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bchamorro

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 31, 2007
161
0
Is bootcamp enough for running windows games on leopard?

or will I have to buy parallels or fusion?
 
Obviously you also need a copy of XP Service Pack 2 or Vista, but yes Boot Camp is enough on its own, and if you're talking games it's preferable performance wise to either Parallels or VMWare.
 
Do I need to have a copy of XP/Vista installed in order to run windows games?

now im a little confused.
 
When using Boot Camp on your Mac, Windows does not run from within OS X. Running Windows on your Mac is essentially the same as running Windows on any other PC.
 
Yes. Boot Camp basically turns your Mac into a dual-boot PC capable of running Windows. But you still need a copy of Windows to put on it.
 
Should I get Vista or XP?

I was thinking Vista Home Basic because of Direct X 10. Should I go for it?
 
Unless you have a Mac Pro with a high-end graphics card; DX 10 will be irrelevant. On my sig iMac, I use XP for all my Windows gaming needs; works great.
 
Unless you have a Mac Pro with a high-end graphics card; DX 10 will be irrelevant. On my sig iMac, I use XP for all my Windows gaming needs; works great.

same here. its more the hardware. dont expect top notch performance, but if you can deal with a little lower resolution or turning off/down AA, you'll be fine.
 
FWIW, I ordered Vista Home from Amazon (OEM edition); it was only $20 more than XP. Loaded it up in bootcamp on my Al imac (20" with the better graphics card and 3 gigs of Ram) and played Bioshock last night at highest resolution. Seemed great to me (I'm not a high end gamer). I was pretty impressed.
 
i know i'll be repeating some things here, but, too bad lol

Boot Camp allows you to designate a portion of your Hard Drive as a windows partition. It also gets you started on the installation of XP or Vista (if using XP, it must be a disk that has Service Pack 2 or later on it).

Now, you can hold option key on the keyboard whenever your computer is starting up to select the operating system.
Alternatively, you can go to the "startup disk" preference pane in the System Preferences.

You should experience absolutely no performance hit whatsoever with boot camp.

Boot camp will NOT allow you to run Windows software simultaneously with OS X. It's one or the other, but restarting really shouldn't take too long.

Fusion and parallels allow you to run windows and OS X simultaneously, but you will see a performance hit. This is because Windows is running in emulation, not natively. Also, with parallels/fusion you have to designate a specific portion of your systems RAM to Windows.
Additionally, fusion and parallels may have problems with the 3D graphics in games.

I don't really think Direct X 10 is that big a deal right now. You'll probably run most games faster for now in XP.
The only game I know of that REQUIRES Vista is Halo 2 for Windows, and they had a ******** reason for doing so. Originally they claimed they were going to use DX 10 for it. Well guess what... by the time it was released, they had dropped that idea. The game uses DirectX 9.


BTW, you have one other option for gaming.... crossover (and their newly released "crossover for games."
Crossover is different than the other options stated here because it doesn't actually run a copy of Windows. Instead, it allows you to open up Windows applications from WITHIN OS X. I think it's supposed to be pretty seamless.

The catch is, Crossover is not compatible with everything, and you will see SOME performance hit with games, though nothing like if you were trying to run them through parallels/fusion.
Also, Crossover, does NOT require u to install a copy of windows. If you want to try it out you can go here.

EDIT: and.... i just realized that this thread is 3 months old lol
 
For gaming... Go With Vista Home Premium

If you've got any video card in your Mac that is compatible with Direct X10, then I'd highly recommend using Windows Vista Home Premium. That version now supports Boot Camp (originally MS didn't allow it to be installed via Boot Camp for some reason) and can be had as an OEM for right around $100US.

Direct X10 will provide a significant boost in gaming graphics quality while being mostly backward compatible with all previous versions of Direct X. Don't worry too much about Vista not running your older games either - I've installed quite a few (some even being Win95 games) and they've all worked fine in Vista.

Home Premium features several features not included in Home Basic, and sports a not-too-bad-looking Aero interface.

For those who don't have the graphics muscle to run Direct X10, then there is little advantage to moving up to Vista unless you just want a solid 64-bit OS for your Core2Duo Mac. (I don't personally care for the X64 version of Windows XP.)

Either route will give you the same Windows gaming quality that you could expect from any other similarly equipped PC box. Forget using Parallels or VM Ware for games, the emulation just isn't fast enough for today's demanding graphics.
 
there is little advantage to moving up to Vista unless you just want a solid 64-bit OS for your Core2Duo Mac.

Before I get too many replies... "solid" is in Windows self-comparison of XP vs Vista. There's really little "solid" about Windows. That's why we use a Mac to begin with.

I simply prefer 64-bit Vista to 64-bit XP for gaming, but everyone will have their own opinion of that I'm sure.
 
If you can get hold of a copy of XP it will be faster for games.

I beg to differ.

I have an extra HD partitioned in 2 specifically for Windows-gaming on my Mac Pro.
1) XP Pro SP 2, 32 bits;
2) Vista Ultimate SP 1, 64 bits.

I have done the video stress test of Counter Strike Source, in both setups, and Vista is faster! This is a DirectX 9 game, and it was done on exactly the same hardware ('08 Mac Pro, GeForce 8800 GT, 4 GB RAM, all latest nVidia drivers).
OTOH, some older games have other issues with Vista though....
 
I beg to differ.

I have an extra HD partitioned in 2 specifically for Windows-gaming on my Mac Pro.
1) XP Pro SP 2, 32 bits;
2) Vista Ultimate SP 1, 64 bits.

I have done the video stress test of Counter Strike Source, in both setups, and Vista is faster! This is a DirectX 9 game, and it was done on exactly the same hardware ('08 Mac Pro, GeForce 8800 GT, 4 GB RAM, all latest nVidia drivers).
OTOH, some older games have other issues with Vista though....

? Every single game I play in xp / vista (I had both on my old windows box) ran waaay faster in XP...Then again you have 64 bit vista so maybe the extra ram is helping you out I'm not sure. I ran it on 32 bit Vista
 
? Every single game I play in xp / vista (I had both on my old windows box) ran waaay faster in XP...Then again you have 64 bit vista so maybe the extra ram is helping you out I'm not sure. I ran it on 32 bit Vista

Same here. I'm on 32bit XP with just 1gb of ram and from my tests with 64bit Vista - XP is by far the fastest. You'll likely need more ram to get the benefit.

XP also boots a lot faster too, which might be important if you're bouncing between OSX for work and DVR and XP for gaming (like I do).
 
Is bootcamp enough for running windows games on leopard?

About time, hopefully they do a better job at supporting operating systems than Mac Drive does. I imagine the driver should work fine on PCs as well.
 
If you are primarily installing Windows to game and you want to run older games, get 32 bit XP.

If you are more interested in running the newest Windows games and want them to run fast, get 64 bit Vista home premium.

32 bit XP = Most compatible
64 bit Vista = Fastest
 
If you are primarily installing Windows to game and you want to run older games, get 32 bit XP.

If you are more interested in running the newest Windows games and want them to run fast, get 64 bit Vista home premium.

32 bit XP = Most compatible
64 bit Vista = Fastest

Actually for most games that is wrong.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/435034/#12

For the extremely few games made for 64bit, such as crysis, vista 64 is a bit faster. But more and more games are doing the 64bit thing.

Vista 32 vs 64:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/64-bit-vista-gaming,2250.html
 
Unless you have a Mac Pro with a high-end graphics card; DX 10 will be irrelevant. On my sig iMac, I use XP for all my Windows gaming needs; works great.

exactly this, no need for DX10 if your hardware can't even use it. Then you'll be lagging your comp even further with Vista. I use XP and it works wonders.
 
Hi Bchamorro...
You have to copy of XP or Vista in order to play games. I think you should prefer vista for Direct X 10 because Xp doesn't support it. Actually, i am wondering to purchase graphics card which is very faster and not much costly. I think to Direct X 10 doesn't deal right now.
 
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