Does Starcraft 2 run better on Windows or Mac?
I have Starcraft 2 installed on my Macbook Pro in OS X. I have Intel i7 CPU, 8 GB of RAM, nVidea Geforce FT 330M, and a SATA hard drive. In Energy settings I've set it to Higher Performance over battery life. I notice that running it on the recommended High settings, it doesn't run very smoothly when there are many units on the screen.
I have Windows 7 Ultimate also installed via Bootcamp. I'm considering installing Starcraft 2 on that now.
My question is: Does Starcraft run better on Windows 7 than OS X?
Things to consider in comparison:
- Mac OS X default to 32-bit mode, while on Windows can start in 64-bit
- Does nVidia graphics card better support on Windows?
Typically, I find cross platform games have better performance on the Windows version as opposed to the Mac versions. If you look at what Blizzard's recommended specifications are:
PC Recommended Specifications:
- Dual Core 2.4Ghz Processor
- 2 GB RAM
- 512 MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX or ATI Radeon® HD 3870 or better
Mac Recommended Specifications:
- Intel® Core 2 Duo processor
- 4 GB system RAM
- NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT or ATI Radeon® HD 4670 or better
PCs require less powerful components than Macs do. From this, I would assume Starcraft 2 runs better on Windows than on Mac.
It runs much better on a Windows 7 boot. People are reporting that on the same Mac, they're getting low framerates at low/medium settings under OS X, and very good framerates at high/ultra settings under Windows 7.