Windowless world.

[Samuel Thurston]

On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 12:34 AM, Basil Chupin <blchupin at iinet.net.au> wrote:
>
> On 10/10/2010 00:41, Michael Haney wrote:
> > On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 6:04 AM, Basil Chupin<blchupin at iinet.net.au>  wrote:
> >
> >> On 09/10/2010 19:07, Michael Haney wrote:
> >>
> >> [slice]
> >>
> >>
> >>> [dice]
> >>>
> >> Somehow this, "Does not compute".
> >>
> >> Why would he spend $3,000 on something to be used with Windows when
> >> "he's been and still is a heavy Mac user.....he  simply couldn't stand
> >> Windows anymore"; and so why spend $3000 on a Windows system? The mind
> >> simply boggles at such a procurement...... Ah, he has money to spend,
> >> right? :-) .
> >>
> >>
> > Its "strictly" a gaming system.  He bought it specifically for Final
> > Fantasy XIV, the new MMO that has pretty high system requirements.  He
> > switches over to his Macbook Pro with a kvm to browse the web and
> > download files.  The gaming rig does have AV software.  Everything
> > else he does he does using his Macbook Pro.
> >
> > He did consider Ubuntu for the gaming system but went with Windows 7
> > instead because Wine didn't work with most of his games.
> >
> Ah, OK, understood.
>
> OK, Wine I know is the poor cousin of CrossOver (well, you know what I
> mean) but CrossOver wouldn't work either? Or what about VirtualBox or
> even the not-free VMWare?
>
> I'm not arguing but just asking as I don't have the experience with
> these except that I have used VirtualBox and so this would be an
> education for me.
>

CrossOver might be ok. I don't know because I won't pony up the
subscription.  VMware almost certainly has a product that would do the
job but I'm not sure which one.

VirtualBox has a problem for gaming though.  The virtual video card
driver is not set up to support most of the modern features of 3d
gaming cards (last i checked anyway which was about 6 months ago) such
as pixelshader 2.0.   So it's a sure bet that you couldn't squeeze SLI
capability out of this.  It's too far removed from the hardware itself
at this time.  They may remedy this in the future: I do know that the
output from the virtual card does at least make use of hardware
acceleration depending on the host and guest operating systems
supporting it, again as of my last check. But I think it will be a
long time before the virtual guest card truly mirrors the features of
the physical hardware card, because of the huge variation of cards and
capabilities on the market, and the fact that VirtualBox isn't a
product really aimed at this type of use.