Gaming on a mac via bootcamp

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O.k so i bought my MBP since i travel all over the world with work and wanted a sturdier more reliable laptop, so far so good, everything is fine and i love my mac, its awesome.
Problem is my job. Like i say, a lot of time traveling so never get to use my PS3 or 360 any more. This made me check out games available on mac.... not many eh?

So what i a was hoping is that someone could tell me in laymans terms, if i install windows vista or windows 7 on my 13" 2.2ghz intel core 2 duo, 2GB 1067MHz DDR3 how much of my general performance will be affected (while using it as a mac) and how realistically well i can expect to play games using the windows. I know upgrading my ram or whatever will help but if there is no need then obviously i wont.

Spare me any lectures about "a mac shouldnt be used windows" etc, its only for offline gaming to pass the time i spend bored to tears at work

Thanks
 
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Your Mac's Specs
Black Macbook C2D 2GHz 3GB RAM 250GB HD iPhone 4 iPad 3G
Unless you're going to be using up all your remaining hard drive space, installing Windows on your Mac isn't going to affect its performance in the least bit. The two operating systems exist separately from one another, so Windows will have no effect on your Mac side and vice versa.

As for game performance, it really depends on the game. Most games that came out in the last two or three years, you'll probably manage Medium settings. With older games I'm sure you can hit High settings. So definitely playable settings :D

Don't worry, we're not Apple fanatics here, nobody is going to pontificate about the evils of installing Windows on your Mac. There are plenty of legitimate uses for it and there are lots of us here at Mac-Forums that have Windows installed on our Macs.
 
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O.k so i bought my MBP since i travel all over the world with work and wanted a sturdier more reliable laptop, so far so good, everything is fine and i love my mac, its awesome.
Problem is my job. Like i say, a lot of time traveling so never get to use my PS3 or 360 any more. This made me check out games available on mac.... not many eh?

So what i a was hoping is that someone could tell me in laymans terms, if i install windows vista or windows 7 on my 13" 2.2ghz intel core 2 duo, 2GB 1067MHz DDR3 how much of my general performance will be affected (while using it as a mac) and how realistically well i can expect to play games using the windows. I know upgrading my ram or whatever will help but if there is no need then obviously i wont.

Spare me any lectures about "a mac shouldnt be used windows" etc, its only for offline gaming to pass the time i spend bored to tears at work

Thanks

The guy I bought my imac from was playing a couple of first-person-shooter games running XP SP3 in the bootcamp partition. He said it worked flawlessly with absolutely no lag. The machine is a 2.8G C2D with 2G DDR2 Ram.

Hope that helps.

P.S. The machine is partitioned with 50 gb dedicated to bootcamp and it must have been enough for Windows and a couple games.
 
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I want to install XP on my mac book pro 17" but I don't get what is meant by making sure you get the correct version of bootcamp?

How do copies of XP run on bootcamp? Does it matter if it's SP1, 2 or 3? Because eventually once Windows is installed, I'll be able to download updates for those right?

Also I was told by a friend who works for Apple that

Boot Camp - which boots from start up is best for performance e.g games, which is mainly what I'm looking to install it for.

Parrallel/VMWare - opens in Snow Leopard but isn't as 'good' performance but is open for just small applications right? I would like to use this for stuff like Sopcast (streaming sports), so it will not be resource intensive.

However, he said, it's better to only run one OR the other, as the whole process of dealing with the partitions, virtual box will put a lot of pressure on the CPU? Also say I have bootcamp, do I have to install Windows in Parrallel/VMWare?
 
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I want to install XP on my mac book pro 17" but I don't get what is meant by making sure you get the correct version of bootcamp?

How do copies of XP run on bootcamp? Does it matter if it's SP1, 2 or 3? Because eventually once Windows is installed, I'll be able to download updates for those right?

Also I was told by a friend who works for Apple that

Boot Camp - which boots from start up is best for performance e.g games, which is mainly what I'm looking to install it for.

Parrallel/VMWare - opens in Snow Leopard but isn't as 'good' performance but is open for just small applications right? I would like to use this for stuff like Sopcast (streaming sports), so it will not be resource intensive.

However, he said, it's better to only run one OR the other, as the whole process of dealing with the partitions, virtual box will put a lot of pressure on the CPU? Also say I have bootcamp, do I have to install Windows in Parrallel/VMWare?

Just use the copy of bootcamp that is on your computer already.

You can use any Service Pack and upgrade like normal.

Parrellel/VMWare is fine for Sopcast and pretty much anything except games and stuff like video editing. Basically anything that needs a lot of power/memory you should run under bootcamp.

You dont need Parrellel/VMWare if you have Windows running under bootcamp. You can have Windows running virtual under OSX as well, if you want. In that case you will have two copies of Windows (with twice the maintenance).:(
 

cwa107


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Actually, Boot Camp has very specific requirements for which version of Windows you can use.

If it's Windows XP, the disc must have SP2/3 integrated. It also must be a full version, not an upgrade edition. And finally, it can not be a system restore disc from another computer as they are frequently tailored to the machine they were sold with.

Vista is also supported, but it can not be an upgrade or restore disc (same as with XP).

Windows 7 runs, but you need to make sure you have Boot Camp 3.0 (the version that came with Snow Leopard). Additionally, it is not "officially" supported by Boot Camp, but Apple has publicly stated that the release should be out before year's end.

All of that information and much more is in this thread:

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/wi...4239-running-windows-mac-switchers-guide.html
 

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