With Steam officially hitting Mac in just
a few weeks many Apple gamers have suddenly lost their need to emulate. But, for those who are hoping to get busy in a little
Command & Conquer 4 under Snow Leopard this week -- or any of the other myriad of PC-only gaming options -- virtualization is the only way to go -- short of rebooting into Boot Camp, of course.
Parallels is the most commonly used solution, but how does
VMware's Fusion 3 stack up for gaming? Not too well, as it turns out.
MacTech sat the two down together on matching Mac hardware and ran them through a number of benchmarks, including 3DMark. The results of that test fall heavily in the favor of Parallels, offering better framerates and far more consistent visuals, which you can see for yourself in a video below. Most of the many, many other tests run favor that option as well, but we won't spoil all eight pages worth of results just waiting for you on the other end of that source link.
posted March 16th 2010 9:11AM
I used parallels 4 when on leopard and it worked really well. However as vmware 3 came out first for snow leopard I ended up getting that and haven't tried parallels 5. How is parallels 5 on snow leopard? When I use virtual machines it is for light use and not for gaming, so which do u guys think would be better? I've stuck with vmware as people say that it is better for lighter use, but haven't been impressed by performance. I find it pretty slow, so not sure whether to give parallels 5 a go?
@to86
I got Parallels 5 on Snow Leopard and my use cases seem similar to yours: light use.
I have no complains, Parallels is running my Windows XP (stripped for smaller footprint) just fine. What I don't like much about Parallels is that by default it will try to integrate your Mac and Windows user and applications, I think it is messy. You can change the defaults, though, so this is a one-time annoyance.
But unless you really need a specific Parallels 5 feature, the switch from Fusion is probably not worth it.
@thing
If Parallels is faster and more integrated why it does not worth to switch? Strange statement...
Seriously..... If you are a gamer why over-pay for a Mac only to run Windows? lol
@Mrwirez windows is just an option but not the main reason for a mac, kinda "a feature among many features".
:)
@Mrwirez
Where did you get the idea that anybody is buying a Mac ONLY to run Windows?
@Jack
GAMERS, Jack not ALL Mac users. Although, I know a good many Mac fans that use Parallels to try Win7 or to get programs that won't run on Mac-OS. Personally, I use a Macbook at work and Windows7 at home. I find Windows to be so much more compatible and easier to use. Also, dollar for dollar you can get way more on an HP machine.. but hey, that's me.
@Mrwirez
Yep, real gamers will not even look at a Mac, that is for sure.
Since competition is tough and VirtualBox (which is pretty good) is free, Parallels is using this advantage to differentiate itself from the crop and earn market share (which is probably going to work pretty well)
wow. nice tech demo Parallels. that's all this is. if i was really playing Windows games on my Mac, i'd be using Boot Camp for maximum performance.
honestly, vmware and paralels is great for anything else than gaming.
pc games --> bootcamp. period.
Ehm, emulation != virtualization.
Virtualization for gaming just sounds like a bad idea. Gaming is always going to be resource intensive and running two operating systems at the same time is going to be very limiting. From what I was seeing in this video, neither looks like a good option for trying to play games. Just run it in Bootcamp, it's not like you're really going to multi-task while trying to play a game.
Gaming under virtualization is pretty much the least important thing I can think of. Does playing games earn you any money? Get a game console instead.
I don't understand why these two things even exist. Boot Camp is INCLUDED on the Mac, so why pay more for an extra that does exactly the same?
It's like paying to run Notepad when you already have TextEdit.
@Alex R So you can run both at the same time. Do you know how annoying it is to reboot so you run a piece od software or (although this doesn't change) Partition you tiny harddrive wasting space. Although you can with these programs run windows files off the mac partition.
@Alex R Really alex? The ability to run Windows+Mac seamlessly does not make any sense, or do you not understand the concept?
Having to fully reboot to enter windows isn't very friendly, and sometimes you need to have things open side by side in Mac and Windows if you're doing development work. There's lots of reasons VM clients exist.
Honesty I have not been satisfied with VM Fusion for playing games on my MBP. I actually started rebuilding my PC because its just not as good. I wish apple or who ever would fix it so you can get these games on macs
I need parallels to run ie6 and ie8 at the same to for web development
Not using it for gaming but we run Rhino and Solidworks from a bootcamp partition running Win7 64-bit, they both run fine. I tried Parallels before and had networking problems and in general more issues, so we have stuck with VMware even though OpenGL performance is a little slower. We are running off of Bootcamp partitions so if a project gets really heavy they can boot into Bootcamp and have full resources and acceleration in Windows.
P5 is gooder than VM Fusion from my experience, waaay gooder.
I find VMWare Fusion a lot more rock solid for non-gaming needs, so I chose it back when I made the decision.
Version 3.0 supports 64-bit Snow Leopard and is quick and responsive with my Linux or Windows VM's during testing.
It might not be the gaming champ, but it's what the enterprise world uses and what I use in production (not Fusion directly, but Vmware based products)
- D
I'm sure its comforting for Mac users to know they'll be able to run those 4 year old games somewhat respectably.
@Dew
Yep, the other day I gave my old Freelancer a try and it ran pretty well...