Gaming: BootCamp, Parallels or CrossOver?

[raevynn]

My bf is sick of Windows and is planning to buy a Mac. However, he's a gamer and would want to install Windows too, so he can keep enjoying his (mostly strategy) game collection.

In your experience, which solution works best for gaming on a mac - BootCamp, Parallels or CrossOver? What are CrossOver's capabilities or limitations on gaming and would Parallels be more of an investment?

 

[lapino]

Bootcamp, no doubt about it.

 

[flopticalcube]

Bootcamp by a huge margin. Crossover perhaps occasionally.

 

[Tallest Skil]

Virtualization is worthless for games and Boot Camp is free.

 

[Eidorian]

Virtualization is worthless for games and Boot Camp is free.

Accept no substitute for a native installation.

 

[LtRammstein]

Do what they said, but I'd like to add something.

Make sure your copy of Windows is 64-bit.

 

[Stridder44]

My bf is sick of Windows and is planning to buy a Mac. However, he's a gamer and would want to install Windows too, so he can keep enjoying his (mostly strategy) game collection.

In your experience, which solution works best for gaming on a mac - BootCamp, Parallels or CrossOver? What are CrossOver's capabilities or limitations on gaming and would Parallels be more of an investment?

Like everyone else has already said, Boot Camp and preferably a 64-bit version of Windows.

This thread reminds me of a another thread where a guy asked a similar question. It always makes me laugh.

 

[aki]

Bootcamp

and just to add some explanation

parallels works well enough (v3 faster than 4 right now...) if you are playing an older game so like if your boy likes old X-Com strat games or something it could be fine and even convenient compared to bootcamp rebooting all the time

BUT with parallels you can sometimes get small but irritating problems and end up messing with lots of things until finally you end up doing it in bootcamp anyway ie there is some tweaking you have to live with sometimes screen resolutions controllers etc etc

crossover works very well for some things and around 80% for most things i havent used it very much but if i had to choose id go parallels because its easier to see what is happening and mess with settings a lot of stuff is sort of hidden from a normal user like me in crossover

in theory i use parallels and bootcamp for gaming but id be honest to say its 95% in bootcamp

PS fantastic link stridder hehehhee

 

[edgcrshr]

Boot camp question

I just switched to Mac this weekend and I have a boot camp question, I too have some programs that I will need windows for but I don't have a Vista install disk, just the recovery disk. I do have a XP install disk, does anyone know if I can install XP on a thumb drive and launch boot camp from there rather then have to actually waste space on my hard drive?