play. I've had some titles strain in windowed mode but really pick up when set to full-screen, and other titles choke in full-screen but suddenly become playable in windowed mode. Your mileage may vary.

Keep Your Other Apps Closed and Uninstall System-Sucking Plugins

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Even if your Mac is packed with a massive SSD and plenty of RAM, keeping a bunch of apps running in the background while you fire up a full-screen game isn't going to do you any favors. If you game on Windows, you're probably used to the performance tradeoff of keeping other apps open while you game, so you should be ready for it in OS X as well. This is especially true for heavier apps and web browsers, which consume more system resources the longer they've been open. If you can, close Firefox or Chrome on your Mac while you game, or at least close them before you game and start a fresh session if you like to surf the web or research while you play.

In some cases, it's not a big difference, but in others—namely when it comes to web browsing—it can be pretty nightmarish. Flash, Java, and other heavy plugins for web content are especially to blame for sucking down system resources while you're trying to play full-screen games, and fighting those games for valuable processor time even though the game clearly has priority. You could just remove Flash and Java entirely, or you could install ClickToFlash for Safari or Flashblock for Firefox or Chrome to stop it from loading until you actually want it.

Keep an Eye On Performance with Activity Monitor

Activity Monitor is built in to OS X and gives you a complete picture of which processes and applications are using the most memory, CPU, and disk resources. It's great, and it's a great way to see if there's some application open behind your games that's slowing everything down so you can close it (even if that app is Steam—I've seen that happen before). However, Activity Monitor can be a pain to keep an eye on behind a full-screen game, so consider iStat Menus, which essentially puts those tools in your Mac's menubar.

I know we suggested keeping menubar utilities to a minimum, but the beauty of iStat Menus is that they're really light on system resources, and can tell you more than just RAM, CPU, and disk activity. One click shows you CPU temperature, battery temperature, fan speed, and more. You can get a feel for whether or not there's a hardware issue at play as well as a software one (like a broken or dying fan, for example), even while your favorite game is up and running.

Yes, You Can Always Install Windows

Just to get the inevitable out of the way, yes—you can always install Windows on your Mac. Whether you give up on OS X entirely or you use Boot Camp to dual-boot, you can run Windows and your favorite Windows apps and games on your Mac hardware. It's one way to get your game on in a way you're probably familiar, and use all of the tweaks and tools you're familiar with. Plus, if you're running Windows, you have a broader array of games available for you to play, and many of them will actually run better in Windo, you have more options. A Mac actually makes a remarkably solid Windows computer, and while it's not designed specifically for gaming, most models' discrete graphics make them pretty good for the task.

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Once you've gone through these suggestions, ideally your games should play a bit more smoothly. As with any system, you'll have to tweak the graphics settings to make sure everything is just right, but just because you're gaming on a Mac doesn't mean you have to settle for the performance you get. Keep in mind however just like in a Windows PC, hardware plays a significant role, and there's only so much you can do to accommodate it and boost performance before you hit its natural ceiling. You can't control everything, but there are definitely a few things you can do to boost your gaming experience, especially if you're on the go.

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Photos by Paul Hudson, bochalla, Evan-Amos, and Dan Taylor.