3 ms·

How can you run old 32-bit, directx 9 games on apple silicon? Is there any solution that is flawless? One of the things that stops me from buying a modern Mac.

danaris 1y ago
I believe CrossOver now has full support for 32-bit games.
todd3834 1y ago
I imagine a virtual machine would be able to handle it just fine. Try VirtualBox
- mdaniel 1y ago
  Unless you know something I don't, VirtualBox isn't qemu's CPU emulation - it's only virtualization for the current CPU. So, great if you want an alternative to Virtualization.framework but it's not going to run Windows 7 on Apple Silicon And, even if it did run effectively under Rosetta, its management interface won't even let you select a non-arm64 guest: https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/topics/Introduction.html#host-guest-matrix https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/topics/Introduction.html#h...
cactusplant7374 1y ago
I think this should cover it. https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk
- banqjls 1y ago
  That won’t fix the fact that the macOS kernel can’t run 32-bit binaries.
  - galad87 1y ago
    It's possible to run 32-bit Windows binaries with Rosetta 2 and WINE, but I don't know if there is any good DirectX 9 to Metal wrapper yet. Probably DXMT will implement it in the future: https://github.com/3Shain/dxmt https://github.com/3Shain/dxmt
    - banqjls 1y ago
      I have heard of Rosetta not implementing the entire instruction set, and games being one of the most affected kinds of software, most of them crashing due to illegal instructions.
      - Rhedox 1y ago
        Rosetta actually supports 32bit code just fine.
- Rhedox 1y ago
  DXVK does not run on Mac OS. There's a modified version based on an ancient release of DXVK that kinda works on MoltenVK but the D3D9 side never worked. The D3D9 implementation in DXVK uses a Vulkan binding model trick to improve performance that MoltenVK can't handle. Besides that, DXVK simply requires modern Vulkan features that MoltenVK doesn't support.

danaris 1y ago

I believe CrossOver now has full support for 32-bit games.

todd3834 1y ago

I imagine a virtual machine would be able to handle it just fine. Try VirtualBox

mdaniel 1y ago
Unless you know something I don't, VirtualBox isn't qemu's CPU emulation - it's only virtualization for the current CPU. So, great if you want an alternative to Virtualization.framework but it's not going to run Windows 7 on Apple Silicon And, even if it did run effectively under Rosetta, its management interface won't even let you select a non-arm64 guest: https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/topics/Introduction.html#host-guest-matrix https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/topics/Introduction.html#h...

cactusplant7374 1y ago

I think this should cover it. https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk

banqjls 1y ago
That won’t fix the fact that the macOS kernel can’t run 32-bit binaries.
- galad87 1y ago
  It's possible to run 32-bit Windows binaries with Rosetta 2 and WINE, but I don't know if there is any good DirectX 9 to Metal wrapper yet. Probably DXMT will implement it in the future: https://github.com/3Shain/dxmt https://github.com/3Shain/dxmt
  - banqjls 1y ago
    I have heard of Rosetta not implementing the entire instruction set, and games being one of the most affected kinds of software, most of them crashing due to illegal instructions.
    - Rhedox 1y ago
      Rosetta actually supports 32bit code just fine.
Rhedox 1y ago
DXVK does not run on Mac OS. There's a modified version based on an ancient release of DXVK that kinda works on MoltenVK but the D3D9 side never worked. The D3D9 implementation in DXVK uses a Vulkan binding model trick to improve performance that MoltenVK can't handle. Besides that, DXVK simply requires modern Vulkan features that MoltenVK doesn't support.