Originally published in the Smoking Apples Magazine, Issue 2 (December 2008) and is part of the Parallels vs Fusion virtualization review. Free PDF direct download of the entire magazine.
Gaming on the Mac has virtually non-existent for many years. Apple recently has made a push for the Mac as a more viable gaming platform, especially with the release of their newest laptops. However, we all know that Windows still has the upper hand and it will most likely stay that way.
First off though, while having Windows and Mac running side by side runs really well, it’s not ideal for gaming. When you run Windows and Mac together they are both sharing your computers power resulting in a slower performance from both. If you want the most out of your gaming, it’s better just to use Apple’s Bootcamp to run Windows by itself. However if you just want to run low end games (from a few years ago most likely) such as Starcraft, Halo or even Call of Duty 2 virtualization might work.
3… 2… 1… Fight!!!
With my 2.2Ghz MacBook Pro with 2GB RAM, I first started to use Parallels and running on the default amount of memory (512 MB) the program ran rather smoothly. Moving on, I first tried installing Call of Duty 4. I know, I know, I should have known that neither Parallels or VMware would not have run it well on my computer. However, I found that Parallels wouldn’t even start up COD4 because my graphics card was not supported. The next game I tried was something I think every PC gamer or gamer in general likes, Halo. The demo installed fine but once I got into the game, the graphics were not working at all. All the models were not loading and you could play at all which was a bummer. I increased the performance in the Parallels preferences and that only helped enough to make it slightly playable. Next up, Call of Duty 2. This ran about the same as Halo. Graphically it looked pretty good except for the framerate, to remedy this I tuned down a few settings in game.
So as far as gaming goes you should be able to have a fairly fun casual gaming experience on Parallels. What would proper testing be without a benchmark? I’ve never really bothered with gaming benchmarks so I took some recommendations and downloaded 3D Mark from FutureMark. What this benchmark did was play some realtime rendered movies to test out my virtual computer. The results… unimpressive. For most of the movie I was at around 1-2 frames per second. Overall Parallels works fine, but not great and has some pretty major graphics compatibility issues.
Jumping on over to VMware, the install for Windows went a whole lot smoother. Personally while the Parallels UI may look slightly better, VMware is a whole lot more functional. I basically ran through the same steps that I did with Parallels. Installed Call of Duty 4, this actually ran but the framerate was horrid and my controls/keyboard wasn’t working at all. Next Halo, which worked actually really well with only minor framerate problems. I finished playing through the whole first level and I never had to change any of the game settings or VMware performance settings. Call of Duty 2 ran about the same as it did on Parallels with a slightly better framerate. Finally I tried running the benchmark again. The framerate for the 3D movie was still very low on average but when the results came out the score nearly doubled that of Parallels.
K. O.
So which is the best way to run PC games on your Mac? I think the answer is pretty clear and that is Bootcamp. If you just want to run a pretty simple game within OS X then your best to go with VMware. Not only did the installs and the whole experience feel better than Parallels, but when the benchmarks came in VMware nearly doubled that of Parallels in performance. What is VMware’s next battle against? I’d like to see how it fares against Crossover Games seeing as it runs Windows apps without having to really “run” Windows.
