OS X Parallels or bootcamp? which is better?

[Lichqueen]

I use Parallels play the following games without any problems and very smooth:
- Torchlight 2
- Path of Excile
- DOTA 2
- AoE Online
- AoE 2 HD

 

[imacken]

A lot of what has been said above is obviously true. Clearly, Bootcamp will be faster than Parallels. But, the point is that Parallels can be fast enough to avoid the huge hassle of booting into Bootcamp, and is good enough for a huge number of games.
I played F1 2012, Skyrim and The Witcher 2 quite happily on Parallels 8 albeit with lower fps and some detail turned down.
Out of interest, my WEI results for the 5 categories on Bootcamp were 7.9, 7.9, 7.5, 7.5 and 5.9. On Parallels they were 5.8, 7.5, 7.1, 7.1 and 8.8.

 

[iF34R]

I've tried parallels and vm, and definitely prefer bootcamp over both.

 

[Delegator]

Having used both, Bootcamp is better for Windows games, hands down.

If you are looking at virtualization software, I would start with VirtualBox instead of Parallels or VMWare. I have used all 3, and there was a time when VirtualBox was much rougher around the edges than Parallels or VMWare. But, VirtualBox is now a very polished piece of software...and it's free.

 

[Wardenski]

Virtualbox is virtually useless for 3D gaming.

Bootcamp (native as some prefer) is the best. Why settle for anything less than best?

 

[doh123]

Having used both, Bootcamp is better for Windows games, hands down.

If you are looking at virtualization software, I would start with VirtualBox instead of Parallels or VMWare. I have used all 3, and there was a time when VirtualBox was much rougher around the edges than Parallels or VMWare. But, VirtualBox is now a very polished piece of software...and it's free.

VMWare and Parallels run MUCH MUCH better and can actually do 3D graphics... VirtualBox is free, but its not nearly as good.

Bootcamp just totally sucks to me because I have to lose my whole machine and everything on it just to boot into Windows to play a game. I never only do 1 thing on my computer at a time... and I don't want to switch over using other software in Windows as well. I don't know any game worth needing to run Windows only.

 

[imacken]

Bootcamp (native as some prefer) is the best. Why settle for anything less than best?

Because losing all your work and access to all other aspects of your Mac just to play a game is, IMO, just not worth the hassle.
I would rather have a lower fps, and slightly lower detail in Parallels than boot into Bootcamp.

 

[jedolley]

Games that I have run via Parallels with no noticeable performance issues that I would consider "recent" games:

Torchlight 2
Path of Exhile
The Old Republic
Skyrim

You can add Defiance to the list of games that run just fine in Parallels. Not an overly demanding game graphics wise, but still looks pretty good and so far has been pretty fun.

 

[pdittysf]

Bootcamp runs games way, way better than Parallels will ever. Simply because parallels has top share the hardware of your computer between mac and windows. With Bootcamp the entire computer is dedicated whatever windows application you are doing.

Source Test: (GTA 5 XBOX 360 BIOS Emulator)

Because my machine is a beast i can get around 60 fps with all of the graphics set to their highest level on bootcamp.

I get around 20-2 fps with all the graphics set to their medium level on parallels.

Think about it......

 

[Washac]

I throw games at Parallels and or a Wineskin first, if they do not run then I throw them at Bootcamp.