[Spacephrawg]

I am considering getting a Mac desktop thing and i was considering running parallels or some equivalent on it so i can run my favorite windows-based 3d rendering program, Rhino4 on it. The idea was to avoid or limit the problems i always seem to attract while running windows by only using it for a limited number of things, and only pertaining to 3d rendering, while i'm doing everything else on OSX at the same time: running FF with as many as a dozen tabs open, PS, illustrator, torrents, itunes, etc. I wanted to get the fastest machine i could afford so it wouldn't choke on all of this stuff, fastest meaning an 8core, 8gb of RAM thing. I intended to get a workstation video card for this beast.

I mentioned this on an unrelated forum (the one on Starshipmodeler.com) and people there told me that when i'm running parallels or the equivalent, that virtual machine would only be able to access 256mb of the video card at most no matter how much RAM i put into the machine. Is that true? Is there any way around that?

Plan B was to use Bootcamp and just do 3d rendering on the PC side and do everything else on the Mac side. I am unclear on the ins and outs of doing that: do i have to shut down one OS and boot up the other to switch between, or can i pause one and switch to the other, and then pause the other and switch back and pick up my original task where i left off?

The whole point of going over to Mac is that i want to avoid or ,minimize the problems i always seem to attract whenever I use Windows of any version for anything. I have some gamer friends who don't even own anti-virus programs, swear they've never needed them, and cannot figure out why crap always happens to me. They do the same intensive websurfing in firefox that i do (firefox with more than a dozen tabs open all the time), the same torrent downloads, itunes, whatever else. And only I get the problems. So if i went (mostly) over to Mac, the problems would be greatly reduced, if and only if the video card thing can be dealt with, or Bootcamp can be used in the manner i hope it is.

Am I screwed or can I do what i want to do with parallels and/or bootcamp?

[AKcrab]

You can't "pause" Boot Camp..

Pretty sure there is no way to force Parallels to use more than 256MB of video RAM.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Spacephrawg 

The whole point of going over to Mac is that i want to avoid or ,minimize the problems i always seem to attract whenever I use Windows of any version for anything. I have some gamer friends who don't even own anti-virus programs, swear they've never needed them, and cannot figure out why crap always happens to me. They do the same intensive websurfing in firefox that i do (firefox with more than a dozen tabs open all the time), the same torrent downloads, itunes, whatever else. And only I get the problems. So if i went (mostly) over to Mac, the problems would be greatly reduced, if and only if the video card thing can be dealt with, or Bootcamp can be used in the manner i hope it is.

As far as "problems" with Windows, it really doesn't matter if you run Bootcamp or Parallels.
Both are prone to all the crap that you would encounter on a normal PC.

-t

[Spacephrawg]

Originally Posted by AKcrab 

You can't "pause" Boot Camp..

Pretty sure there is no way to force Parallels to use more than 256MB of video RAM.

Not 256mb of RAM but 256mb of the video card's memory.

[Spacephrawg]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

As far as "problems" with Windows, it really doesn't matter if you run Bootcamp or Parallels.
Both are prone to all the crap that you would encounter on a normal PC.

-t

Which is why i was hoping to use as few things as possible on it if i could.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Spacephrawg 

Which is why i was hoping to use as few things as possible on it if i could.

Well, yeah, but as far as I understood, you also wanted to know how Bootcamp compares to Parallels. So in that respect, there is no difference.

Bootcamp:
+ better performance
+ full support for GPU
- no "parallel working" of Mac apps

Parallels:
+/- basically exactly the opposite of the above.
+ easy copies / backups of the whole Virtual Machine (VM)

-t

[Spacephrawg]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Well, yeah, but as far as I understood, you also wanted to know how Bootcamp compares to Parallels. So in that respect, there is no difference.

Bootcamp:
+ better performance
+ full support for GPU
- no "parallel working" of Mac apps

Parallels:
+/- basically exactly the opposite of the above.
+ easy copies / backups of the whole Virtual Machine (VM)

-t

Ah. very clear. thank you. I was hoping to get a fast enough machine that the decreased performance woudln't be an issue so much. Mainly what I am concerned about is how much of the video card the VM can access. If it can't access much,, my options are either boot camp or just get a PC.

[bishopazrael]

Boot camp just means that instead of booting into Mac you're booting into Windows. And if you're doing that you have full access to all the hardware, just like it was a dell or ibm laptop. Hardware's the same. Its the software you open to use it that's different when you boot up.

[Spacephrawg]

Originally Posted by bishopazrael 

Boot camp just means that instead of booting into Mac you're booting into Windows. And if you're doing that you have full access to all the hardware, just like it was a dell or ibm laptop. Hardware's the same. Its the software you open to use it that's different when you boot up.

How hard/easy is it to transfer info between the mac side of the drive and the windows side? Would I need a USB thumb drive for this or is there an easier way?

I heard someone once give lip service to bootcamp being difficult to install and operate. Is there anything to that?

About system resources, I think I am just concerned about how much or little of the video card the VM can access. Like can the VM access all of the video card if need be or only 256mb of it?

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Spacephrawg 

How hard/easy is it to transfer info between the mac side of the drive and the windows side? Would I need a USB thumb drive for this or is there an easier way?

You have full access to your Mac drives / partitions.
(Currently, some people have issues with Win 7 and the file sharing. Apple needs to work on a bug fix for this.)

Or, alternatively, you can use something like Dropbox to share files.

Setup of Bootcamp is not very involved, Apple Bootcamp Manager will guide you through creating the partition, then you install from a Win DVD just like on a PC.

-t

[ibook_steve]

Parallels can only use up to 256 MB of VRAM. That's it.

You can use your Boot Camp partition with Parallels instead of creating a separate VM. This saves hard disk space.

When using Parallels, the software has built-in features for file sharing across the two OSs (drag and drop, psf network shares). When booted into Windows with Boot Camp, I use Macdrive from Mediafour to mount my OS X volume. There are probably other ways to do it.

Steve

[Spacephrawg]

Originally Posted by ibook_steve 

Parallels can only use up to 256 MB of VRAM. That's it.

You can use your Boot Camp partition with Parallels instead of creating a separate VM. This saves hard disk space.

When using Parallels, the software has built-in features for file sharing across the two OSs (drag and drop, psf network shares). When booted into Windows with Boot Camp, I use Macdrive from Mediafour to mount my OS X volume. There are probably other ways to do it.

Steve

ibook_steve:

Whats this about creating a boot camp partition with parallels? I am confused. I thought either you use bootcamp or you use parallels and that boot camp allows you to boot in either win or OSX, whereas bootcamp is a VM. I am confused. I apologize.

So if i do things like you're describing, whatever that is, does that mean I would be running windows inside OSX or something else? Whatever it is you are talking about, would i be able to access more than 256mb of VRAM doing it?



Turtle777:
First off I just want to say i dig turtles. I am a professional sculptor and use turtles as a motif a lot in my work. Been loving them since I was a kid. LOL, that said, i have some questions about what you said:

Please pardon the stupidity of this and other questions: does having full access to my mac drives/partitions mean I can sort through images i have saved on the windows side while in Mac OSX, and view them in the finder in thumbnail or slide-show view? When in Windows, would i be able to access my music collection from the mac side of the drive? By that, I mean, could i be running itunes on one OS using a playlist thats saved on the other half of the drive?

What sort of bugs do people experience with Win7 in filesharing between the two parts of the drive?

If I tell the windows side not to connect to the internet at all so as to avoid bugs, would OSX be in offline mode when i switched back to it?

What is this "drop box" of which you speak? When i think of the term literally, I think of something like having a USB drive that i have plugged in all the time that I would put stuff on while in one OS that i could access when i switched to the other. A little rube-goldberg-ish I suppose but its the same in principle yes?

Thanks again!

[ibook_steve]

With Parallels or Fusion, you can use the Boot Camp partition as the hard disk for the VM. So you install Windows as usual through Boot Camp, then when you are in Parallels or Fusion, you select the Boot Camp partition as the C drive when creating the VM. So you can either run Windows through Parallels while in OS X or you can reboot into straight Windows, both scenarios using the same installation of Windows. I don't know why Parallels and VMWare don't market this feature much, but requiring only one Windows install is a win in my book.

Steve

[Spacephrawg]

Over on the other forum I was asking people about this on, someone just said that you guys were wrong, that it is possible to set a VM to use as much or as little of the VRAM as i want, just not to starve the host machine. They were refering to using VMware Fusion, and VirtualBox VM's rather than Parallels. Anyone know anything about this?

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Spacephrawg 

Turtle777:
First off I just want to say i dig turtles. I am a professional sculptor and use turtles as a motif a lot in my work. Been loving them since I was a kid.

Turtles are the best humans evar

Originally Posted by Spacephrawg 

Please pardon the stupidity of this and other questions: does having full access to my mac drives/partitions mean I can sort through images i have saved on the windows side while in Mac OSX, and view them in the finder in thumbnail or slide-show view? When in Windows, would i be able to access my music collection from the mac side of the drive? By that, I mean, could i be running itunes on one OS using a playlist thats saved on the other half of the drive?

If Win 7 and Bootcamp 3.1 work, you can browse and access (read and write) your Mac formatted drives from Windows. So yes, from Win 7, you could access pictures and your music collection.

From OS X, you only have READ access to Windows (NTFS) volumes.

Originally Posted by Spacephrawg 

What sort of bugs do people experience with Win7 in filesharing between the two parts of the drive?

Me (and others) experience a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) when the file sharing drivers of Bootcamp 3.1 are installed under Win 7. The only way to use Win 7 w/o a BSOD when booting up is to manually disable the Apple file sharing drivers that Bootcamp 3.1 provides. Of course, that makes it impossible to read / write on Mac formatted drives.

A bugfix by Apple should be provided by Apple at some point (hopefully).

Originally Posted by Spacephrawg 

If I tell the windows side not to connect to the internet at all so as to avoid bugs, would OSX be in offline mode when i switched back to it?

I don't understand your question. The previously mentioned bug can not be "fixed" by disconnecting internet access.
Alas, if you disable internet access on Win 7, it has NO effect on OS X/

Originally Posted by Spacephrawg 

What is this "drop box" of which you speak? When i think of the term literally, I think of something like having a USB drive that i have plugged in all the time that I would put stuff on while in one OS that i could access when i switched to the other. A little rube-goldberg-ish I suppose but its the same in principle yes?

Dropbox - Home - Secure backup, sync and sharing made easy.

Free 2GB space that will be automatically synchronized among all computers / OSes that it's installed on.
Your thumbdrive analogy is correct. It's like a shared drive that can be accessed from any computer anywhere in the workld as long as you have internet access.

-t

[ibook_steve]

Originally Posted by Spacephrawg 

Over on the other forum I was asking people about this on, someone just said that you guys were wrong, that it is possible to set a VM to use as much or as little of the VRAM as i want, just not to starve the host machine. They were refering to using VMware Fusion, and VirtualBox VM's rather than Parallels. Anyone know anything about this?

I don't know about Fusion's settings, but in Parallels, there's a slider that lets you select up to 256 MB to be used as VRAM. The slider doesn't go any higher.

Steve

[sek929]

Fusion was recently updated to support DirectX 10, not sure if that means it can make use of a 512mb card or not though.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

If Win 7 and Bootcamp 3.1 work, you can browse and access (read and write) your Mac formatted drives from Windows. So yes, from Win 7, you could access pictures and your music collection.

I thought the Win 7 Boot Camp HFS driver is read only, but I could be wrong.

[Spacephrawg]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

I thought the Win 7 Boot Camp HFS driver is read only, but I could be wrong.

Oy I hope you're wrong. I haven't been able to get Parallels, VMware Fusion, or any other people's tech support or general inquiries dept to reply to emails.

If i'm looking at files from the other half of the drive whether i'm in OSX or Win7 or Win whatever, can i copy/paste files?

Stupid question: does Win XP exist in 64 bit format? Can it still be bought anywhere?

[olePigeon]

There is a 64-bit Windows XP, but you're better off using Vista or Windows 7 simply because 64-bit XP is poorly supported. You're going to run into less headaches with a 64-bit Vista or 7 over 64-bit XP.

I'm unaware of Boot Camp being able to read & write HFS+ partitions. You might have to buy MacDrive, which is a commercial HFS/+ file system driver.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

I thought the Win 7 Boot Camp HFS driver is read only, but I could be wrong.

To be honest, I'm not 100% sure now.

Can anybody who has a working BC 3.1 install under Win 7 confirm ?

-t