CrossOver Support - Community Forums

Good Morning and happy weekend to you all.

I just wanted to describe something I've been witnessing for almost all of last year, since I got my MacBook Air M1.

Games that used to work very well under CrossOver, specifically older games from the 2000 decade, are now running like crap. Very slow frame rates, very jerky, virtually unplayable. Weirdly, this is not affecting newer (and more demanding games) as much as it does specifically older games.

One prime example is Deus Ex 2, that used to run like butter on max settings, max resolution, now stutters at 1440x900, medium settings and has become unplayable. Star Wars : The Old Republic has been affected by this as well, even though not so much, but it is still very stuttering.

Both games play well under Parallels (except for a texture problem in SW:TOR, where they flicker periodically between low and high grade textures).

Another very good example is the original Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell. Ran like butter on my Intel Macintosh, now runs like a dog on the much more powerful M1. Same goes for Vampire - The Masquerade : Blood Lines.

I can guess that this is an issue with them being Intel programs, and from what I've learned (by chance), you are not using Rosetta to translate these programs, but a game like Grim Dawn which is much newer, and I would say, probably more demanding than Splinter Cell, runs very well (except for massive slowdowns when I turn the camera).

EVE Online was running buttery smooth before the native client for Mac made it obsolete under CrossOver. So it can't be all blamed on the Intel emulation, or can it?

Please enlighten me. Thank you very much.

First let’s get something out of the way, Rosetta2 is not emulation. Rosetta2 translates x86_64 code into arm64 before launching the newly translated binary.

CrossOver wine32on64 is also not emulation.

There’s somethings to take into consideration when comparing CrossOver versions.

• Intel system running macOS Mojave (and below)
• Intel system running macOS Catalina (and later)
• Apple Silicon hardware

Each of these end up having vastly different compatibility.

Also comparing Parallels Desktop (virtualization with some emulation) running Windows 10/11 ARM that uses Microsoft’s own x86 emulation is going to again produce different results.

Some the older 32Bit title compatibility will vary greatly, for example here two old games I still play Total Annihilation & Red Alert 2.

Total Annihilation for the most part runs great almost never being completely broke.

Red Alert 2 since wine-3.4 requires cnc-ddraw it then runs great. The issue for this title is ddraw.

Some other titles let’s say Fallout NV/Skyrim LE are both good examples that run worse via wine32on64. (That’s ignoring the audio crackling)

And one from the list that I don’t own personally, Medal of Honor Allied Assault we have listed as not working on Apple Silicon (might be CX20.0.x specific)

If an older title does anything weird like using Direct3D and ddraw in combination will run worse, if a title was built to take advantage of SSE2 it will run worse under Rosetta2 (it doesn’t seem to optimize the generated code for SSE2 well)

Some titles just run worse due to 32on64 trunking bugs.

Thank you for your exhaustive reply.

I'm aware that Rosetta 2 is not really emulation, it's just a habit of mine that I keep using that word. I know it's more of a JIT translator. I'm of course also aware that Windows 11 ARM uses its own x86 emulation, and doesn't have to translate Windows API calls to MacOS APIs. I was just using this as an example that it's not necessarily an ARM issue. The texture issue could be related to the Parallels video driver. I don't know.

So from what I'm gathering here from you, it could be that wine32on64 is to blame? I didn't have these issues with my old '17 Intel MacBook running Catalina, if I recall correctly (which got rid of 32Bit libraries). AFAIK Grim Dawn is also 32 Bit and that doesn't run nearly as bad as, for example, Deus Ex 2. Which is a much older title.

So it boils down to graphics API issues under Rosetta 2? Isn't CrossOver using its own translator? Not sure if all of my older titles use SSE2, but then of course I don't know.

Please explain what you mean with "32on64 trunking bugs". Is that in regards to running 32bit libs in a 64bit environment and the resulting problems with bugs in that system?

Thank you again for your reply.

Hi Andreas,

Some of the problems that are encountered on M1s are due to bugs in Rosetta, but some of them are issues that we can address in Wine. In either case, reporting them to us is the best course of action (we are currently in a beta cycle, so you can report them in beta reports to get XP; otherwise, you can submit tickets). Fixing M1-specific issues is a high priority for us, and if our developers determine that the issue is in Rosetta, they report those issues to Apple.

Best,
Meredith

Thank you as well for your reply, Meredith.

I don't have any real issues. It's just that the games run ultra slow. I'll try to submit bug reports for individual games (as tedious as it is, since it's probably the same overlying issue for all of these games). I'm using the current beta, btw.

Thanks, again.
-E

Andreas Weik wrote:

I'm aware that Rosetta 2 is not really emulation, it's just a habit
of mine that I keep using that word. I know it's more of a JIT
translator. I'm of course also aware that Windows 11 ARM uses its
own x86 emulation, and doesn't have to translate Windows API calls
to MacOS APIs. I was just using this as an example that it's not
necessarily an ARM issue. The texture issue could be related to the
Parallels video driver. I don't know.

You’d be surprised how many users quote comments from here (even if wrong), so rather make sure it’s explained when possible.

Parallels handles things very differently so it’s not always a good comparison, the only thing that both currently have in common is the lack of DirectX12 support.

Andreas Weik wrote:

So from what I'm gathering here from you, it could be that
wine32on64 is to blame? I didn't have these issues with my old '17
Intel MacBook running Catalina, if I recall correctly (which got rid
of 32Bit libraries). AFAIK Grim Dawn is also 32 Bit and that doesn't
run nearly as bad as, for example, Deus Ex 2. Which is a much older
title.

I didn’t have Grin Dawn of Deus EX 2 in my list but yes some titles simply run worse on the M1.

If a title runs fine on Catalina but not on M1 it’s a Rosetta2 bug, however if something runs fine on Mojave but not Catalina/M1 it’s a bug in 32on64.

Andreas Weik wrote:

So it boils down to graphics API issues under Rosetta 2? Isn't
CrossOver using its own translator? Not sure if all of my older
titles use SSE2, but then of course I don't know.

The M1 graphics is tile based so it functions different than standard desktop GPUs. Half-life2/Portal for example has graphical issues on M1 systems and was later resolved in CX21 (enable and emulated extension)

Rosetta2 sometimes just generates buggy code, Chip has reported issues to Apple before and these have been resolved.

Without using some utility’s it’s not always obvious of a title used SSE2 or not just something to consider.

Andreas Weik wrote:

Please explain what you mean with "32on64 trunking bugs". Is that in
regards to running 32bit libs in a 64bit environment and the
resulting problems with bugs in that system?

Trunking bugs means that a function is working correctly within “wine” but not within “wine32on64”, maybe something doesn’t get converted correctly.

Yes running 32Bit Windows binaries on a 64Bit only version of macOS trunks 32>64 functions and back as required, this also causes some slowdowns when compared to native 32Bit code execution. (Can also be slower when running via Rosetta2)

During the Beta it’s best to submit feedback for these kind of issues so they can be resolved or at least added to CodeWeavers internal tracker.

Andreas Weik wrote:

Thank you as well for your reply, Meredith.

I don't have any real issues. It's just that the games run ultra
slow. I'll try to submit bug reports for individual games (as
tedious as it is, since it's probably the same overlying issue for
all of these games). I'm using the current beta, btw.

Thanks, again.
-E

Even if the issue is the same across multiple titles it’s always better to submit feedback for each one, the more titles suffering from an issue the more lightly it will can get resolved.

The amount of feedback CodeWeaver had for running GTA5 for example helped then to know if the required patches were added the tile can be played legally.

During the CX21 beta I’d reported an obscure bug with Half-Life Opposing force/CS1.6 and the issue was resolved in the next build.

Thank you both for your assistance and replies. It is very appreciated.

I will submit beta reports for all of my older games that run badly. Might not be today, but I'll try tomorrow evening when I have more time on my hands. ;)

Another title that is affected is S.T.A.L.K.E.R Clear Sky. Runs perfect in Parallels/Win11, frame rates suck massively under CrossOver.

One thing I found is, if I lower shader quality in SW:TOR, it speeds up the game considerably. I can crank up everything else, i.e. resolution, texture quality and other stuff, and it will have almost no effect. It's singularily shader quality that is responsible (of course shadows, bloom and post processing is turned off as well, but when I turn those off individually, they almost have no impact).

Might be interesting as well. Unfortunately, I can't experiment like that on all my older titles, since they have not the granularity of fine control on graphics settings, except for Stalker. I'll try to mess with that one as well, and try to see if shader quality has the same singular impact there.

Thanks again. I'll get to it as soon as I can.

Hi, just wanted to post my experience and say I hope this is being worked on. I was running Star Wars Episode 1: Racer (from 1999) through CrossOver on my old MacBook Pro from mid-2012 (running Catalina) and easily getting framerates above 60. With my new 2021 M1 Max MBP and CrossOver 21 on Monterey, it's barely ekeing above 24fps. There are definitely some significant issues here!

I'll submit a report with my issues. Hope to see improvements soon!

Here is a Youtube video where someone on an M1 Mac is able to get Unreal Tournament 2004 running smooth like butter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYTRngOy5Xc

I tried asking the person how to do it, and I was able to install the Win64 UT2k4 patch and get it installed via Crossover, but when I try to launch the win64 exe file, it says "Bad EXE format for" and Crossover is not able to install it.

Has anyone here been able to get UT2k4 running smoothly on an M1 Mac?

I wanted to post a follow up. I was able to make Unreal Tournament 2004 run very smooth by doing one simple thing: when installing for the first time, make sure the bottle you select is Windows 7 64 bit, not regular Windows 32bit. And run the 64-bit patch and run the 64-bit version of UT2k4 and it will run smoothly.

Maybe that is the problem with some of these older games, that they are 32 bit games and that's why they are running so slow?

Macintologist wrote:

Maybe that is the problem with some of these older games, that they
are 32 bit games and that's why they are running so slow?

That is most likely the problem here, because they can't rely on Rosetta. (My understanding so far)

Andreas Weik wrote:

Macintologist wrote:

Maybe that is the problem with some of these older
games, that they are 32 bit games and that's why they are running
so
slow?

That is most likely the problem here, because they can't rely on
Rosetta. (My understanding so far)

They have a snazzy 32-to-64 bit library shim they use that handles this. I imagine this has some (or a lot) overhead.