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Running Skyrim in Parallels at 4k on Mac Pro (Late 2013)

OCDMacGeek

OCDMacGeek

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 19, 2007
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I thought this would be of interest to the Mac Pro community. I am running Skyrim on my Mac Pro (late 2013) with an Asus PQ321 4k display at 60 Hz through Parallels 9 at 3840x2160 resolution -- almost 4k. I was shocked to see that the frame rate is completely playable even though this is being played through Parallels 9.

My Mac Pro is 3.5 GHz six core Intel Xeon, with 128 GB of RAM. I have the dual D500 video card. In Parallels, I have maxed out the video memory and assigned 16 GB of RAM.

If you have any questions about this set up, please let me know in the comments.

http://youtu.be/3ODlmaFjs0w
 
I think that's rather impressive, honestly. Goes to show how much effort Parallels puts into their graphics drivers. What settings are you running Skyrim on? (Aside from the resolution, I mean graphics quality, anti-aliasing, etc). Are there any mods active? I would be interested to know how well benchmarks perform as well.
 
Running Skyrim in Parallels at 4k on Mac Pro (Late 2013)

I am running Skyrim on High settings (which puts antialiasing at four samples, and the other filtering at eight samples). I don't have any mods active, apart from downloading the high-resolution pack through Steam. I would be glad to run benchmarks, but which ones did you have in mind?

As measured through Parallels, Windows gives the machine score of 7.2.
 
That's pretty incredible. I'd be interested to know how Fusion 6 performs compared to those numbers. That's what I use currently on my 3,1 - but those numbers are quite remarkable. The benchmark I always fall back to is the ol' BioShock Infinite benchmarking utility, though those Windows experience index numbers are enough for me. Finally, a quality product!
 
Actually really impressive for Parallels. They must be hard at work on their graphics drivers.
 
One interesting thing to note, and which I can't fully explain, is that I believe the quality and speed went up after I hooked up by Asus 4K display and cranked the resolution up. I previously had a Dell monitor at 2560 x 1440, and with the same settings, I ran Skyrim at that max resolution. It was still playable, but I noticed more shuttering than I do now with it running at basically 4K resolution on a 4K display.

My non-expert theory: from what I understand, the dual D500s typically operate with one powering the displays and the other one powering graphic intensive tasks. Perhaps with a 4K display being powered, the other D500 GPU is put to task in a different manner, and thus the improved performance.
 
May I know which version of Windows you are now using in Parallel 9?

My Mac Pro 2009 (spec as per signature), running Windows 8 in Parallel 9, it give me a score of 7.9.

The lowest score is coming from the CPU. May I know your score details? It's because I think the nMP can easily beat my old Mac Pro, but the score is not quite right. Are you running Windows 7?

Screen Shot 2014-07-19 at 12.10.28.jpg
 
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Running Skyrim in Parallels at 4k on Mac Pro (Late 2013)

Sure, I am using Windows 7. The highest score for Windows 7 appears to be 7.9. My lowest score is the CPU. I have only assigned two CPUs, and see that you have assigned six. I will increase my CPUs and see how this improves performance.

As you might gather from this thread, I love to play Skyrim, and I have heard that perhaps Windows 8 and Skyrim do not play well together. This is the primary reason I have not upgraded.

Thanks for sharing the information about your system.

pe5yhyry.jpg
 
The difference is clearly that OP has designated 2 cores to the VM while H98 has 6 dedicated. Although, 2 cores on an E5 is damn close to 6 cores on a E5690 is just incredible too. Engineering is amazing.
 
Yes, I think more core will give you better result. I've just try the Windows 7 performance test. Interestingly the score is more or less the same as Windows 8. So, even though the scale in Windows 8 is up to 9.9, but the same score may still represents more or less the same performance.

Screen Shot 2014-07-20 at 5.09.35.jpg
 
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Running Skyrim in Parallels at 4k on Mac Pro (Late 2013)

When I allocate six cores like you did, my Windows 7 experience score went to 7.7 (CPU score 7.7, everything else the same). So, based on these numbers our systems are being judged about equal. I'm looking at the specs of your machine in your signature, and it appears that you have installed a very high-end video card. And you're also running a 4K display. Have you ever tried to run a graphic intensive game like Skyrim?
 
shahidhaque said:
When I allocate six cores like you did, my Windows 7 experience score went to 7.7 (CPU score 7.7, everything else the same). So, based on these numbers our systems are being judged about equal. I'm looking at the specs of your machine in your signature, and it appears that you have installed a very high-end video card. And you're also running a 4K display. Have you ever tried to run a graphic intensive game like Skyrim?
Click to expand...

Not yet, I am not good at using keyboard to play game. But will try to run some games later for testing purpose.
 
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Went to test this out in VMWare Fusion 6 today, but my Windoze decided to die on me. Will report back when I get everything fixed. I know it won't be nearly as good, Fusion 6 still only supports OpenGL 2.1 and DirectX 9.0 - pretty sad compared to the competition...
 
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