GPU Switch with Parallels?

Don't use VMs for games, they virtualise the GPU and performance is significantly reduced because of that. I can't even get home world 1 and 2 to work properly within VMWare Fusion 5, let alone Skyrim.

 

Virtualizing will hinder windows performance even more. I don't think you understand how computers work.

The more I read your threads the more I think you made a wrong choice purchasing the MBP. If you're overly obsessed about the intel 3000HD's VRAM it's likely because you have a 13" MBP.

In that case, there is nothing, and I repeat, NOTHING AT ALL, you can do to increase gaming performance on that laptop. The integrated card is a piece of crap, either you deal with it, or you buy something else. VRAM is only used to store texture before being processed by the GPU. It does not affect the actual image processing, which is exactly where the 3000HD sucks.

Now if you do have a 15" or 17" model, running windows will force the discrete card to run(the ATI card for 2011 models), which is LEAPS AND BOUNDS faster than the 3000HD.

If you want the best possible gaming performance out of your laptop, run windows with the latest video card drivers for your card under bootcamp, not parallels.

/End thread.

 

VRAM doesn't increase in Boot Camp because it automatically uses the discrete graphics card. Same thing with Parallels/VMWare

 

obviously you don't know how computers work. why would you care about vram and gaming at all if you have the 15" mbp. you'll obviously want to be using the discrete card anyway when gaming (and you're forced to anyway in windows). increasing ram won't increase vram since you're not even using the integrated card. uh doy.

 

Admittedly OT, but it never stops to me, how some people, especially some who have been attending these forums for a long time, tend to forget the importance of being polite.

I dare to assume it has something to do with not being physically close to the person you are insulting.

 

No you obviously do not. 8GB would do just fine for Windows and OSX but it only help with requiring less slow disk access. It won't speed up the least bit how games perform.
If you run a game in a VM. The DirectX GPU calls need to be translated into the OpenGL calls that the host system (OSX understand) which even if OSX had the best possible drivers (which it does not) and 3D performance would still be much worse in performance. Expecting 3D performance in a VM is foolish.
VRAM size has little to nothing to do with 3D performance it only helps with certain detail settings. At a certain point when the VRAM is too small some additional extra high details will create more performance loss than they usually would. Yet on no HD 3000 or 4000 can you run any settings at decent fram rate that would cause this to happen.
How fast your game runs depends on the GPU first and the VRAM really doesn't matter it is almost always big enough. An Intel HD 3000 with 2GB VRAM would not offer you a single additional fram in any game.

What snaky said you should take to heart. If you want the best possible performance you can ever get from your Mac. Run Windows in Bootcamp and install the latest GPU drivers. Windows drivers are far superior to those of OSX. Also Apple only delivers one bootcamp driver which is never updated. You should get the newest ones for they fix bugs in new engines and sometimes offer significant performance boosts.
RAM doesn't matter. No Game to date would require more than 4GB system RAM on a 2011 MBP. Everything beyond that doesn't hurt but it doesn't do you any good either. It doesn't change the fps in the least.

Forget your RAM obsession and care about the software part which is what actually matters. As the posters have said in all the threads VRAM for the dedicated GPU won't change anyway and it would be useless for the integrated even if you could change it.

 

My argument still stands. You don't know how computers work if you think increasing RAM will allow you to run games better in parallels. I'm not trying to insult you, simply pointing out facts. Increasing ram does help in Virtual Machines, by allowing you to allocate more ram to the Virtual machine without hindering the host (OS X). That's it, nothing else. You still have every other performance drawbacks from virtualizing.

You may not like windows, I don't care much for it either, but for gaming on a computer, windows is king, with better software and driver support, period.