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Best Boot Camp video resolution for retina MacBook?
- Thread starter Blue604
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Best would be obviously 2880x1800 at 100% DPI. But if it's too small it seems 2880x1800 at 150% would be best. 200% messes up with some of the UI elements.
the reason i use bootcamp is for quicken. 2880x1800 just makes the font too small to read. 200% or 150% make the fonts bigger but blurry.
There is no need to reboot your mac for just productivity applications. If you really need PC apps. look into virtual machines.
To me the only reason to boot camp is to play PC games. such as Skyrim (old 2d games like Diablo 2 can run on windows 7 VM, i also got Doom II to play on a window xp VM)
there are solutions as parallels but virtual box is 100% free. I have been using Virtual Box for Mac for a while. It's great. I have an old version of rosetta stone that runs on PC. I don't want to shell out nearly 400 bucks for the new updated versions for Mac. I run my VM. it runs perfectly.
its very easy to make a VM. just select the OS you want, name the VM, configure the hardware settings to your liking. Set Ram to 2GB for windows 7 VM. You need to keep at least 2GB for Mac OSx. set virtual hdd size.
then load up os either via iso file or just mount the CD drive.
VB suports seamless mode which does exactly what it says. basicaly it merges mac desktop with the Windows VM desktop. It basicaly makes like you can run pc apps on your mac.
thank you. I had vm before, slows down my macbook pro 13". so i decided to go with bootcamp. bootcamp was great on the 13"
The 13" lacks the firepower to run VM. Especially older models that only had 2 and 4 GB of RAM, and they only have dual-core processors. Of course it was slow. The MBPr has the RAM and quad-core processing chops to run VM. I highly recommend it for your Quicken purposes. Quicken is not a very resource intensive program, so VM should run perfectly fine on it as long as you don't have a lot of other apps running in the background on OSX.
It'll also look a lot better than running it in Bootcamp. Windows is not ready for the retina display.
I actually find running at bootcamp crisper than parallels, for some reason, parallels 7 looks blurry at 2880x1800 (with any dpi), I have to set it up to 1920x1200 with 100% dpi and still looks kinda fuzzy (not much, but not as crisp as bootcamp 2880x1800 at 150 dpi).
The only thing I don't like about bootcamp are the trapckpad drivers. My retina can handle a VM with windows 7 good, but I still think it's way more responsive at native boot.
well it should be more responsive. it uses the whole computer + discrete card without the overhead of being emulated within another OS, rather than the limited ram and processor cores assigned by parallels. and you're right, parallels is not retina ready (doesn't actually display the windows viewport properly and still scales) despite what they say.
yeah it annoyed me that the application is retina aware, but the only part that matters is not!
I've messed with the settings quite a bit and the best (so far, anyway) that I can find is 2800x1800 with 200 DPI.
Some apps do look small, but this res looks really crisp and clear. For me, it works well because I only use a few apps in Windows - MS Office, Chrome and a few other light apps that look nice at that res.
Some apps do look small, but this res looks really crisp and clear. For me, it works well because I only use a few apps in Windows - MS Office, Chrome and a few other light apps that look nice at that res.
Solved: Best screen resolution for retina macbook running bootcamp
For systems running Windows 7
After much tinkering around. I found the best [custom] resolution. It is 2160x1350 and "make text and other items larger" setting at 150% ... This is found by right clicking on your desktop-> Screen Resolution-> "Make Text and other items larger or smaller"-> "Larger-150%" ->Apply.
You will have to then log out and back in to see the changes..
The custom resolution is created in the NVIDIA Control Panel:
->right click on desktop screen
->NVIDIA Control Panel
->select "Change Resolution" under the "Display" tab (left side bar)
->select "Customize..."
->select "Create Custom Resolution..." on the bottom of the screen.
->Change on the Horizontal pixels (2160) & Vertical Lines (1350)
->Click test and then accept the changes
I found that this was the best SR as it did not distort images and was elements were not too small or big. Along with this, you will notice, that elements remain as sharp as the native 2880x1800 SR.
Please share and I hope this helps!
For systems running Windows 7
After much tinkering around. I found the best [custom] resolution. It is 2160x1350 and "make text and other items larger" setting at 150% ... This is found by right clicking on your desktop-> Screen Resolution-> "Make Text and other items larger or smaller"-> "Larger-150%" ->Apply.
You will have to then log out and back in to see the changes..
The custom resolution is created in the NVIDIA Control Panel:
->right click on desktop screen
->NVIDIA Control Panel
->select "Change Resolution" under the "Display" tab (left side bar)
->select "Customize..."
->select "Create Custom Resolution..." on the bottom of the screen.
->Change on the Horizontal pixels (2160) & Vertical Lines (1350)
->Click test and then accept the changes
I found that this was the best SR as it did not distort images and was elements were not too small or big. Along with this, you will notice, that elements remain as sharp as the native 2880x1800 SR.
Please share and I hope this helps!
Last edited:
Windows 8.1 Update with proper 200% scaling looks the same as OSX, only old Win XP apps don't scale, but they aren't blurry, just blocky which is the same as old OSX apps that aren't retina ready.
All UI elements are the correct scale and size. Perfect one would say.
All UI elements are the correct scale and size. Perfect one would say.
I have Windows 8.1 installed via Bootcamp on my 15" rMBP, but also have the partition as a virtual machine in Parallels. Use Bootcamp for gaming, parallels for Visual Studio and other dev tools. Have no issues with performance at all when running the VM. I have the high end MBP, but previously had a 2011 MBA with 4GB RAM and the VM ran pretty well then too.
Windows 8.1 seems to have very flaky support for Hi-Dpi displays, a very inconsistent experience. Command Prompt for example...
Windows 8.1 seems to have very flaky support for Hi-Dpi displays, a very inconsistent experience. Command Prompt for example...
Never used 7 on a retina display, but i'd imagine that the hi-dpi resolution support is worse than the not great support that is available in 8.1 unfortunately