Parallels 4 now supports 256 MB VRAM!

[palebluedot]

NOTE: If you are gonna bash emulation or start a flame war like has happened in every other thread on VMWare/Parallels gaming in the past (or say USE BOOTCAMP11!one!!!) then please save both of us some time and move along, nothing to see here. Yes we all know bootcamp plays games better (because its native) and we all know there is a performance hit with emulation.

Still with me? Good

So... I read on Penny Arcade's forums that Parallels 4 now supports 256mb of VRAM. Thats 128 more then VMWare Fusion 2. Has anyone tried it yet? Thoughts? Also does Parallels 4 support DX9 like Fusion 2?

If you are interested in emulation gaming (not crossover or bootcamp) lets talk here! I am going to try Left 4 Dead and TF2 when I can get my hands on a Parallels 4 copy... anyone got one already?

 

[yellow]

http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/features/3d/

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[NeoMayhem]

It is still fake vram. If parallels 5 supports 16gb of vram on a fully loaded mac pro it still wont work as well as a 64mb geforce 3 card from several years ago.

 

[Sol]

It is still fake vram. If parallels 5 supports 16gb of vram on a fully loaded mac pro it still wont work as well as a 64mb geforce 3 card from several years ago.

Good point but if you have a MacPro with 16GB of RAM you can probably afford to use a top-of-the-line graphics card as a back-scratcher.

 

[palebluedot]

It is still fake vram. If parallels 5 supports 16gb of vram on a fully loaded mac pro it still wont work as well as a 64mb geforce 3 card from several years ago.

True, but Fusion 2 can run TF2 at 60fps on my 8600 256 - I wnder what Parallels 4 will do

 

[MacsRgr8]

I own both, and I love both.

I use virtualisation software for PC gaming only to play my good ol' favourites, for which I can't be bothered to reboot my Mac into Boot Camp.
Older games don't require the latest and greatest hardware, and both VMware Fusion 2 and Parallels 4 are very capable of running those games....
.... however....
Just like Crossover Gaming, not all older games run "just like that".
My absolute favourite, Need for Speed 4, is one of those "tough to get it running well". Boot Camp with Win XP SP3 on my Mac Pro simply lets the game crash (whatever I try..!), so I try VMware and Parallels.

Parallels 3.0 got it running full screen on my Mac Pro, but only if you manually set the monitor to 640 x 480 x 24 bits colour first, and re-enabled the MOMO FF USB wheel.... but it worked!! (crashed my Parallels sometimes, but it was playable enough!!)
Upgraded to Parallels 4.0, and alas.... the 3D grfx in this game are terrible... unplayable . Not able to play it now....

Tried VMware Fusion 2.0.1 the other day, and I got the game running perfectly!.... almost ...... in a "Windowed mode".... If I let VMware run full screen (or Coherence), the game crashes...
But, in Windowed mode it does run perfectly, even with FF enabled! (see pics)
So, this time VMware has one up for me....
But, still waiting for the one which simply lets me run this game flawlessly.

 

[palebluedot]

TF2 on Parallels 4 (and L4D)

I just tried Parallels 4 with TF2 and I got between 15-90 FPS with an average of 30. It was for the most part playable with occasionally spurts of major lag (like 2-3 sec freeze/sputtering, I wonder why). It was unfortunately hardware DX 8 with software dx9 so the awesome tf2 "glow" and facial animations were not there.

I was playing both at 800x600 and fullscreen at 1440x900, didn't seem to be much of a difference either way.

I tried to play L4d. It loaded the video then went to the main screen but the main screen was all black. You could select stuff (hear it) but not do anything. If you pressed Shift + Enter a Steam interface would come up with friends list.

Has anyone tried Fusion 2 with L4D? How did that work?

A bit of a bummer but still impressive. I think it may be on par with Crossover.

 

[Sol]

I just tried Parallels 4 with TF2 and I got between 15-90 FPS with an average of 30.

What Mac were you running it on?

Hopefully Crossover will be updated to work with Left4Dead soon. Man I want to play that game.

 

[palebluedot]

What Mac were you running it on?

Hopefully Crossover will be updated to work with Left4Dead soon. Man I want to play that game.

Early 08 MBP 2.4 C2D, 8600 with 256 MB of VRAM and 4 gigs of RAM, Running it off my Boot Camp Partition

I think Parallels 4 MAY run it better then Fusion 2 only because it gets 256 MB of VRAM. That said, Fusion 2 looks better because it actually lets you use DX9.

I'd say the best is Fusion 2, then Parallels 4, and as usual the worst is Crossover Games (in terms of looks + speed)

 

[Lershac]

Good point but if you have a MacPro with 16GB of RAM you can probably afford to use a top-of-the-line graphics card as a back-scratcher.

no, coz I am broke after spending it all on my workstation.

But I do love it.

 

[palebluedot]

Found the first game that doesn't work very well, which is weird since it is less resource intensive and older then TF2 and L4D.

Battlefield 2. A shame cause this should be a game that would be perfectly playable on a VM... the Ciderized version even works pretty well with some minor texture glitching.

This however had MAJORE texture glitching. Anyone get this working?

Example: