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jypatl

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 12, 2012
26
4
I have a rMBP and I just installed Parallels the other night and was very excited to play Saints Row 3 that I bought from the steam summer sale. I try to play it and it gives me an error "Failed to create graphics device". I've looked online for this problem and a lot of people have had this problem and they just upgraded there graphics card. I looked up the updates for NVIDIA 650M cards and found a beta update and I tried to install it on parallels, but it gave me an error and wouldn't let me upgrade. Anyone know what I should do?
 
You might want to try adjusting the amount of video memory available to the virtual machine. It defaults to 256 MB and I would think you are better off giving that game at least 512 MB if not a Gigabyte of video RAM.

You can find information about how to adjust your virtual machine settings in the Parallels online help.

Keep in mind too that while many games work well with Parallels, not every game will work. Also keep in mind that games which demand a lot of hardware power, such as Saints Row 3 probably does may suffer performance-wise running with Parallels as a lot of computational power is required to run the virtual machine plus the software running within it.

Not to be negative or discourage you from trying this by the way. It might work to your satisfaction. Those are just issues to be aware of. For newer, demanding games going with bootcamp is often a better option for best performance and compatibility.

Lastly, it is kind of a long story but you never need to install any drivers in your Windows installed with Parallels. Parallels takes care of that for you. It is simulating a generic PC for Windows to run in and has its own drivers for that already setup.
 
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Lastly, it is kind of a long story but you never need to install any drivers in your Windows installed with Parallels. Parallels takes care of that for you. It is simulating a generic PC for Windows to run in and has its own drivers for that already setup.

Thats kinda true, but it does need some specialised drivers also, which it installs for you as part of the Parallels tools. If your windows is running weird, or doesnt seem to have those drivers installed (i.e. if you cant resize the parallels window and have windows automatically adjust its resolution and adapt) - then you may need to go into one of the options or settings, and choose the option to reinstall the parallels tools onto that windows installation.

I bought Saints Row the third as part of the steam sale a few days ago, never thought about running it under parallels though, it might be a bit gpu intensive to run smoothly under parallels, but I can try and get back to you. Bootcamp would be the better option no doubt.
 
Thanks guys! I'm going to use bootcamp instead, hopefully it'll work!
 
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