Thanks for all of your feedback in my other forum posts, it was a huge help, and I thank you for that. However I need some more questions answered.
I was doing some shopping around, and it looks like Apple has put a lock on pricing on their machines, meaning that the stores have no choice but to sell it at the price given, or they could lose their license to sell Apple products.
Anyway to the question at hand, I am 99.5% sold on Unity, as my new dev platform of choice. However I am also a huge gamer, not to mention I have lots of money invested in applications for windows.
I have been told that I can have a dual boot system on a Mac Pro, OSX and Windows XP, my question is, if I set up the Mac Pro with dual boot, will Windows XP play all of my PC games without problems? I also heard of something called Parallels, or something of that nature? With that I think it was kinda like a Windows emulator, and runs only some things, the dual boot would be the best solution, to have windows applications and games running on my Mac?
Please help clear this up as I am not 100% sure on this. If this is the case I am sold on a Mac Pro for my next purchase. Followed by Unity.
I use dual-booting for my Macbook Pro. It’s neat to jump into Windows and run games like Half-Life 2, and I’ve got Steam on there right now. But to be honest, I want to keep my mac applications up and running most of the time. So having to shut it all down and restart into windows gets to be an annoyance. So I basically haven’t been playing PC games even though I have a capable machine.
Of course, I have plenty of consoles that keep me busy too.
It might be more cost/time efficient to get the development machine you need for Unity, and then build a gaming PC separately. The two combined would probably cost less than a Mac Pro anyway, and you would have the best of both worlds, plus a good PC for testing your windows builds!
I’ve also used Parallels which is great for things like Office if you need it, but the gaming support is not there yet. They’re planning to support Direct3D gaming better in the future but that has not happened so far.
So you’re saying with a Mac Pro with Dual Boot, I can play my PC games no problem if I boot into windows?
In regards to a test PC rig That’s what I am on now haha, remember I am not a mac guy, but for my next machine if I can kill two birds with one stone then I am all for it, and I am willing to invest the money into it.
Well, if you’d like to avoid the need to constantly reboot you might also consider using Parallels. It serves as a VM window in which you can run Windows (or a variety of other OSes) simulataneously with OS X. I have a MBP myself and have had good results with Parallels running WinXP for me. For example I’ll be using Unity and C4D on OS X and Photoshop on XP under Parallels. You can share folder space and copy/paste between the two. The one gotcha is that there is currently no 3D acceleration under Parallels so that limits its usage a bit. Of course if you use both Bootcamp and Parallels you have the best of both worlds, use the two OSes simulataneously for ease-of-use, or quit out of parallels/boot straight into Windows if you really need the full horsepower of the machine.
So the lack of 3D acceleration isn’t as drastic a situation as it might seem at first in this case. Parallels is a great way to have 2D Windows apps running on a Mac and a great way to enjoy 2D games. Sure, anything 3D really requires a reboot but that’s not such a singular priority based on my reading of his post.
When you dual boot your Mac into Windows XP it is a PC with that hardware. It’s not emulation. So any problems you have will be identical to the problems you’d have on a similarly configured PC. (Just clarifying other responses. You can’t play Windows games with “no problems” – just “the same problems as usual” .)
Parallels et al is great, especially for playing older games that won’t run under XP. You can install 98 or 3.11 on its own (tiny) partition and run, I dunno, Master of Orion or Fallout.
The basic problem with Mac Pros is that (a) they don’t support just any PC video card you stick in them, and (b) you can’t buy a $1000 Mac Pro with one CPU, and (c) they don’t do SLI. Aside from that, they’re golden – the CPUs are upgradeable if you’re into that. You can open them up without a screwdriver and swap out drives etc., also with no screwdriver.
Oh and (d) they’re freakin’ huge.
BTW: I figured when I bought my Mac Pro it would replace my current Mac AND my current PC. The problem is, I can’t stand rebooting my Mac, so I still end up pining for a faster PC… Just a warning
That’s what I am on now haha, remember I am not a mac guy, but for my next machine if I can kill two birds with one stone then I am all for it, and I am willing to invest the money into it.