Gaming setup for iMac: which Windows to install & more

[vannibombonato]

Hi there,
it's been nearly 10 years since i last owned a PC for gaming, i'm about to get one of the new iMacs and would like to set-up a Win partition to play some games (planning to never have more than two or three at the same time installed).

As i've been out of the games for a lot of time questions are:

1- Which of the zillion versions of Win (6,7, XP, Vista, 8, i'm lost...) should i be getting? I'll be using it exclusively for gaming when the Mac counterpart is not available / not optimized
2- How much space you think i should allocate to the Bootcamp partition?

Thanks,

Vanni

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Right now, Windows 7 is your best bet. Stable, good driver support, basically every game you might possibly want to play will work on it.

But moving forward, Windows 8 will get stable, will get good driver support, and new games will eventually require it. "Modern Interface" (aka Metro) games obviously require it now, but no grade-A games will be Modern Interface-only for quite some time.

Lastly on the support front, Boot Camp only works with Windows 7 on new Macs. It doesn't support anything older than Windows 7, and it hasn't been updated to support Windows 8 yet.

I'd get Windows 7 now, then buy the Windows 8 upgrade now while it's cheap to have it whenever you decide to upgrade.


As for disk space, that's entirely dependent on what you plan to put on there, and how big your disk will be. The absolute bare minimum you should consider is 250 GB. That will easily fit the Windows 7 install plus quite a few large games; and even if you get the smallest hard drive available, will leave you with plenty of room on the Mac side. Obviously, if you plan on getting more large games, you should go for more disk space - or just get an external drive for Windows.



Notes: There is no Windows 6. Windows Vista should be avoided at all costs (Windows 7 is just Windows Vista plus fixes and performance increases.) Windows XP would be perfectly reasonable if all of your games are older, but it doesn't support the latest software technologies, so newer games will be missing features on it.

 

[vannibombonato]

Right now, Windows 7 is your best bet. Stable, good driver support, basically every game you might possibly want to play will work on it.

But moving forward, Windows 8 will get stable, will get good driver support, and new games will eventually require it. "Modern Interface" (aka Metro) games obviously require it now, but no grade-A games will be Modern Interface-only for quite some time.

Lastly on the support front, Boot Camp only works with Windows 7 on new Macs. It doesn't support anything older than Windows 7, and it hasn't been updated to support Windows 8 yet.

I'd get Windows 7 now, then buy the Windows 8 upgrade now while it's cheap to have it whenever you decide to upgrade.


As for disk space, that's entirely dependent on what you plan to put on there, and how big your disk will be. The absolute bare minimum you should consider is 250 GB. That will easily fit the Windows 7 install plus quite a few large games; and even if you get the smallest hard drive available, will leave you with plenty of room on the Mac side. Obviously, if you plan on getting more large games, you should go for more disk space - or just get an external drive for Windows.



Notes: There is no Windows 6. Windows Vista should be avoided at all costs (Windows 7 is just Windows Vista plus fixes and performance increases.) Windows XP would be perfectly reasonable if all of your games are older, but it doesn't support the latest software technologies, so newer games will be missing features on it.

Pretty much nailed everything, super crisp&clear.

I'm going for a 500gb partition and Win7 then, thanks a lot for the help.

Vanni

 

[thomaskc]

Hmm purely for gaming I would go windows 8. It is 100% stable and supports 99% of things you might need, the last 1% is being worked on.

How ever, for production, definitely go windows 7. As 8 has a few quirks that won't matter or change anything when gaming but is huge in production.

Edit: thinking about it, it also matters how familiar you are with making things work. If you want the 1 click install and work option, def win7