Steam for Mac System Requirements

If you’re a Mac user who is into gaming, you’ll probably be thrilled to know that Steam is available on the Mac OS ecosystem. But before you go jumping for joy for Steam on the Mac, you might want to make sure the Mac you have supports Steam.

Here’s what we know about the basic minimum system requirements for the Mac Steam client:

* Intel processor support only

* Mac OS X 10.5 or greater, some games require 10.5.8 or 10.6.3 or higher

* X3100 and 950 integrated Intel Graphics chipsets are not supported (older MacBook models)

* Steam and Source both run native in Mac OS X with OpenGL

Keep in mind that base Steam system requirements does not necessarily equate to system requirements for individual games, as many games will require beefier hardware to either be able to run at all, or certainly to perform their best.

Thus it’s important to remember that some Steam games will have much higher minimum system requirements for supporting those than the Steam app itself.

Steam games are myriad, and there are hundreds that are available for Mac. Steam Games that confirmed for the Mac version include: Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, The Half-Life Series, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal, and Portal 2, many Civilization series, and much more.

Mac users who already purchased the Steam games for a PC will be able to use the same key and won’t have to buy the game again for the Mac version, and as expected you’ll be playing against all the PC users out there.

Gaming on the Mac got a pretty big boost with Steam arriving for Mac OS X, and Mac gamers should be thrilled by its presence on the platform. Steam for Mac originally arrived back in 2010, but the basic system requirements still persist even in 2018, though as mentioned above not all games will have the simpler requirements and some may need additional hardware capabilities to perform as intended.