37 replies to this topic

[theishkid]

Kanamit, on April 6th 2006, 10:22 AM, said:

I'm not surprised this happend, but I am surprised this happened so fast. All this windows on mac news so close together is giving me hypertension.

I can almost guarantee that Parallels was not preparing for this all along, or at least not prepared to release when they did. They were going to wait till it was finished then release it for 50 bucks a pop. But with Apple releasing Boot Camp for free, I guarantee you Parallels sprung into action to prep their software for release today so that Apple would not have the entire market on this. I bet parallels wasn't even planning on doing a beta... chances are their software isn't done but they had to pop something out as quick as possible. I just feel sorry for the developers who were working for 24 hours straight to get it ready to release.

[teflon]

thing is that as soon as apple released the firmware which added BIOS support, the game was up. Everyone can now run Windows, whether it be in virtualisation, with Boot Camp,  or just reformat and install...

They were probably trying to figure a way around EFI, but then didnt have to, but also had to get a release out of the door.

And im sure those developers are having a lovely rest with a cup of tea and biscuits right now.... or theyre in bed.

[Tesseract]

teflon, on April 7th 2006, 10:32 PM, said:

They were probably trying to figure a way around EFI, but then didnt have to, but also had to get a release out of the door.

They never had to "figure a way around EFI". You don't use the host machines' firmware at all in a virtualiser. They could implement whatever virtual firmware they wanted, or even just jump straight into the kernel's bootstrap entry point. (Though maybe Windows relies on some BIOS functions, so the latter wouldn't work; but it works with Linux.)

[flargh]

theishkid, on April 7th 2006, 01:33 AM, said:

I can almost guarantee that Parallels was not preparing for this all along, or at least not prepared to release when they did. They were going to wait till it was finished then release it for 50 bucks a pop. But with Apple releasing Boot Camp for free, I guarantee you Parallels sprung into action to prep their software for release today so that Apple would not have the entire market on this.

You're wrong. Parallels didn't have any indication of when Apple was going to release Boot Camp, and the close timing of the two releases was entirely coincidental.

[converted2truth]

One thing i've noticed is that Parallels loading XP SP1 only shows 1 CPU :interesting:

I haven't been playing with boot camp cause i don't have an SP2 copy of XP.

So far i have been highly impressed with performance.  It nails the coffin shut for VPC.  I bet photoshop runs faster in parallels than the version for OSX a la Rossetta.

[Batcat]

converted2truth, on April 11th 2006, 01:16 PM, said:

One thing i've noticed is that Parallels loading XP SP1 only shows 1 CPU :interesting:

I haven't been playing with boot camp cause i don't have an SP2 copy of XP.

So download and slipstream SP2. There's an article in General somewhere.

[tiskippy]

converted2truth, on April 11th 2006, 01:16 PM, said:

One thing i've noticed is that Parallels loading XP SP1 only shows 1 CPU :interesting:

This is because it virtualizes a single processor (a Duron, IIRC).

converted2truth, on April 11th 2006, 01:16 PM, said:

I bet photoshop runs faster in parallels than the version for OSX a la Rossetta.

Hmm, debatable on that.  I was impressed with the speed of some things in Parallels's software, but I'm not sure that it trumps Rosetta...not that I have any hard evidence whatsoever on the topic, that's just my 'gut feeling.'

[Tesseract]

tiskippy, on April 12th 2006, 10:38 AM, said:

This is because it virtualizes a single processor (a Duron, IIRC).

It virtualises the actual CPU in the machine. Which is why it's called "virtualisation" and not "emulation".

[rob_ART]

Just wanted you guys to know I've posted some 3D game results using Boot Camp + WinXP Pro versus Mac OS X on a MacBook Pro:
http://www.barefeats.com/bootcamp.html

I haven't tried Parallels Workstation yet but plan to. I understand from reading Anandtech's report on Parallels that it only uses one core and doesn't support GPU acceleration -- all graphics rendered by CPU. Ehhhh! Thanks for playing!

Mac OS X Tiger and UB Apps take care of 99% of my needs on the Intel Mac but it's really nice to have Boot Camp to cover the 1% -- including games like Halo and pro apps like Photoshop CS2 that aren't UB and won't be for a while.

[tthiel]

Interesting test Rob.  Convinced a friend of mine to use CS2 via Boot Camp instead of OS X.

[steiner designer]

rob_ART, on April 13th 2006, 05:30 PM, said:

Just wanted you guys to know I've posted some 3D game results using Boot Camp + WinXP Pro versus Mac OS X on a MacBook Pro:

Thanks Rob! we can always count on Bare Feats for solid, methodical benchmarking.

I'd be interested to see how the Intel Mac Towers stack up this fall (drools..)

[Huntn]

rob_ART, on April 13th 2006, 07:30 PM, said:

Just wanted you guys to know I've posted some 3D game results using Boot Camp + WinXP Pro versus Mac OS X on a MacBook Pro:
http://www.barefeats.com/bootcamp.html

Thanks! I've posted this link in the IMG FAQ thread.

-Hunt'n

[teflon]

tthiel, on April 14th 2006, 01:35 AM, said:

Interesting test Rob.  Convinced a friend of mine to use CS2 via Boot Camp instead of OS X.

just make sure you get them to go back to OSX when CS3 comes out.

[tthiel]

Oh he will.  The guy is a recent swticher and he loves OS X.

[hambone]

yo dudes, AnandTech has a really nice review of the MacBook Pro that also benchmarks the Parallel VM  in comparison to booting into XP. their findings are extremely interesting -- performance was almost exactly equal (!) other than the UI lag because of the lack of videocard drivers. that blows me away.

http://www.anandtech...doc.aspx?i=2740

so still not a gaming solution obviously, but *very* promising for something that is only a couple of months old.

also its only gonna cost $50.

[Thain Esh Kelch]

Has anyone tried to run a 3D game in virtualization? (Uh, what a hard word to write!)

Im mostly interested in whether it will run or not at all at this point.

[Jan]

Thain Esh Kelch, on April 17th 2006, 11:34 AM, said:

Has anyone tried to run a 3D game in virtualization? (Uh, what a hard word to write!)

Im mostly interested in whether it will run or not at all at this point.

They will most likely refuse to run. I've tried some older 2D adventure games under the Q emulation a few weeks back (which has no 3D acceleration either) and I was surprised how well they performed.

I guess games like Grim Fandango, The Loungest Journey, etc. would run great using Parallels, but anything newer might be out of the question.

[Tesseract]

The virtual machine only has a generic VESA video system. There's no technical reason why 3D games wouldn't run as long as they don't require features not offered by the software renderer (whether OpenGL or Direct3D). That does rule out pretty much everything that needs programmable shaders though.