Gaming with Parallels 6

I have an iMac 27" (Quad-Core i5 & 4GB RAM & ATI Radeon HD 5750 w/1GB). I only use Boot Camp on the machine to run my Windows only games like Flight Simulator X: Acceleration. Would I get the same amount of gaming performance that I currently get in Boot Camp if I bumped the RAM up to 8 GB and used Parallels 6? Any help is appreciated!

asked Feb 19 '11 at 17:38

ThatMacGuy
316●29●32●40

edited Feb 21 '11 at 17:35

3 Answers:

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You cannot use more than the amount of ram that is in your system. Your iMac has 4GB then in parallels you can only use like 3 GB because there has to be ram left over for Mac OS X.

answered Feb 21 '11 at 17:46

TheTechDude
16.8k●40●94●298

If I upgraded the RAM to 8 or 16GB, then do you think it would be a good idea?

(Feb 21 '11 at 17:50) ThatMacGuy

Gaming in a Virtual Machine is never better than running in inside of BootCamp. Because in a VM it doesn't get to use all of your computer where in BootCamp it does. There are tons of questions about this

(Feb 21 '11 at 17:51) TheTechDude

Here is one: http://lockergnome.net/questions/119187/gaming-in-virtual-machine

(Feb 21 '11 at 17:52) TheTechDude

Thanks for the link.

(Feb 21 '11 at 17:54) ThatMacGuy

Your welcome

(Feb 21 '11 at 17:56) TheTechDude

Let me ask you this. Right now I run Boot Camp with Win7 32 bit. Would I see an improvement in gaming performance if I got Win7 64 bit and upgraded the RAM to say 8GB? Thanks for all of your help.

(Feb 21 '11 at 18:07) ThatMacGuy

If you run Windows 7 64-Bit then you will be able to use all of your ram. in 32-Bit the max that can be seen is around 3.75 GB so even right now you can't use all your ram so yes upgrading to 64-Bit will allow you to use all of your ram. You will then most likely get better gaming performance.

(Feb 21 '11 at 18:14) TheTechDude

All right. One last thing that popped into my head. Will running Aero with the transparent glass and all of that eyecandy; will that slow down video game performance if all of the video games run in full screen?

(Feb 21 '11 at 19:58) ThatMacGuy

I personally have never seen much of a difference but since some games turn off Aero it must have some effect. It can't hurt to turn it off.

(Feb 21 '11 at 20:11) TheTechDude

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0	I personally don't know, but I think the processor would get tired eventually answered Feb 19 '11 at 17:41 taylrock 106●8●9●15

I don't own a mac or anything and I have absolutely no experience with such things, but I'm gonna say no. You're Imac has to work so hard to even run paralells and than it has to run a game also. Maybe it could, but I'm gonna say it's not a good idea.

answered Feb 21 '11 at 17:41

Mitte
511●19●21●31

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