MacBook Pro, Triple OS booting, and Gaming

I don't own a Mac but I have been looking into getting one. I have had a Dell for the past couple of years and it has worked well and done everything I want for it to do. However it is getting up there in age. Ive had it for 3 years and I am looking to replace it soon. I have been checking out the new Mac Book Pros. The one in particular is the 15 inch, 2.2 GHz quad core i7, 8 GB or ram, AMD Radeon HD 6750 with 1 GB GDDR5. The first question I have is can it run 3 different OSs on it. I have friends who run Windows and Snow Leopard but I want also run Ubuntu. The second question, how well would it handle games once Windows was installed. For example, could it play Shogun 2 Total War or Call of Duty. I know a lot of people say you should just get a PC if you are going to game but I like Mac Books and the hardware that comes with them. Let me know what you guys think.

Not sure if this is were this post is supposed to go since I have multiple questions. It seems like a hardware question since I am asking if the system can handle these things.

Welcome to the Mac Forums.

Fairly common questions. The machine you chose is a good one and should be able to handle the Windows gaming through Boot Camp. The Linux part is a bit more tricky to setup and get running right but there are good step by step procedures we can direct you to so that it's done correctly.

You may in fact find that you don't need Ubuntu once you start running OS X. I would wait for awhile before deciding to run Ubuntu. Let us know when you buy your MBP and ask away.

Thanks for the reply. I thought the Ubuntu part may be tricky but I figured that with the graphics card it had it would be able to handle most games at least on the Medium graphics setting. Its just nice to clarify with someone who has experience with Mac.

Hi Zinryu,

When you get your new MBP, you can try this to install your multi OS

rEFIt - An EFI Boot Menu and Toolkit
Please read it now, do some research until you get your new Mac

I used to install Mac OSX, Windows and Ubuntu 10.10 running on my MBP late 2007 by using that boot tool and I like very much the interface. It worked perfect. I don't know about gaming, but I think it should work fine with most of games with your MBP configuration.

I don't know how is your experience installing multi OS but be careful when you install Ubuntu or other OS on your Mac. I am not so good at explaining plus my English has a limit. So, you just post your questions here and see if I or others can help you.

Good luck

I have multi booted Ubuntu 10.10 with Windows 7 but I've never touched a Mac Book at all so it will be a challenge from the start. As for the tool kit, I have heard of boot camp. Does boot camp only work for installing Windows OS?

Boot Camp is included with all new Mac machines. It's merely a tool which prepares and sets up a partition so that Windows can be installed. The actual installation is done through the Windows DVD once the partition is prepared and ready. Boot Camp only works with MS boxed or OEM system builders genuine full install versions of Windows XP SP2 and above - including Vista and Win 7. It does not work to install Ubuntu or any other operating system.

You may get conflicting advice on that but what I said above is from Apple.
Also avoid downloading any boot managers or boot devices such as rEFIt mentioned in another post until after you get Windows 7 installed. As I mentioned before, chances are you will not need Ubuntu once you run Mac OS X.

I ran Ubuntu for years on my Win machines in dual boot config - always playing around with various boot loaders and what not. Never looked back when I switched to OS X.

Ill remember to wait till after I install 7 before i install any other boot managers. Also, I guess it doesn't make much since to run Ubuntu since OS X and it are both Unix based and any applications I would potentially want to run probably work for Mac as well. I guess I just have an attachment to Ubuntu since I used it as a Primary OS at one point.

Please..... OS X is NOT Linux based. It's Unix based which by the way so is Linux Ubuntu. (Just thought I'd correct your thinking on this.)

Ubuntu is nice but unfortunately it's becoming bloated with too many frills and other junk. I personally don't like the newer versions as much as what was available several years ago when I was dual booting with XP.

My bad, I know they are both Unix based. I had Linux on the brain from thinking about Ubuntu. As for the new versions I would have to agree. Ubuntu 11.04 is especially a change for worse. I really hate the new version which is actually another reason for not booting into Ubuntu. I really do appreciate the help and the comments though. I think I have pretty much decided on the Mac Book. Now I have to just wait till I have the money saved in a couple of months.

Another quick question for you guys. Should I install Windows 7 64 bit or 32 bit on the Mac Book Pro. I don't know if the Mac Book Pro hardware will support Windows 64 bit or not. Let me know what you guys think.

Zinryu said:

Another quick question for you guys. Should I install Windows 7 64 bit or 32 bit on the Mac Book Pro. I don't know if the Mac Book Pro hardware will support Windows 64 bit or not. Let me know what you guys think.

Click to expand...

Intel Macs use commodity x86 hardware. The big difference is in the firmware (Macs use EFI as opposed to BIOS on a bog-standard PC). The long and short of it is that modern Macs are really just PCs in a pretty case.

So, the simple answer to your question is that assuming you buy a MacBook Pro that has a 64-bit processor, yes, you can use Windows 7 64-bit.

As far as triple-booting goes - I'm not sure I understand the desire. Few people game on Linux, so I'd recommend just using Boot Camp to dual boot with Windows and then run Linux in a virtual machine, since 3D acceleration isn't a big deal. You'll save yourself a ton of trouble and also have the flexibility to run Linux whenever you want to without rebooting. Trying out different flavors of Linux is a breeze as well.