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palebluedot

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 29, 2008
734
91
Is it bad to install multiple programs in one crossover bottle? Like say I have a bottle (main one) that is winxp for all my steam games. Could I install other games like Guild Wars to that bottle or does it need to be in a diff one? Does running multiple bottles put more strain on the system (i.e. like running two emulated instances of Windows at once?)
 

Keleko

macrumors 68000
Mar 26, 2008
1,927
2,767
It depends on if a game needs a different configuration in a bottle than another game you have installed. I have some games installed all in one shared bottle, and they all run fine in it. (Dawn of War games and Star Wars - Empire at War in that bottle). Guild Wars I put in a separate bottle because Crossover has their own built-in install for it, so I considered it "safer" to use a separate bottle. I have another bottle for Steam games (Civ IV and expansions are the only games at the moment) for the same reason.

As far as the resources used, it is mostly disk space that matters. If you're not running anything in a bottle, then it isn't really taking up any resources beyond the space to store it.
 

palebluedot

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 29, 2008
734
91
It depends on if a game needs a different configuration in a bottle than another game you have installed. I have some games installed all in one shared bottle, and they all run fine in it. (Dawn of War games and Star Wars - Empire at War in that bottle). Guild Wars I put in a separate bottle because Crossover has their own built-in install for it, so I considered it "safer" to use a separate bottle. I have another bottle for Steam games (Civ IV and expansions are the only games at the moment) for the same reason.

As far as the resources used, it is mostly disk space that matters. If you're not running anything in a bottle, then it isn't really taking up any resources beyond the space to store it.

What if I am running Steam and then launch guild wars in a seperate bottle. Would that use up more resources running 2 bottles at the same time versus running two games from one bottle?
 

Keleko

macrumors 68000
Mar 26, 2008
1,927
2,767
If you're just running Steam in a different bottle, it would use more resources. Steam itself isn't that needy, since it hangs around while you're playing a Steam-based game anyway. You'd have the extra overhead of the Steam + bottle and then Guild Wars + bottle. All you'd really need to worry about is memory usage, though, since Steam doesn't do much with the cpu itself.
 

palebluedot

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 29, 2008
734
91
If you're just running Steam in a different bottle, it would use more resources. Steam itself isn't that needy, since it hangs around while you're playing a Steam-based game anyway. You'd have the extra overhead of the Steam + bottle and then Guild Wars + bottle. All you'd really need to worry about is memory usage, though, since Steam doesn't do much with the cpu itself.

So running 2 programs in separate bottles does in fact use more resources then running 2 programs in the SAME bottle from what your saying?
 

TheVendor

macrumors member
Aug 11, 2008
78
0
Canada
So running 2 programs in separate bottles does in fact use more resources then running 2 programs in the SAME bottle from what your saying?

I would assume so, but not enough for you to notice a difference between running programs from 1 bottle vs 2 bottles
 
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