question with parallels on MBP

[BigJohno]

Parallels says that it has 64mb vram but I though it said on the web site that it can run half life 2 with no problem. does it use my whole video card or what? if not how do I get it to. I have the new version.

Thanks

 

[iW00t]

Nobody knows how it is done except for their own devs, but if you do need to game bootcamp is still your best option.

I do not like Parallels at all. They seem to have a penchant of hyping things up way before it is done. Look at their coherence vs VMware's unity. I will not be surprised if Parallels try to pull a "3D Support 2.0" in the upcoming Parallels Desktop version 5.

SA really put it best:

I think XEN is what is scaring the piss out of Parallels right now. Apple has a SOLID history of putting open sourced features into their OS. While ZEN wouldn't == game over it would put a definite dampener on Parallel sales. Not sure about VMware if they make the client really cheap or free. Again for me VMware's biggest feature is cross compatibility.
I don't think Parallels is emulating a vid card. What I think is happening is what happened in the days of predual core CPU's. Two OS's sharing a single GPU is obviously going to run slower then if the virtualized envir had its own discreet GPU. Also I think Parallels is pulling a fast one with the games demoed.
As an example Quake that was being demoed. My money is on parallels doing some form of pass through for Open GL calls which would be a heck of a lot faster then using Direct X. Again IMHO Parallels is playing games with their customers.

I just finished backing up my Parallels VHD and removing Parallels. I'm going to give Fusion a shot because at this point Parallels really has irked me enough to try the other white meat.

 

[zap2]

Did you turn DirectX9 and/or OpenGL 1.5 on in system prefs?

 

[BigJohno]

Did you turn DirectX9 and/or OpenGL 1.5 on in system prefs?

It just asks if u want to use direct x.

 

[elithrar]

http://www.vmware.com/products/beta/fusion/

It's free, it's a beta, and it's already superior to Parallel's, at least in my experience.

 

[BigJohno]

Can I play half life 2 and ccs on VMware?

 

[e12a]

i got parallels hoping that it would run aero...but unfortunately they're still "working on it". 3d support/stability for a majority of games is sketchy at best.

VMWare's "accelerate 3d graphics" doesnt do much other than let you run screensavers. At least in my experience. If any of you guys have an idea to get the thing to run half life 2/CS:S then by all means post.

 

[Sbrocket]

Can I play half life 2 and ccs on VMware?

It isn't in your best interest to try and run processor and graphics intensive games in a virtual environment. Any solution is going to be slower than booting up natively and running the game.

Seriously, your best bet is to create a small Boot Camp partition that you can use for games. Then if you need access to some less hardware-intensive Windows apps while you are in OSX you can use VMware (or Parallels, if you really want to for some weird reason). This is want I'm doing this fall for college. My school has a mostly Lenovo required laptop program (yech), but all I have to do is run the apps that I need in either VMware or Boot Camp.

In simpler words: ideally, you're not going to be able to game in a virtual OS environment and get native performance at this point in time with any solution. Go native with Boot Camp.

 

[72930]

Nobody knows how it is done except for their own devs, but if you do need to game bootcamp is still your best option.

I do not like Parallels at all. They seem to have a penchant of hyping things up way before it is done. Look at their coherence vs VMware's unity. I will not be surprised if Parallels try to pull a "3D Support 2.0" in the upcoming Parallels Desktop version 5.

I have both (Parallels and Fusion) and I now prefer Parallels v.3 to Fusion beta 4 (maybe that will change in future updates).

I don't care about updates, and while Unity is cool, it is buggier than Coherence mode. I love the speed increases that just came, and Parallels is much faster for the simple stuff.

 

[darkcurse]

But parallels eats waaaay more system resources than VMWare's Fusion Beta. I mean, with Parallels running a video in WMP for example can use up >100% CPU while in VMWare it only uses up 50~70%. Amazing really, I can't wait for VMWare to release the full thing.