• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Virtual PC on Mac?

Masher88

Masher88

Believe in absurdities and you commit atrocities
May 7, 2005
1,856
18
53
Cleveland, OH
www.myspace.com
#1
Has anyone tried this program out? I mean, can you load in any PC program to your Mac with Virtual PC and have it work? PC has way more games...but thier OS sucks...hahhaha! I just got this shiny new G5 iMac with a 20" screen and a gig of RAM (yeah, I'm bragging!). I'm dying to play some killer games! :D
 
#5
Masher88 said:
Has anyone tried this program out? I mean, can you load in any PC program to your Mac with Virtual PC and have it work? PC has way more games...but thier OS sucks...hahhaha! I just got this shiny new G5 iMac with a 20" screen and a gig of RAM (yeah, I'm bragging!). I'm dying to play some killer games! :D
Click to expand...


Well, I used Virtual PC back in the days... maybe around '97-'98.
It is probably impossible to play "killer games" in the virtual pc.

First of, MacOS boots up, taking mucho resources, then you power up Virtual PC with whatever OS on it there (XP for example), mucho more resources.
And then to play a "killer game" on top of that?
I think not.

Also I can´t imagine how the graphics will be... most of the new "killer games" have hefty requierments for the video card... I don´t know how that will work out when you are really emulating it through Virtual PC.
 
#6
Ívar Þórólfsson said:
Well, I used Virtual PC back in the days... maybe around '97-'98.
It is probably impossible to play "killer games" in the virtual pc.

First of, MacOS boots up, taking mucho resources, then you power up Virtual PC with whatever OS on it there (XP for example), mucho more resources.
And then to play a "killer game" on top of that?
I think not.

Also I can´t imagine how the graphics will be... most of the new "killer games" have hefty requierments for the video card... I don´t know how that will work out when you are really emulating it through Virtual PC.
Click to expand...


Actually, the first versions of VPC were better at handling games than subsequent versions. If I recall correctly(I used versions 1-3) Since they actually utilized hardware acceleration for graphics. This provided better game playback(I managed to play a couple of hot titles at the time) But it caused issues with compatibility(windows being the crap that it is) and ultimately was dropped(in favor of virtual hardware emulation...ick) since the goal of VPC shifted from being able to emulate a windows environment to being able to run key software and work with windows networks.

But yes, the bottom line is, even with a quad processor g5 with 16 GB of RAM and a quattro FX 4500 GPU, you will not be able to play killer games thru virtual PC.

They even have a virtual PC for windows to enable you to run various versions of windows inside of XP.

Eitherway, in the next year, there will be intel macs that can boot windows and OS X, best of both worlds.
 
#7
Masher88 said:
Has anyone tried this program out? I mean, can you load in any PC program to your Mac with Virtual PC and have it work? PC has way more games...but thier OS sucks...hahhaha! I just got this shiny new G5 iMac with a 20" screen and a gig of RAM (yeah, I'm bragging!). I'm dying to play some killer games! :D
Click to expand...

There are some good games that can run native on Mac, such as UT2k4 and many id software games, but I have a more important question.

What type of graphics chip is in your iMac? That will probably be another important limiting factor.
 
#8
Davidoc said:
What type of graphics chip is in your iMac? That will probably be another important limiting factor.
Click to expand...

Not really. If you see my above post. Virtual PC does not utilize the hardware acceleration based on the specs of the computer it's operating on. If I recall correctly, VPC doesn't produce a scalable windows environment, instead, emulating a fairly simple hardware configuration that is only really suitable for simple tasks. It has its place as a software suite, but more for business than recreation.
 
#9
Wrong Robot said:
Not really. If you see my above post. Virtual PC does not utilize the hardware acceleration based on the specs of the computer it's operating on. If I recall correctly, VPC doesn't produce a scalable windows environment, instead, emulating a fairly simple hardware configuration that is only really suitable for simple tasks. It has its place as a software suite, but more for business than recreation.
Click to expand...

I was talking about games with native versions.
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back