How to Install games on windows parallel

[dlandry6]

This might be a dumb question but I was just wondering. When I installed games on windows I usually saved games in the Program Files folder. The question I had, do you do the same for installing on windows parallel or do you save the files to the shared folder for mac. I was just wondering because I tried installing Star wars The Old Republic and says I do not have enough CPU cores.

My specs are as followed:

Processor 2.2GHz intel Core i7
Memory 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Graphics AMD Radeon HD 6750M 1024 MB

 

[Mal]

That's because Parallels hasn't been configured to give your Windows installation access to enough cores. Where your files are stored won't help that, and they absolutely be stored in the Program Files directory.

Edit the Virtual Machine's settings and give it access to more cores.

jW

 

[dlandry6]

Thanks I will give that a try

 

[Stetrain]

You should really be using Bootcamp instead of (or in addition to) a Virtual Machine setup like Parallels if you want to play games.

When running in Parallels, Windows is running on emulated hardware. A game running on Windows in Parallels can't access the full power of your processor, all of your RAM, or the full power of your graphics card.

 

[dusk007]

The CPU is usually less of a problem than the GPU and graphics drivers. Apple's Open GL drivers are already worse than the highly optimized Windows DirectX drivers. Now Parallels needs to translate DirectX 10/11 commands to the OpenGL ones that is additional overhead. Performance in native Windows is a lot better.

Anyway give the VM as much CPU cores as there are. If you don't run stuff on the VM in background but only switch between OSX and the VM, using foreground apps like games, Office, .. giving it access to all cores is better.
The set core are the maximum that the VM may access but they are still all shared. OSX can still use all of them if there the VM is currently idle.
You usually set a maximum so a VM under full load doesn't compete with OSX. If it is usually idle if you don't use it there is no competition and you can benefit from a faster VM with more cores.

Gaming still sucks because of the graphics acceleration. CPU overhead would probably be small enough given enough cores.