i have my eye on some windows games that are not FPS or flight sims so they don't have high frame rate demands, although they might have other graphics demands (3D?) that could give parallels a problem. i would rather do parallels than boot camp, but my only windows demand is for these games, so i want to do one and not both. is there a body of testing work i could reference? representative of the games i am interested in are Battles in Normandy and Battles in Italy from SSG. on a similar vein, i know parallels is working on better graphics support (directx?), but i have no feeling for the potential for success or possible timing. is there any info on this subject?
I would migrate to a Parallels/Bootcamp solution instead. When you want to play games, boot to XP via Bootcamp. That is, if they solve the hardware activation loop problem.
right now there are too many variables in that solution to make me happy. i have to think someone somewhere is trying these things out.
Well I think the reality of it is, no matter how good Parallels ever gets, you're still using software to interface between the actual hardware and the host OS. So there will always be a limitation as to how much performance you can squeeze out of emulation. If you want 3D intensive apps, with semi-intensive sound and other bells and whistles, you really will need your OS (Windows) to be interfacing directly with the hardware, not through another OS first, or else you will (I assume) always get subpar performance vs a Bootcamp installation of Windows. When I first got my MacBook Pro, I started in Bootcamp and tried a few games on the Windows side and was really impressed. As for the variables, the only one I see is the activation issue. For work purposes I've been running in Coherence mode and getting everything done I need to like a dream. Once a final is released with Coherence, I'll be making a disk image of my Parallels install and then applying it to a Bootcamp partition so I can boot directly into Windows for some after-hours gaming