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Virtualization vs. Bootcamp for Gaming on Macbook Pro Retina

nikster0029

nikster0029

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 21, 2010
709
484
Hey guys I was wondering whether I should use Virtualization or Boot Camp for gaming purposes on my Macbook Pro with Retina.

I understand that commonly, Boot Camp is always better, but with the new Ram of the Macbook pro being at 8gb, will this help in any way to make virtualization a better choice?

Thanks!

//

Thanks for the responses, I will be using bootcamp
 
Last edited:
nikster0029 said:
Hey guys I was wondering whether I should use Virtualization or Boot Camp for gaming purposes on my Macbook Pro with Retina.

I understand that commonly, Boot Camp is always better, but with the new Ram of the Macbook pro being at 8gb, will this help in any way to make virtualization a better choice?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

RAM isn't the only issue, you're still sharing clock cycles with the host OS, which will bog down any virtualization software, especially if you're gaming on it. If you want the best gaming experience, Boot Camp will always be the way to go. Depending on the game though, you may be able to get away with virtualization. I'd suggest taking it on a case-by-case basis. Which games are you planning on playing?
 
Bootcamp is the ONLY way to run games on a mac. While, yes, the rMBP has some power, so you could allocate a lot of resources potentially...but you are still running 2 OS's at once...which means you are sacrificing too much for any modern games. Older games should run fine tho.

Does anyone know if you can assign the NVidia card to a VM and the HD4000 to OSX to run both with full GPU power?
 
From my understanding, gaming performance in a virtual machine will always be bad for any newer games. This could have improved since the last time I tried however. But the main thing is,the video drivers being handled in a VM typically is just a low end video setup. Just enough to handle windows aero and some other directx things. I think it is also limited as well to directx9. But like I said, it has been a while since I tried it. I also hear Parallels does a much better job with games than Fusion. I have even tried using wine and wineskins and such. Usually ended in bad performance and stability.
 
nikster0029 said:
Hey guys I was wondering whether I should use Virtualization or Boot Camp for gaming purposes on my Macbook Pro with Retina.

I understand that commonly, Boot Camp is always better, but with the new Ram of the Macbook pro being at 8gb, will this help in any way to make virtualization a better choice?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

For regular every day tasks, the RAM will help out in the virtual machine. But for gaming purposes, it will have almost no impact.

Games will always run significantly better in bootcamp.
The biggest performance issue is going to come from the GPU. In parallels or VMWare, the GPU is virtualized. This is where you lose the most speed (at least when you're dealing with GPU intensive games).
 
Lindono said:
RAM isn't the only issue, you're still sharing clock cycles with the host OS, which will bog down any virtualization software, especially if you're gaming on it. If you want the best gaming experience, Boot Camp will always be the way to go. Depending on the game though, you may be able to get away with virtualization. I'd suggest taking it on a case-by-case basis. Which games are you planning on playing?
Click to expand...

Thanks, I will follow with bootcamp, I will be playing games that are pretty powerful like modern warfare 3, battlefield 3, Max payne
 
gentlefury said:
Does anyone know if you can assign the NVidia card to a VM and the HD4000 to OSX to run both with full GPU power?
Click to expand...

Would be nice but I don't think that is possible really. What I am seeing is that the VM won't take any advantage of the GPU features. It's typically treated as a generic video card.

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mikeo007 said:
For regular every day tasks, the RAM will help out in the virtual machine. But for gaming purposes, it will have almost no impact.

Games will always run significantly better in bootcamp.
The biggest performance issue is going to come from the GPU. In parallels or VMWare, the GPU is virtualized. This is where you lose the most speed (at least when you're dealing with GPU intensive games).
Click to expand...

This is what I was trying to get at, but wayyyy to much energy drinks today.
 
01mggt said:
Would be nice but I don't think that is possible really. What I am seeing is that the VM won't take any advantage of the GPU features. It's typically treated as a generic video card.

----------



This is what I was trying to get at, but wayyyy to much energy drinks today.
Click to expand...

Parallels does have GPU features...but it still only uses virtualized graphics drivers. Which is lame! They need to update to somehow take advantage of dual GPU systems.
 
I have windows on all my mac's....100% for gaming. All that is installed on windows is Steam, Origin and games within.

it makes the inevitable reinstall easier...
 
Anyone with a rMBP care to share how big their windows partition? I wanna decide how much I should allocate to it, as I'll be using windows for gaming. I'll be getting the 256GB model specifically.
 
BigZ9 said:
Anyone with a rMBP care to share how big their windows partition? I wanna decide how much I should allocate to it, as I'll be using windows for gaming. I'll be getting the 256GB model specifically.
Click to expand...

I have a 256GB SSD on my Mac Pro and I have it split in half, 128/128 Mac/Windows. I still have 40GB left on both.
 
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