OS Emulator or Bootcamp?

[lucasfart]

I was just wondering, what are the major differences between installing xp on my Mac OS X through a OS emulator, specifically virtualbox, a free softwre similar to parallels, or using bootcamp to set it up and use it.

If it makes a difference, i will probably mainly be using it for gaming...

[myers73]

use a program that boots your computer into windows, if you use an emulator you are running two operating systems at once, not advisable on a mac if you are gonna game since they already have low resources.

[RogueKnight]

Depends on the type of Mac you have. My laptop, you could dual boot, run Crysis on one, C&C4 on the other, Have iTunes open, scan for viruses in Windows, record in Garage Band, and pile all of heck on top of that all at the same time and it wouldn't even flinch.

[lucasfart]

yeah well. since that post i have actually installed it in bootcamp, but BF2 doesn't even work, coming up with a "fatal" error on startup, and there is no sound system, although my laptop has speakers. Would this just need a whole tonne of drivers or is my computer just not suited for cross-platform gaming? (By the way, i think the fatal error has something to do with something called TNL not working/not installed, whatever THAT is)

The laptop is a Macbook and has the following specs:
-1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
-1 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
-Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard

Alternately, i can install it on my dads laptop, which i probably won't be able to use anywhere near as much as the on mentioned above.

Dad's laptop is a Macbook with:
-2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
-4GB 1067 MHz DDR3
-Mac OS X 10.6.1 Snow Leopard

It's quite a bit better but dad uses it for work and i don't get to use it much. On the bright side, i do have 2 weeks of holiday ahead of me, starting this afternoon

EDIT: Heh, i just looked at the first computers Graphics card and its an intel 64Mb card, which will probably not work with ANYTHING at all! a bit annoying. But dad's laptop has a 256Mb GeForce 9400m graphics card, which seems pretty good.

Also wondering, with the second laptop, will good games like Crysis, Halo, COD 4/5 work on a computer like that?

Also found out what TnL is:

Hidden/Spoiler:

TnL or T&L, short for Transform and Lighting it refers to a hardware feature found on some graphics cards. TnL is separate engines on the GPU that enable extremely high polygon count scenes. With TnL technology some or all of the 3-D information normally processed by the computer processor is processed by the GPU. Transform performance determines how complex objects can be and how many can appear in a scene without sacrificing frame rate. Lighting techniques add to a scene's realism by changing the appearance of objects based on light sources.

[Hebes24]

If you're going to use it for Gaming, use BootCamp, definitely. Emulatora are nice if you need to use OSX apps and windows apps side-by-side. The problem is that emulators will not run as well as if you just ran Windows exclusively on another partition. Therefore, I definitely suggest you using BootCamp. It'll run Windows like you have a PC, so it will use all your hardware resources properly.

(I have a MacBook pro, and I use BootCamp for games. It works quite well.)

[lucasfart]

Yeah, well, i didn't get the safari disc when i got the laptops, so i can't install any drivers, so therefore the graphics card doesn't work, and neither does the sound. Do you know any alternative methods to get all the drivers from the mac disc??

[Eggman]

I'm thinking about setting up Windows on my MacBook as well and was about to post a topic here to ask some questions first, but I might as well use this topic since it's relevant.

I think I would mostly use Windows for games - more specifically, for Battlefront so I could do some modding in the little bit of free time I have at school. For this reason, I was planning on using Windows XP. According to this article I would need to specifically install XP with Service Pack 2, but as you might notice the article is a little out-dated, so does that still hold true?

Also, I'm wondering if anyone has suggestions for how big to make the partition. I'd rather not spend more money on an external hard drive to store any games and modding assets. I figure if I had Windows XP installed along with BF2, the mod tools, the assets for several maps and sides, and extra space for one or two games/programs I might install in the future, I would need a fairly sizable partition, but not something too large.

To give an idea of the space I have to work with on my hard drive now:

Capacity: 148.73 GB
Available: 119.79 GB
Used: 28.94 GB

So I guess the best question I can ask right now of Hebes is, how large did you set your partition to be? I imagine your setup might be a good estimate of what I need, since I'll have fewer games, but modding assets to take their place.

[Hebes24]

I've installed XP SP3 on my Windows partition before, and I currently have 7 on it. Pretty much any Windows Operating system from XP SP2 on up should be fine (though I don't recommend Vista, obviously ).

As for how much space you should have, that's really up to you. I'd take a look at the disk space requirements for the games you want to put on there, and then make sure it's definitely bigger than that (I'd suggest 10-25GB more, at least). For me it wasn't too big of a deal because I have a 320GB HD in my MacBook Pro (So I set it to be ~ 200 Mac, 120 Windows). Basically, just be sure to give yourself room for a couple more games, in case you want to buy some more after you get it up and running.

@lucasfart - Safari = web browser. There's no disc for that. You need your Mac OS install disc (which definitely should have come with your MacBook). All your drivers should be on there.

[Eggman]

I've installed XP SP3 on my Windows partition before, and I currently have 7 on it. Pretty much any Windows Operating system from XP SP2 on up should be fine (though I don't recommend Vista, obviously ).

As for how much space you should have, that's really up to you. I'd take a look at the disk space requirements for the games you want to put on there, and then make sure it's definitely bigger than that (I'd suggest 10-25GB more, at least). For me it wasn't too big of a deal because I have a 320GB HD in my MacBook Pro (So I set it to be ~ 200 Mac, 120 Windows). Basically, just be sure to give yourself room for a couple more games, in case you want to buy some more after you get it up and running.

@lucasfart - Safari = web browser. There's no disc for that. You need your Mac OS install disc (which definitely should have come with your MacBook). All your drivers should be on there.

Awesome, I was thinking of going with about the same ratio as you have. I just thought it'd be a good idea to ask somebody who's actually done this before, since I don't like fiddling around with my computers too much unless I know what I'm doing.

[lucasfart]

I've actually read that the HD is dynamic, meaning it expands to your needs, so if you only have 4gb left and are installing an 8gb game, it will expand the windows partition to match the size needed. So you only need to start off small. i made mine about 10gb to start with, because it can always expand when i need it too. At least, thats what i've read, can't remember where though.

@Hebes - Sorry, thats a typo should be snow leopard. I actually went to a store and asked if they came with a disc, so i'm gonna have a look at ours, which is unfortunately at the school where my dad works, so i won't see it till wednesday at least