Company of Heroes 2 on Mac: Benchmarks & How to Download

Company Heroes 2 is one of my favorite real-time strategy games. It may be a few years old, but the destructible environments, the graphics, and the intensity are still unrivaled.

The game easily earned a place among our Top strategy games for Mac, but there was one caveat: those impressive graphics came at a cost. Not anymore. But what does it take to run this RTS superstar? How well can your Mac run Company of Heroes 2? Can it run on M1 Macs?

Can you play CoH2 on Mac?

You can absolutely play Company of Heroes 2 on your Mac, including Intel and Apple Silicon Models. Even if the official system requirements don’t mention M1 or M2 Macs, our benchmarks confirm the game runs fine on Apple Silicon Macs.

On 2018, Feral Interactive released a free update that moved the game from the aging OpenGL graphics engine to Apple’s Metal graphics API. And as could be expected, the improvements were impressive (the game instantly ran 52% faster on our 2014 27-inch iMac).

Art	Game	Genre	64-bit?	64-bit	API	M1 Support
	Company of Heroes 2	Strategy	Yes		Metal	Rosetta

Company of Heroes 2 on Mac: Everything you need to know

It was hard to imagine how a sequel could significantly improve upon the legendary Company of Heroes, but CoH2 delivered. The sequel brought a new engine with much better graphics, an improved physics engine, dynamic weather, and much more.

Plus, Company of Heroes 2 moved out of the tired battles we know too well (Battle of Normandy, anyone?) and featured an intense single-player campaign that reenacts some of the infamous battles led by the Red Army on the Eastern Front. If you’re more into online play, the game also features competitive and cooperative multiplayer (Mac-to-Mac only).

The bottom line, CoH2 is a terrific game, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. The game has received good reviews since day one from both professional critics and users alike:

IGN gave the game an 8.4/10 and came to the same conclusion I did:

Viewed side by side, it might be tough to distinguish Company of Heroes 2 from its predecessor. (….) However, that comparison is to one of the finest real-time strategy games ever made, and being mostly as good as that makes this an excellent game on its own.x

Company of Heroes 2 Mac requirements

These are the game’s official Mac requirements:

The game is supported on the following Macs:

• All 21.5” iMacs released since Late 2013 with a 1.8GHz i3 processor or better
• All 27” iMacs/iMac Pros released since Late 2013 (Late 2012 models with Nvidia 675 or Nvidia 680 graphics are also supported.)
• All 27″ iMac Pros released since Late 2017
• All 13” Retina MacBook Pros released since 2016
• All 15” Retina MacBook Pros released since Mid 2012
• All 15″ MacBook Pros released since Mid 2012 with a 1GB graphics card or better
• All Mac Pros released since Late 2013

How to play Company of Heroes 2 on Mac

As mentioned before, Company of Heroes 2 runs natively on macOS, including Intel-based Macs and M1/M2 Macs.

The game does require Rosetta 2 to run on Apple Silicon Macs. But Rosetta 2 works so seamlessly (it installs automatically the first time it detects an Intel-based app), and it integrates so well with macOS that the experience is virtually the same as running a native Apple Silicon Mac.

This means Company of Heroes 2 can run on macOS without requiring any third-party software. Therefore, we won’t waste your time talking about Parallels, Crossover (both excellent tools, but only useful for Windows-exclusive games…), or Streaming services.

Can you play Company of Heroes 2 on Mac? M1 and Intel Benchmarks

These are the Terraria M1 benchmarks we have gathered so far:

As a reminder, this is how we describe the different levels of performance:

• Below 20 FPS: Unplayable: Laggy gameplay, full of stutters and slowdowns.
• 20-30 FPS: Borderline: Can be OK in slow-paced games. Still, not optimal.
• 30-45 FPS: Playable: Acceptable for most (most gaming consoles do this).
• 45-60 FPS: Smooth: Fluid gameplay, with no perceivable stutters.
• 60+ FPS: Very Smooth: For hardcore and professional players, a luxury for most.

Into Strategy games? These are our favorites:

Game	★ Our Pick	Also Great	Best Value
	Civilization 6	Crusader Kings 3	StarCraft 2
Genre	Turn-based	Turn-based	Real-time
Release date	2016	2020	2015
Metascore	88	91	88
Our rating	★★★★☆ Full Review	★★★★☆	★★★★★ Full Review
Requirements	High	Medium	Low
Check Price	Check Price	Check Price	Free-to-play

Intel Mac benchmarks

We previously tested the game on these Intel Macs:

• iMac (5K, 27-inch, Late 2014): 3.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB RAM, AMD Radeon R9 M290X (2GB)
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2016): 2.0 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB RAM, Intel Iris Graphics 540 (1.5GB)
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2013): 2.4 GHz Intel Core i5, 4 GB RAM, Intel Iris 5100 (1.5GB)

⚠️ Be aware that the 2013 13-inch MacBook Pro is not officially supported.

Why these machines? The purpose of these reviews is to help as many of you as we can which is why we test our games on machines as different from each other as possible. Hopefully, one of these Macs will be close enough to yours to provide results you can use really at home.

These are the settings we used to test the game:

Initially, our results were much lower. In fact, the game was unplayable on everything except our high-end iMac (and even then, it only scored 31 FPS). But as you can see below, updating the game to use Metal paid off:

On Intel machines, our 2014 27-inch iMac was the only one that could run the game at a Playable 31.5 FPS. Now that Company of Heroes 2 supports Metal, the same machine runs the game at a Smooth 48 FPS. That’s a 52% increase in performance.

Needless to say, that’s a spectacular improvement and proof that Metal is significantly faster than OpenGL.

On M1 machines, however, it’s an entirely different story. Company of Heroes 2 runs just fine on all M1 machines. It isn’t necessarily surprising, as it has been widely established that Apple Silicon machines are vastly superior to Intel machines, but this is one more example.

Can you play Company of Heroes 2 on a MacBook Pro?

If you have an Intel-based MacBook Pro, you won’t be able to run Company of Heroes 2 at acceptable performance levels. However, if you have a fairly recent MacBook Pro with dedicated graphics, or an Apple Silicon MacBook, you can absolutely run this game.

But what if you have an older Mac?

Unfortunately, Metal won’t do any miracles if you have an older, unsupported Mac. The game was Unplayable on our 2013 13-inch MacBook Pro at 6.9 FPS. With Metal, the game runs slightly faster at 7.2 FPS. Better but still unplayable. Then again, Feral did warn us from the get-go:

How to download Company of Heroes 2 on Mac

While Company of Heroes 2 is available from several Digital stores, your best bet is to purchase it, download it and install it via Steam (especially as most Digital stores are basically selling Steam keys).