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Mac Pro 1 1 7300GT Graphics Card Not Showing Up in Parallels

O

ORTOX

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 6, 2011
61
0
I already did search for some topics regarding this issue, along with multiple google searches and couldnt find an answer.

I have a Mac Pro 1 1 with 18 gb of ram and an Nvidia 7300 gt. I have parallels 7 installed along with Windows 7 64 bit installed in a VM.

I installed Starcraft 2 the other day and ran all of the updates available for both windows and starcraft. i have 8 gigs of ram allotted to the vm along with 2 cpu cores and 256 mb of vram. Heres whats happening.

Whenever I try to load starcraft 2 it says something about the video card not being recognized or usable because it is locked. Sorry, not at home so can't remember the exact error.

So I looked in the device manager and saw that the only graphics card within the VM is a "Generic VGA Grapics Adapter". My next thought wast to download the nvidia drivers for the 7300gt which i did. then i tried installing them and it said that there is no videocard in this computer that can utilize the drivers that im trying to install.

Also, within the device manager there are 2 unrecognized pci express devices, so i tried manually installing the nvidia drivers to both of these but didnt work. Whats weird is the 7300 gt is the only pci e device i have in my mac pro!

If anyone else here has run into this issue, please tell me how you corrected it. Thanks!
 
dont think you can use hardware accelleration inside virtual machine, parallels will just use software accelleration. games doesnt work well in virtual machines.

starcraft is available for OSX.
 
Hey Cindori I know you're the authority on graphics cards and macs.

So by only software acceleration do you mean theres no way to have parallels recognized my 7300 gt and or gtx470 once I get that installed and recognized in mac os?

I know I can run starcraft 2 in mac, but I plan on gaming completely in the vm environment since I'll be playing windows only games. starcraft 2 was my test dummy.

Parallels 7 is capable of using up to 1 gb of vram now and I have heard that it's become a viable solution for gaming within mac os. Have you had any personal experience running games in windows 7 in parallels desktop 7?
 
have not used latest parallels, but your gaming experience will not be that good. why not bootcamp?
I don't think it's possible to get the VM OS recognize the GPU directly since it's all emulated by parallels.
 
I was planning on bootcamping, but I'm thinking going VM style for the convenience factor. I'm sure I'll end up bootcamping eventually, but right now with my HDD setup, it's not the most practical thing for me to do right now. I'd like to get OWC's cd-rom HDD adapter so i can install a 5th 3.5 inch HDD and a 2.5 inch SSD dedicated to bootcamping.

I did a little more research and I read about a tool that may help me out in my situation called Parallels Tools. I guess it's software you install within the VM that helps with better graphics card utilization. I'll give it a try when I get home and let you know if I can get SC2 running.

And you're right about getting it to recognize what the vid card actually is. Found some threads on parallels forums and its not possible. But like i said parallels tools should correct my issue (here's to hoping)
 
Virtual machines are fairly useless for gaming, even my 5770 equipped 1,1 can run stuff like Rainbow6 Vegas using VM at only a modest level. Starcraft 2 however is utterly hopeless, unless you want it to look like Starcraft, circa 2001. You will have to use bootcamp to get good performance in Windows games. Maybe in another generation or so the power to run that level of emulation will be here, but it isn't workable just yet.

Hmmm, going to have to check out VM tools, looks interesting...
 
You don't understand how virtual machines work. Your VM doesn't have an NVidia 7300 GT graphics card. It has a virtual VGA graphics adapter provided by Parallels, who also writes the drivers.

A virtual machine uses virtualized components not your computer's actual components, and that is how the guest OS sees them. If you'll look through your device manager you'll see that very little (if any) of the VMs "hardware" matches what is actually in your Mac Pro.
 
Parallels is not suitable for playing modern games with demanding requirements.

On top of this, you have an old computer and an old video card.

Boot camp is the way to go.
 
Well, I've got an SSD on the way. SOo I'll be using that as my Bootcamp disk, I've decided.

But I did install Parallels Tools last night and SC2 now opens with no issue. I didnt try playing a game yet so cant tell you how it performs. Ill post more once I get a chance.
 
It won't perform nearly at all. The GT7300 is about as powerful as the video subsystem in the iPhone. Virtualized, it's at about 15% performance.
And why the hell bother with Bootcamp and Windows, when SC is available for OS X? I don't get it...
 
Perhaps if you read all of my other posts in this forum topic you'd see why I'm running SC2 in a VM.
 
ORTOX said:
Perhaps if you read all of my other posts in this forum topic you'd see why I'm running SC2 in a VM.
Click to expand...

Just read them and it still sounds like you just like walking uphill or swimming upstream.

VM was never meant for gaming. I know you stated "I plan on gaming completely in the vm environment since I'll be playing windows only games." but choosing to do this in VM when you could just use bootcamp is just this side of insanity.

So either accept herky, jerky unplayable games, or use bootcamp.

And using a 7300GT to start with is crazy. I don't think it will even launch on a Mac with a 7300GT because the card is so horribly outdated. So using an outdated, unsupported card via VM is like paddling a canoe up the Niagara River with just your hands.

Not gonna happen.
 
Just installed Windows on my new SSD. I'll be dual booting between mac and windows but I plan on installing parallels soon to use with the windows install. I'd like access to it while I'm in mac os.

Once I have parallels up and running I'm going to try out gaming with it. I'll post a vid once I get the chance.

I'll obviously be dual booting to game in windows, but I'd still like to see how gaming is in a VM. I'll post in this thread once I get a vid up.
 
This is a LONG overdue update. I've been away from this forum for a while, but decided to post my experience from last night.

Well, I have bootcamp with Windows 7 installed on my SSD and have been primarily gaming in bootcamp for obvious reasons.

But last night I had to burn a DVD and in the process I got a text to hop on SC2 and game with a buddy.

Since I was in the middle of a burn in Mac OS, I couldn't reboot into bootcamp at the time but wanted to game.

I have parallels installed in Mac OS 10.7 Lion and I have the latest parallels tools installed. I have 4 GB of RAM allotted to the VM and 1 GB of VRAM allotted.

I have it setup so that Parallels uses my bootcamp installation for the VM. It works perfectly!

So, I booted up my windows install in parallels while this DVD was burning, opened up starcraft 2, set my resolution to 1920x1200 for my ACD (I did put all of the game options to LOW) and I was able to play in a 4v4 match of SC2 online in a VM. It ran nearly perfect. I carried the team, playing in a VM while a disc was burning in Mac OS.

So, while it's not by any means a great way to game, playing SC2 with all settings at low is possible in a VM.
 
ORTOX said:
...
So, while it's not by any means a great way to game, playing SC2 with all settings at low is possible in a VM.
Click to expand...
And you know that SC2 installation works on Mac OS as well? If you bought the game on DVD, just install it from there. If you bought the digital download, you can grab the Mac Downloader form battle.net. That way you don't waste resources virtualizing it and you can have all your Mac software running as well?
 
So why again are you not just playing in OS X instead of a VM?

OS X would perform way better the way you're doing it for the exact same functionality.
 
No this is with a GTX 470. And it's just a proof of concept. Seriously, if I'm able to get this setup don't you think I know how to install a game in Mac OS?
 
Good point. Yeah, in Parallels, it doesn't use your video card. It sets up a virtual video card and you can choose how much VRAM is allocated to the virtual video card.
 
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