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Totally new to gaming on a Mac

T

Trident00

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 10, 2011
3
0
I have a 2010 model iMac (can't remember specific specs right now) and I would like to do some gaming on it.

I am planning on installing Windows 7 on a partition through BootCamp as I have heard Parallels and the like do not handle gaming well. Is this what I should do? The only reason I am installing Windows is to do some gaming so I just wanted to make sure that this is my best option.

Thanks!
 
Thank you, just wanted to be sure.

Do you have an idea of how much memory should be devoted to that partition? I'm sure it depends but is there a recommended level? I have a 1 TB hard drive with about 700 GB still available.
 
Even a Mac Pro with a 5770 is barely passable as a gaming machine in virtualization, and you'd need the top model 2011 iMac to top that Pro, especially once you ramp up the resolution on tougher games.

To give you an idea how bad it is, even games like Rainbow 6 Vegas don't run smoothly on my Pro using Parallels or Fusion. Honestly, anything past about Diablo II is not really an option ;-)

Boot camp all the way.

Unless you are going to to crazy with games, 80 or so GB should be plenty. I started with 30, and ended up having to reinstall to get an 80GB partition. It's not like a regular mac partition that you can just stretch, you'll want to make sure you have all the space you want, so aim a little high. Since you won't be storing data, just OS and games with a few support programs, you're usage should be low enough to maintain a decent amount of open space at the 80 gb level.
 
Last edited:
AngryRedTicTac said:
It's not like a regular mac partition that you can just stretch, you'll want to make sure you have all the space you want, so aim a little high.
Click to expand...

I agree with this. Do your math and calculate how much storage you're going to need. You don't need some blind number someone else tells you to use. Windows 7 will need 20 GB of storage space (for 64-bit), add in your games, add in a page file and sum the total. Then multiply that by 1.11+ to have 10% of free/unused disk space and you'll have your minimum disk space required for yourself.

I ended up using 400GB for Windows on a 1TB drive, but I have more games than will fit on that much space.
 
Great thank you for all the help, I am mostly doing this for Skyrim as I don't want to miss out on community mods like I did with Fallout.
 
95yjman said:
Is installing window's via boot camp really hard to do? I mean do you have to have software engineer skills to do it?
Click to expand...
LOL. Apple make it nice and easy. They provide all the drivers. The smoothest Windows installations and experiences I've ever had have all been on Macs.

For gaming, go with Boot Camp ALL THE WAY like the other guys said, virtualisation software like Parallels and Fusion just can't replicate the 3D power required to run modern games.
 
Bootcamp is fine if you don't mind having a PC... I like to casually game and multitask doing many things, which makes Bootcamp useless since I lose all access to Mac OS X while running Windows...

I port everything I want to run over through Wineskin (the whole reason I made Wineskin in the first place)... but being a very casual gamer I do not mind waiting a year or so to play a game, and I do not mind 10% to 30% decrease in performance... For people who always want to play the latest and greatest Windows game at the highest performance possible, then you really have to run Windows (not in a VM) to do that.
 
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