[ginf5geg]

Dear all,

I am about to buy a 2.2GHz MacBook Pro for work purposes but since i am also a gamer i was wondering if there is an ideal solution for running Windows games. Has any of you tried Parallels or VMware fusion software to run Windows applications or I shouldn't perhaps bother at all and stay with Apple Boot Camp to run Windows games and/or other Windows software?

Any advice from out there?

[teflon]

just stick with Boot Camp if youre going to be gaming on it.
but if you plan on using old office software or something like that, then so long as its not too intensive, you can go the VMware or parallels route (my preference is with VMware)..

the plus is that both can use your boot camp install of windows.

but neither has very good gaming support.

and welcome to the forum

[Lord Brixton]

I have Parallells, and don't have any experience of the others: P'lells is fine for older games, (like.. say.. Doom3) but newer games that require more advanced graphics juice (like...say..Team Fortress 2) won't even launch.

Like m'learned friend says though, Boot Camp is the way ahread for hardcore gaming.

[the Battle Cat]

I'm going to move this thread into the Windows on Mac sub-forum so hold onto your campy parallel VMware!

[ginf5geg]

thanks a lot for this.

from what you are saying i think i will stick with the bootcamp for gaming and for some specialised software needed for my work and forget parallels/VMware Fusion.

out of curiosity since i am a new mac user, does the fact that there are two operational environments on the same machine (because of the bootcamp) create any problems whatsoever when you are working/playing on any of them? does the machine become slower or anything like this?

thanks for welcoming into the forum. you have been really helpful

[Hoffer802]

ginf5geg, on September 22nd 2007, 10:46 AM, said:

out of curiosity since i am a new mac user, does the fact that there are two operational environments on the same machine (because of the bootcamp) create any problems whatsoever when you are working/playing on any of them? does the machine become slower or anything like this?

Having a macbook pro with xp, and now vista installed on it I can safely say that there is no slow down on either end. Games run like a dream on the windows side, and OS X is as beautiful ans stable as ever =p. One thing though, my OS X starttup seems really slow, but that seemed to start when I installed a virus scanner trial on the OS X side. My only complaint is the limited hard drive space, with my 120gig hard drive I was only able to partition 32 gigs to the windows side. A interesting note though on that side is that I went out and bought a 320gig western digital external hard drive that runs off of USB 2.0, and I tried installing some games on it. The cool thing is there is absolutely no slow down from what I can tell when running games off the hard drive. I currently have Oblivion, Flight Simulator X, Neverwinter Nights 2, Supreme Commander and tons of others that all run with no slow down. I havent tried any FPS's though so who knows, just thought it was kind of cool since it seemed the general idea of installing games on an external Hard drive was a big no no =p.

Oh and the Western Digital Hard Drive I can access and write on it from both sides (OS X and Vista, so I can have games for both OS's installed ^_^)

[Steve Ballmer]

Use Bootcamp, that way the Mac OS stuff won't kill performance!

Better yet, reformat the Mac partition and install Windows there, that way you have a bonified Windows only machine!

[the Battle Cat]

Steve Ballmer, on October 1st 2007, 03:48 PM, said:

Use Bootcamp, that way the Mac OS stuff won't kill performance!

Better yet, reformat the Mac partition and install Windows there, that way you have a bonified Windows only machine!

I hope you don't start trolling us. It's OK to be in your blog persona, but please show some restraint outside of your own threads.

[teflon]

ignoring the last sentece, youre right, steveB, you just worded it wrong. you shouldve said:

"Use BootCamp, that way, running 2 OSs at the same time wont kill performance!"

and forget about the last sentence, theres a reason why this is a mac forum.

[ginf5geg]

dear all

a little update on me and also an opportunity for a little bit more of advice.

i went ahead with the bootcamp and i installed xp on a 32gb partition on my macbook pro as you advised me. as you all said everything runs like a dream. in addition the fact that i spent last weekend formating and reinstalling xp (once again) on another laptop because of all the crap that had accumulated in the registry reminded me once again how bad windows is. even though i am a new mac user i don't think anything can compare to what i see on them.

however i still have one more question for you. i bought a 40gb external hard drive to increase the windows space for games and other applications on the windows side of things. no matter what i have done so far i cannot see the external volume anywhere on the mac or the windows environment, or not even on my windows machine at work. shouldn't this be recognised immediately as any other usb devices (memory sticks, et.) as the manufacturer describes? any advice how to do it?

[bobbob]

You might have to format it before it shows up as a filesystem. Open up Disk Utility (Mac) or Disk Management (Windows) and go to town.

[ginf5geg]

Well thanks for this but i already tried both options as the manual was recommending (who knows why they called it a manal btw. extremely basic).

in the disk utility i don't get the format option. the only thing available for the new drive volume is new image. is this necessary?

on the windows xp side of things the disk management option as such does not exist. only control panel/system/devices mangement/hard disks/properties. but even in there i don't get the option for a setup in order to change the volume recognition letter. only other unrelated things. any ideas on how to do it so?

[bobbob]

ginf5geg, on October 23rd 2007, 08:59 PM, said:

in the disk utility i don't get the format option. the only thing available for the new drive volume is new image. is this necessary?

No erase or partition?

Quote

even in there i don't get the option for a setup in order to change the volume recognition letter. only other unrelated things. any ideas on how to do it so?

Right click on My Computer and click Manage. Disk Management should be under storage. The bottom pane shows the on-disk layout. Right click on any existing partitions and delete them, then right click to make new partitions in the unpartitioned space. Disk Utility is preferable obviously.

[QuantaCat]

..did you install the boot camp beta? Didnt show up without this.

[ginf5geg]

thanks a lot for the tips guys. i managed to make it work, but with problems still... when i bought the hard drive i kind of expected it to work exactly as a usb memory stick which are readable both in mac os and windows.


if i format the disk in windows environment it can be read in mac os but i cannot write anything on it even though i can paste items on mac os. if i do the formating in mac os windows cannot read any files that might be in it. do i do anything wrong? and before you ask write protection is off.... i suppose i might have to use it as extra storage space for the windows side of things..

the other thing is that initially i used a very long usb cable and the performance of the drive was extremely slow and it was crashing all the time. i had to unplug the drive every time to make the machine work with the result to lose the files i was experimenting with. i changed the cable with a short specialised one and everything seems to be working fine...

[QuantaCat]

No, it's just about NTFS & FAT32. Both are windows formats, but NTFS still isn't fully supported by MacOSX. But FAT32 is. The only drawback is that FAT32 cannot hold files over 4Gb and that NTFS can't be written to from MacOSX.

[bobbob]

Parallels or VMware are looking like the best way to play very old Mac games, too. You just have to buy the PC version since the Mac version is going kaput.

[ginf5geg]

thanks a lot for clearing things out for me.

i think i am gonna keep the NTFS for now as extra storage for games on the windows side of things. do you know of any good recent rpgs for mac osx? i am curious to test the system with a game written for it.

[QuantaCat]

Neverwinter nights or Knights Of The Old Republic. Is there a NWN2 for mac too? I dont know..

[Tesseract]

QuantaCat, on October 30th 2007, 12:31 AM, said:

Is there a NWN2 for mac too? I dont know..

Planned for release in December, last I heard.