Bootcamp/parallels/Gaming on the Mac Questions

[superman666]

I own a 2.4GHZ Macbook Pro (not the one that just recently got updated). I have about 94Gig's left free on it, and i have a 500gig external harddrive. I absolutely love Mac OSX, it works so well, and i rarely ever have problems. However i've been recently wanting to play games and Mac Gaming (as you probably already know) is very limited.

I have used CrossOver and i didn't really like it's performance for some games i tried playing it on (CSS). It feels like my computer could do alot better. So i have recently looked at bootcamp, which to me seems like a bigger step than i want to take. What makes it not worth using (for me) is that i would be using it SOLELY for games. I would NEVER boot into windows for anything else but perhaps some steam games, maybe call of duty...

So is it worth using bootcamp if i would only use it for games?
How little of a partition can i have it create?
Can i somehow use my external HD to my advantage with bootcamp?
Would the partition make my labtop significantly slower?
Also is it EASY/SIMPLE to uninstall bootcamp (or uninstall the windows partition)?
What other options do i have for gaming on the Mac? (parallels/Crossover..?)

 

[twombles62]

Bootcamp is worth it just for games. It's pretty painless to work.

The minimum is 5 gbs, but Windows is going to be bigger than that. I first partitioned it for 15gb, but Vista Ultimate took up 7-8 of that. So I am now using a 25gb partition from a 120gb HD.

 

[Pucas]

VMware Fushion isn't bad for gaming either

 

[superman666]

Like i said, i own a 500gig external harddrive (which also acts as my time machine device)... could i install the partition on their, and than boot xp from the external? That sounds like the harddrive would run too slow to play games on.

 

[wgilles]

Don't run games from an external HDD, they will run slow. If possible, install boot camp and XP...play games = just as good as a windows machine.

 

[Vanderpm]

I used to run XP Pro through bootcamp on a 10GB partition on my 2.2ghz MBP and had all the windows games installed on an external HD with absolutely no slowdown problems. I could use it for all the Steam games, Eve Online, WoW and a few others. Your mileage may vary of course.

 

[Flowero4ka]

I use parallels for all my needs and I'm glad with it.

 

[kitki83]

I use parallels for all my needs and I'm glad with it.

Ok I am playing some very old games that are 2D and it runs very sluggish, if people are able to run more graphic intensive games? How can you do it without being sluggish?

Sorry to hijack but you hit the spot of my question

 

[parrothead]

If you are going to be using Vista on bootcamp, then beware that the new SP1 messes with Parallels (or more likely) Parallels messes with it and causes you to be unable to use bootcamp. Hopefully Parallels will come up with a fix soon.

 

[sgntscrawn]

Don't run games from an external HDD, they will run slow. If possible, install boot camp and XP...play games = just as good as a windows machine.

Would they still run slow if you connected your external HDD through eSATA, I know the Western Digital HDDs have that connection, which apparently run at 3GB/s...

 

[byocrysis]

Why don't you just free up some space on your internal hard drive by moving some stuff over to that big old external hard drive, then the space for the windows partition would not even be an issue. I recommend allowing about 20GB for your windows partition, I currently have mine at 32, but I have lots of hard disk space available.

 

[Flowero4ka]

Ok I am playing some very old games that are 2D and it runs very sluggish, if people are able to run more graphic intensive games? How can you do it without being sluggish?

Sorry to hijack but you hit the spot of my question

It's ok

Use Bootcamp then for not being sluggish.. I'm sure it will work great to run more intensive games..