rMBP Bootcamp?

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Cammington13

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 7, 2012
19
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Flint, MI
I recently bought the retina display macbook pro. I absolutely LOVE it. It is such an incredible machine. So far, I haven't experienced any issues with it. I do have one question, however. I was interested in the pros and cons of bootcamp. I've never owned a mac before so I am completely naive to bootcamp and what it is exactly. If someone would be so kind as to explain for me there experiences with bootcamp, how you get it, and the overall advantages/disadvantages of this feature, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
 
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markp99

macrumors member
Jun 14, 2012
94
0
New Hampshire
Cammington13 said:
I recently bought the retina display macbook pro. I absolutely LOVE it. It is such an incredible machine. So far, I haven't experienced any issues with it. I do have one question, however. I was interested in the pros and cons of bootcamp. I've never owned a mac before so I am completely naive to bootcamp and what it is exactly. If someone would be so kind as to explain for me there experiences with bootcamp, how you get it, and the overall advantages/disadvantages of this feature, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
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In addition to Bootcamp, you should consider a simple Virtual Machine (ala Parallels or VMWare Fusion). I tried the following configs:

1. Bootcamp partition
2. VMWare pointing to Bootcamp
3. VMWare, no Bootcamp

I was concerned about performance for some cpu/memory intensive windows-only database tasks for work in a VM environment. My testing indicated that performance on my DB tasks was quite equivalent in all 3 scenarios. I suspect these were more memory vs CPU intensive tests, so my 16GB RMBP had no difficulties.

I finalized on the VMWare Fusion solution (no bootcamp). Moving forward, no glitches, no looking back.

Good luck!

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Another consideration that does not apply to me is gaming.

My son did try to install/run some CPU/video intensive game in the virtual machine. Video drivers from VMWare apparently were not fully up to speed to support this game - sorry, no idea what game that was.

Since my RMBP is for work, gaming has no relevance for me.
 
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Cammington13

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 7, 2012
19
0
Flint, MI
markp99 said:
In addition to Bootcamp, you should consider a simple Virtual Machine (ala Parallels or VMWare Fusion). I tried the following configs:

1. Bootcamp partition
2. VMWare pointing to Bootcamp
3. VMWare, no Bootcamp

I was concerned about performance for some cpu/memory intensive windows-only database tasks for work in a VM environment. My testing indicated that performance on my DB tasks was quite equivalent in all 3 scenarios. I suspect these were more memory vs CPU intensive tests, so my 16GB RMBP had no difficulties.

I finalized on the VMWare Fusion solution (no bootcamp). Moving forward, no glitches, no looking back.

Good luck!
Click to expand...
Interesting Idea. Do you have any ideas if this would work the same with only 8GB of RAM? Thanks for your input!
 
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markp99

macrumors member
Jun 14, 2012
94
0
New Hampshire
Cammington13 said:
Interesting Idea. Do you have any ideas if this would work the same with only 8GB of RAM? Thanks for your input!
Click to expand...
Many report 8GB as fully adequate, and 16GB as excessive :) My database tasks are memory intensive (HUGE tables), so I chose to max out that option.

Bootcamp and VMWare should be fine w/8GB.
 
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