Bootcamp Windows 7

Viper101 · December 28, 2017

Alright, the title doesn't give much away.

Basically, I play a lot of World of Warships, I am also in college. We are on break.

Unfortunately, the situation at my parents house prevented me from bringing my desktop home with me, so I am playing on a late 2012 MacBook Pro 15 (i7 3rd gen, GT 650M 512mb).

The game runs on a wrapper, so from what I understand its a virtual windows machine.

My question is would I see improvements in performance by using bootcamp and having windows installed on my Mac?

Is it worth it at all?

Everything I have seen has pointed me to do so, but I want to ask these forums first.

Thanks!

Tabs · December 28, 2017

There are a few ways to answer this question really.

If you have the space and the time to bootcamp the machine, it's pretty safe to do, doesn't take all that much time over a regular Windows install, and you'd be able to benchmark for yourself to see if it's worth it - if the performance is the same or not much different, it's easy to swap back to OSX and get rid of the bootcamp partition.

Alternatively, you could have a look for other people with the same/similar hardware running the game under Windows, but that's going to be less likely to give you relevant information since there's no guarantees you'll find information about the game running at the same resolution and settings you use.

Still, it'll give you an idea.

FoxPro · December 28, 2017

Like what Tabs said, it doesn’t hurt to try if you have the space to do so. Though be warned, Apple likes to screw you over for using Boot Camp and you’ll definitely need some tools in your windows install to keep the CPU temps down as you can’t use the Intel HD under Windows at all. So you’ll be running your GT650M constantly. I have the same MacBook and it wasn’t fun, I eventually had to dump the Windows install due to space concerns, but the experience wasn’t the best if you planned to have it run silent or not burn your legs (or hands, the keyboard gets pretty toasty too). I used Macs Fan Control (has both an OS X and Windows version, very useful) to watch the CPU and GPU temps and adjust the fans accordingly. I would recommend regardless whether you keep Windows on or not, especially on an older MacBook like that.

DrMacintosh · December 29, 2017

There would be performance and stability improvements but as said before you would be running your dGPU all the time so only use Windows for gaming.

Claryn · December 29, 2017

You will probably see a huge boost to performance. I do not believe you have PCIe passthrough set up in your VM right now? If not, your Windows VM is not using your dGPU.

If you have space, it is as easy as downloading the iso from Microsoft's website, open up BootCamp manager, press 'Next' a bunch of times, and mount the iso a USB-flash drive and the needed Apple software for your Windows install.

Reboot while holding Options and select the USB, then you are off to the races. That's it.

You can set your desired startup-disk from OS X, called "Startup Disk". To boot to the other OS, just hold Option during boot and select it.

The Bootcamp drive you create with Bootcamp Assisstant contains drivers and software needed for the Windows install to work nicely with your trackpad, sound/screen/kbbrightness etc. etc. It will feel like a normal Windows install. Nothing special to it at all.