Call of duty MW3 on iMac – apple osx lion boot camp

I’ve been having issues with my Xbox overheating. It’s due an upgrade but I’m saving hard for a new car so I’m not spending any money. Since I don’t have any windows machines anymore I decided to setup a boot camp partition and install windows 7 to play modern warfare 3.

My iMac is a mid 2009 model iMac with the 2.93ghz core 2 duo processor, 4GB of ram and a nvidia GT120 dedicated graphics card. I thought this would be plenty to run Mw3 in low graphics settings, but I was so surprised to see it run at high graphic details with 2x anti aliasing enabled and sustain a minimum of 30fps on really detailed open maps. When in buildings where less scenery is visible its possible to hit 60 or 70fps. Bearing in mind this is with everything set to high so the graphics look great, and 30fps is perfectly playable & fast. If you want an even faster gaming experience you can reduce the graphics quality. This is also running at the iMacs native resolution of 1920×1200 resolution.

The first step was to run the boot camp assistant in utilities and download the latest boot camp drivers. I saved it to a memory stick for installation later in windows. The next step was to partition the hard drive. I decided to set aside 100GB for windows as I’ve got MW3, BF3 and elder scrolls skyrim to play on the pc (until the Xbox is fixed).

Once partitioned I rebooted with my windows 7 ultimate X64 in the SuperDrive. Remote holding the option key on the keyboard and select the windows disc to begin the installer. Work through the installer and when asked to select an installation partition, select your boot camp partition and click format. Once formatted proceed with the installation. Once complete the system will reboot and boot into windows.

Next insert the thumb drive from earlier and install the drivers. The setup failed to boot on windows x64 so I went into the installation folder and into the apple folder to start the installer manually. This will install all the graphics, airport, volume controls and every other driver required, ensuring maximum compatibility.

The final step was to install MW3 and startup the game. At first boot it was running at low graphics settings with no antialiasing. The fps using fraps was around 90fps. Once I cranked everything up this dropped to a very playable 30-40fps average even at such a high resolution. This is a great solution for mac owners, much more favourable than emulation. The performance is superb, especially bearing in mind that my machine is 2 years old. Owners of newer i5, i7 and quad core machines would see even greater performance.

I’m about 60% through the game now, with no slow downs & rock solid reliability. I can’t wait to try skyrim later today.

Here are a few pics of the game running. Apologies for any typos, I’m typing this from the iPad in a car park during a break from Christmas shopping.

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