MAC Pro with Bootcamp/Win 7

spiderjericho

I hate my Lenovo laptop, especially the track pad (I've RMA'd it twice) and have been looking at the new MAC Pros with eye searing Retina.

I don't however want to lose my Windows apps and still want to play hardware accelerated games and was wondering about the performance of Boot Camp with Win 7 or 8.

I know there's Parallels which can give you access to your apps but it doesn't seem to support hardware acceleration so I couldn't play a 3D intensive game utilizing the 650 mobile.

Bokeh

My boss just replaced his MacBook Air with MacBook Pro/Retina and runs all his Windows apps under VirtualBox. I dont know if that supports hardware acceleration or not, but it runs all the business programs flawlessly.

GOZCU

I use my macbook ( even not pro) enabled bootcamp on it. Windows is working flawlessly. Or if you prefer to use VMware Fusion, it will totally satisfy you. I remember that OSX + VMware Fusion ( win7) + remote desktop connection whole day even couldn't make the machine a little bit slower.

just go for it. it rocks

spiderjericho

Yeah, but I want to play Steam games like Max Payne 3 or whatever. I need to use the Nvidia card to get dem frame rates and Parallel, VMware won't enable that plus you're running OS/processes on top of another.

Boot camp sounds like a normal windows installation. I just wanted to know if it would be a windows install that completely utilizes the I7, Nvidia, RAM, etc.

demonfurbie

you maybe able to dual boot it

networkjutsu

You can definitely run Windows using Boot Camp or VMware Fusion. I like the VMware Fusion because you can access your BootCamp partition and run it as a VM. Parallels didn't have that capability, the last time I checked (has been a while since I last looked at their offerings). My '09 MBP has the dual graphics thing where the integrated graphics will be for normal stuff then switches to the discrete graphics when it needs to. Now, under Boot Camp I haven't checked that yet. I would imagine it will switch it to the discrete graphics though.

Mrock4

+1 for VMWare Fusion. It's pretty awesome.

NotHackingYou

We've used VMWare and Parallels. Both claim you can dual boot and access boot camp as a VM while in Mac. We have only had good luck with VMware in this configuration - Windows freaks out with the Parallels version.

That said, we have many MacBook Pro (Intel Core2 Duo, i5 and i7) booting into Windows and dual booting.

networkjutsu

spiderjericho wrote: »

I just wanted to know if it would be a windows install that completely utilizes the I7, Nvidia, RAM, etc.

Yes, it does utilize the hardware with boot camp. Boot camp is basically partitioning the drive.

I mentioned earlier that my MBP has two graphics processors and wasn't sure if it uses the discrete or the integrated. According to Hardware Monitor, I am using the discrete graphics card when I booted under Windows 7. That said, it definitely takes advantage of the power of the GPU for your gaming purposes or HD playback.

spiderjericho

Thanks for the responses everyone. Sounds like my decision has been made.