Check If My Computer Can Run A Game Mac

Feb 14, 2019  Here's how to check your computer's specs to see if it meets the recommended requirements. How to tell if your computer can run it. Most of the time it's marketing coming up with these stats as they want as many people to buy the game as possible and not cause potential customers to avoid a purchase. Especially on Steam, where you have almost no return policy, I would be hesitent to trust their analysis of if my PC can run a game or not.

Torrent

Fortnite game details

Fortnite is the living, action building survival game where you and your friends lead a group of Heroes to reclaim and rebuild a homeland left empty by a mysterious darkness called 'The Storm'. It is about crafting weapons, building fortified structures, exploration, scavenging items and fighting massive amounts of monsters. Players must work together scavenging treasure and items they can use for building, and defend their assets and people from the Husks. Building is a core mechanic in the game, and buried beneath is lots of loot. The game is described as 'Minecraft meets Left 4 Dead' by Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games.

Here are the Fortnite System Requirements (Minimum)

Check If My Computer Can Run A Game Mac Pc

  • CPU: Core i3 2.4 Ghz
  • CPU SPEED: Info
  • RAM: 4 GB
  • OS: Windows 7/8/10 64-bit
  • VIDEO CARD: Intel HD 4000
  • PIXEL SHADER: 3.0
  • VERTEX SHADER: 3.0

Fortnite Recommended Requirements

  • CPU: Core i5 2.8 Ghz
  • CPU SPEED: Info
  • RAM: 8 GB
  • OS: Windows 7/8/10 64-bit
  • VIDEO CARD: Nvidia GTX 660 or AMD Radeon HD 7870 equivalent DX11 GPU
  • PIXEL SHADER: 5.0
  • VERTEX SHADER: 5.0
  • DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 2048 MB
Click here for the latest video card drivers
System Requirements Lab may earn affiliate commissions from qualifying purchases via Amazon Associates and other programs

Will my PC run Fortnite?

The new gaming phenomenon Fortnite has swept across the world in 2018, dominating all gaming-related media and taking over livestreaming services such as Twitch. To say that the ‘Battle Royale’ mode is addicting to play, is an understatement. According to analytics firm Sensor Tower, a lot of people agree me too. They state that the game is averaging over $1 million per day due to in-game purchases. A light-hearted, cartoony approach sets it apart from its main rivals in the newly emerging Battle Royale genre, such as PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds or H1Z1. So are you able to jump on the bandwagon and see what this game is all about?

Luckily for you, compared to most of the modern AAA games that are released such as Far Cry 5 and Assassins Creed: Odyssey, Fortnite doesn’t require a supercomputer to run. This is partly down to the graphical choice that the developers chose whilst designing the game. The cartoonish graphics and player models decrease the need for a top-of-the-range graphics card and CPU. And then there is the powerful, scalable Unreal Engine. To run this game, you’ll require at least a 64-bit Windows 7 operating system on your computer. Additionally, your rig will need to have an Intel Core i3 processor with 4 GB of Memory to keep the game ticking. Luckily, the vidoe card minimum requirement only calls for an Intel HD 4000 or better to keep up with the game’s graphics.

As you can see, the game is very accessible with many of the minimum requirements, such as the i3 processor, being found in non-specialist laptops and computers. An Intel Core i3 running at 2.4GHz should be enough to keep this game ticking without any issues. However in-game, especially in a large firefight, you may notice the game lose frames due to the amount of particles and structures it has to load in such a short amount of time. If this problem persists, consider turning down a few graphical settings which usually take a toll on your CPU such as shadows or textures.

If you do own a gaming PC with more advanced features and hardware, the recommended processor is an Intel Core i5 to make sure the game can run smoothly. You need a graphics card in the form of either a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 or an AMD Radeon HD 7870 to show off the full graphical capabilities of the game. With these requirements or higher, your PC should have absolutely no problem rendering in the famous map with all its assets and player models. A major part of the gameplay mechanics in Fortnite is that the map gets smaller and closes in on a randomly generated point as the game goes on. This means the game doesn’t have to load and process as many things as it goes on (provided you’re good enough to get this far!) making the game run smoothly. Additionally, this game has no AI in its main game mode ‘Battle Royale’ which, in turn, doesn’t put as much stress on the CPU.

Final thing… don’t forget you’ll need a stable internet connection!

The Mac has plenty of games, but it'll always get the short end of the stick compared to Windows. If you want to play the latest games on your Mac, you have no choice but to install Windows ... or do you?

There are a few ways you can play Windows games on your Mac without having to dedicate a partition to Boot Camp or giving away vast amounts of hard drive space to a virtual machine app like VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop. Here are a few other options for playing Windows games on your Mac without the hassle or expense of having to install Windows.

GeForce Now

PC gaming on Mac? Yes you can, thanks to Nvidia's GeForce Now. The service allows users to play PC games from Steam or Battle.net on macOS devices. Better still, the graphic power of these games resides on Nvidia's servers. The biggest drawback: the service remains in beta, and there's been no announcement when the first full release is coming or what a monthly subscription will cost.

For now, at least, the service is free to try and enjoy. All supported GeForce NOW titles work on Macs, and yes, there are plenty of them already available!

The Wine Project

The Mac isn't the only computer whose users have wanted to run software designed for Windows. More than 20 years ago, a project was started to enable Windows software to work on POSIX-compliant operating systems like Linux. It's called The Wine Project, and the effort continues to this day. OS X is POSIX-compliant, too (it's Unix underneath all of Apple's gleam, after all), so Wine will run on the Mac also.

Wine is a recursive acronym that stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator. It's been around the Unix world for a very long time, and because OS X is a Unix-based operating system, it works on the Mac too.

As the name suggests, Wine isn't an emulator. The easiest way to think about it is as a compatibility layer that translates Windows Application Programming Interface (API) calls into something that the Mac can understand. So when a game says 'draw a square on the screen,' the Mac does what it's told.

You can use straight-up Wine if you're technically minded. It isn't for the faint of heart, although there are instructions online, and some kind souls have set up tutorials, which you can find using Google. Wine doesn't work with all games, so your best bet is for you to start searching for which games you'd like to play and whether anyone has instructions to get it working on the Mac using Wine.

Note: At the time of this writing, The Wine Project does not support macOS 10.15 Catalina.

CrossOver Mac

Check If My Computer Can Run A Game Mac And Windows 7

CodeWeavers took some of the sting out of Wine by making a Wine-derived app called CrossOver Mac. CrossOver Mac is Wine with specialized Mac support. Like Wine, it's a Windows compatibility layer for the Mac that enables some games to run.

CodeWeavers has modified the source code to Wine, made some improvements to configuration to make it easier, and provided support for their product, so you shouldn't be out in the cold if you have trouble getting things to run.

My experience with CrossOver — like Wine — is somewhat hit or miss. Its list of actual supported games is pretty small. Many other unsupported games do, in fact work — the CrossOver community has many notes about what to do or how to get them to work, which are referenced by the installation program. Still, if you're more comfortable with an app that's supported by a company, CrossOver may be worth a try. What's more, a free trial is available for download, so you won't be on the hook to pay anything to give it a shot.

Boxer

If you're an old-school gamer and have a hankering to play DOS-based PC games on your Mac, you may have good luck with Boxer. Boxer is a straight-up emulator designed especially for the Mac, which makes it possible to run DOS games without having to do any configuring, installing extra software, or messing around in the Mac Terminal app.

With Boxer, you can drag and drop CD-ROMs (or disk images) from the DOS games you'd like to play. It also wraps them into self-contained 'game boxes' to make them easy to play in the future and gives you a clean interface to find the games you have installed.

Boxer is built using DOSBox, a DOS emulation project that gets a lot of use over at GOG.com, a commercial game download service that houses hundreds of older PC games that work with the Mac. So if you've ever downloaded a GOG.com game that works using DOSBox, you'll have a basic idea of what to expect.

Some final thoughts

In the end, programs like the ones listed above aren't the most reliable way to play Windows games on your Mac, but they do give you an option.

Of course, another option is to run Windows on your Mac, via BootCamp or a virtual machine, which takes a little know-how and a lot of memory space on your Mac's hard drive.

How do you play your Windows games on Mac?

Check If My Computer Can Run A Game Mac And Windows 10

Run

Let us know in the comment below!

Check If My Computer Can Run A Game Mac

Updated October 2019: Updated with the best options.

We may earn a commission for purchases using our links. Learn more.

(PRODUCT)RED

Apple is now redirecting (PRODUCT)RED purchases to COVID‑19 relief fund

Now through September 30, Apple is redirecting 100% of a portion of (PRODUCT)RED purchases to the Global Fund’s COVID‑19 Response.