Heat and performance - Bootcamp VS Virtual Machine

[oldguru]

Need Win7 on MBP
non-retina MBP 15' 2012, 256 SSD, 16G memory

Questions:
1. Which will be heater ? Bootcamp or Parallels/VMWare?
2. What is the performance gap between virtual machine with bootcamp?
3. What's the battery life difference?

 

[takeshi74]

There are no one-size-fits-all, quick and easy answers to your questions. You need to look at what you're going to run under Win 7 and make your decision based on that. A virtual solution will come with a performance penalty. "Heat" depends on what you're doing just as it does under OSX. Same for battery life.

IMO there's no reason to not go with Boot Camp since it doesn't cost you anything. You obviously have to purchase Win 7 but Boot Camp itself doesn't cost anything. See how well it works for you. You can import Boot Camp with the virtual solutions should you decide to try them out.

 

[SlyMac]

Need Win7 on MBP
non-retina MBP 15' 2012, 256 SSD, 16G memory

Questions:
1. Which will be heater ? Bootcamp or Parallels/VMWare?
2. What is the performance gap between virtual machine with bootcamp?
3. What's the battery life difference?

Using a VM will always use more resources. With a VM, you are running 2 operating systems simultaneously which uses far more resources as opposed to only one. Bootcamp allows you to use the entire systems resources so you can run more intense programs and games. Then there is the cost issue. Like said above, the VM software you list cost $, bootcamp is free. I personally only use the dual boot option with bootcamp. I like having all system resources as my disposal when running windows.

 

[bill-p]

Need Win7 on MBP
non-retina MBP 15' 2012, 256 SSD, 16G memory

Questions:
1. Which will be heater ? Bootcamp or Parallels/VMWare?
2. What is the performance gap between virtual machine with bootcamp?
3. What's the battery life difference?

1. Same amount of heat.
2. Performance gap is up to 400% depending on the application you are running. Bootcamp is always faster by a very huge margin... especially if you run 3D applications.
3. VMWare or Parallels would have superior battery life since they run within Mac OS X. Bootcamp is horrible with battery life.

 

[yusukeaoki]

1. VMware uses more heat since its running more tasks than bootcamp.
2. VMware lacks significantly on GPU. Since its running 2 OS at same time supporting 2 graphics, heavy apps requiring GPU would be laggy.
3. No battery difference that I noticed.