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Is Boot Camp worth it?

A

Anthony81586

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 15, 2011
118
0
I have an early 2011 15" MBP, and recently ordered more RAM to increase it to 8GB. The only reason I'd boot camp it would be to play my two games, StarCraft 2 and the soon to be released Diablo 3. Until recently I never even considered it since SC2 ran fine. But since last patch there's been a number of users (myself included) complaining about a huge FPS drop while playing. This caused me to look into other solutions since Blizzard has yet to address it. While researching I've learned that if the games run through windows there's a dramatic performance increase.

My question is this, is the performance increase so dramatic that it's worth purchasing Win7 and partitioning the hard drive just to play the two games? Has anyone played them on both OS's with a similar setup to mine and felt as though it was worth the plunge?

Thanks in advance!
 
I don't know what others think about it, but to me, its not at all worth it. I switched to Mac so that i wouldnt have to deal with alllllll the nonsense that comes alone with using windows. Virus protection, updates, etc. Id rather lower the gfx on a game than deal with all that.
 
Games tend to run better in Windows. While I don't have any experience with your particular hardware I know that on my iMac Starcraft 2 is very smooth in Windows 7, even on higher settings. When playing it in OS X the game can get pretty laggy and that's with most settings turned down to medium or lower.
 
Anthony81586 said:
I have an early 2011 15" MBP, and recently ordered more RAM to increase it to 8GB. The only reason I'd boot camp it would be to play my two games, StarCraft 2 and the soon to be released Diablo 3. Until recently I never even considered it since SC2 ran fine. But since last patch there's been a number of users (myself included) complaining about a huge FPS drop while playing. This caused me to look into other solutions since Blizzard has yet to address it. While researching I've learned that if the games run through windows there's a dramatic performance increase.

My question is this, is the performance increase so dramatic that it's worth purchasing Win7 and partitioning the hard drive just to play the two games? Has anyone played them on both OS's with a similar setup to mine and felt as though it was worth the plunge?

Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

As both of these games are available for the MacOS, the answer would be no, it's not worth it unless you are sure the performance hit you mentioned is a permanent state. Game performance running in native Windows is better in all most all of the cases I know of. As a rule, Bootcamp/Windows install becomes worth it for games that are Windows only or you are having performance issues under the MacOS and you really really want to play them. :)
 
I believe Blizzard are doing a better job than most when it comes to optimizing their games for Mac OS aswell. but hey, if you arent fully satisfied, try it, and If it feels not worth it, remove it, not much harder than that. :)
 
I bought a mac because I want a powerful-ish, nice looking system that runs the OS' that count. After spending so much money on the machine itself I'm not prepared to lose performance just because I don't want to use Windows.

I run OSX and Win7. Split 50/50 at the moment because each does something better than the other.
 
Bootcamp is worth it just for the games as long as you have a decent GPU. Also, mod support for PC games is much better.

I find Windows 7 pretty solid, its not very complicated as long as you don't install junk. Make sure you install the latest ATI or nVidia drivers for instant fps boost.
 
Wardenski said:
Bootcamp is worth it just for the games as long as you have a decent GPU. Also, mod support for PC games is much better.

I find Windows 7 pretty solid, its not very complicated as long as you don't install junk. Make sure you install the latest ATI or nVidia drivers for instant fps boost.
Click to expand...

This is very accurate. I concur with this post. :)
 
Wardenski said:
Bootcamp is worth it just for the games as long as you have a decent GPU. Also, mod support for PC games is much better.

I find Windows 7 pretty solid, its not very complicated as long as you don't install junk. Make sure you install the latest ATI or nVidia drivers for instant fps boost.
Click to expand...

Games are the only reason I have Boot Camp installed. To me, that's enough for it to be worth it.
 
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