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boot camp or parallels??

R

rayrayjewels

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 14, 2006
29
0
I need to run autocad (doesnt run on macs)
but with the release of bootcamp, i made the switch to a new macbook pro
but i just read about parallels... does anyone know much about them?
it would be GREAT not to have to restart everytime i wanted to run autocad, and it seems that parallels offers that, but i read that it doesn't run some of the games with 3d graphics... does this mean that i won't be able to run autocad??
HELP!
thanks,
ray
 
Basically if you don't require 3D accelleration Parallels will work great for you, and has the added bonus you don't need to quit out of Mac OS X to run Windows.

Apart from the 3D graphics thing, the only downside is that the impact on the computers RAM of running 2 OSes simulatenously can be large, so having plenty of RAM will help.
 
BTW - you can try a Beta test of Parallels for free, why not give it a try?
 
umm... what is 3d accceleration.
i just got a new macbook pro, with as much memory and ram as i could possibly get, i plan on using a portable hard drive as a scratch drive whenever i'm running CAD...

what is the downside to parallels?? and maybe in laymens terms :eek:
thanks!
 
Kingsly said:
The GFX card is still emulated, so thats something to think about.

Edit* dang, you beat me to it!
Click to expand...

oh yeah, and what does it mean that the gfx card is emulated??:confused:
 
rayrayjewels said:
oh yeah, and what does it mean that the gfx card is emulated??:confused:
Click to expand...
It means that there's no graphics card to use (as the graphics card installed is being used by Mac OS X), so the graphics card is "emulated," meaning it is generated by the processor and not by a physical graphics card. This usually means lower performance on graphics-heavy games and other applications.
 
oh, i didn't think that there was emulation?? at least not according to most of the things i have read...
 
You should definetly use Boot Camp, AutoCad needs the graphics card to render things and to draw the vector lines and graphics on the screen. I doubt if the program would even run without 3D graphics support. There's no question about it, Parallel's solution won't cut it in programs like AutoCad or 3D Studio Max. Your best bet is to use Boot Camp, I use it for 3D Studio Max and it runs great. :D
 
yeah,i keep reading about the graphics problem, i hope parallels fixes it because rebooting is really annoying to me....
maybe i'll get used to it...:p
 
rayrayjewels said:
yeah,i keep reading about the graphics problem, i hope parallels fixes it because rebooting is really annoying to me....
maybe i'll get used to it...:p
Click to expand...
Its not really a "problem" unless you really need to do high end 3D graphics. I'm not sure AutoCAD falls into that category, but the last time I used it was on a 80286 machine!

I think you should just try it and find out.
 
rayrayjewels said:
yeah,i keep reading about the graphics problem, i hope parallels fixes it because rebooting is really annoying to me....
maybe i'll get used to it...:p
Click to expand...

It's not a "problem" for Parallels to fix. Their software offers CPU virtualization but not GPU virtualization because the latter is currently not supported by the graphics hardware itself.
 
Lancetx said:
It's not a "problem" for Parallels to fix. Their software offers CPU virtualization but not GPU virtualization because the latter is currently not supported by the graphics hardware itself.
Click to expand...
Hah! :p You beat me to it.

So yeah for the time being Boot Camp is your only option to running AutoCad or other programs that require 3D Graphics acceleration. :D

Good Luck :)
 
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