SimCity with Parallels on Mac

[s8film40 1]

I am tempted to buy SimCity now and run it in parallels or VM fusion until the Mac version is released. Has anyone tried this does it work? Also my understanding is buying the PC version would later entitle me to downloading the Mac version?

[skibumstevo 0]

I am tempted to buy SimCity now and run it in parallels or VM fusion until the Mac version is released. Has anyone tried this does it work? Also my understanding is buying the PC version would later entitle me to downloading the Mac version?

I've been asking the same question...at least there is this:

http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/107435/can-i-use-a-pc-license-to-play-the-mac-version

[Nukksc16 0]

I have it running on Parallels right now, it's super choppy. I'm not sure if its my computer but its very frustrating!! My computer Is just over a year old! Can't be that...

Looking for suggestions for a better performance

[s8film40 1]

I am also considering Bootcamp as well. I just got the latest high end configuration iMac, so I guess that might help as well.

[Nukksc16 0]

I got rid of Parallels and am now working on using bootcamp.  I'll repost when I get some gameplay in..

[s8film40 1]

I did the same thing after VMWare fusion didn't work out so well. Bootcamp is working great! I have all the graphics settings turned all the way up and everything looks great and runs smooth!

[Hamish 1,370]

I was playing the SimCity Dev Beta on Bootcamp, and it was working really well.

I will pick it up and play it using bootcamp on friday, but will eventually want it to run on mac. I am assuming that I can just re-download it when it comes to mac, but nothing concrete has been said about that, so be careful if you buy it through retail stores on PC and then find that you aren't able to download it onto mac when the mac version comes out.

[Cockatoo 2,257]

I tried running SC3000 in fusion on a MacBook pro last week. Super smooth, as good as directly on a Windows PC, but for some reason the CPU decided to get crazy hot. Almost burned a hole in my jeans...

I really wouldn't recommend running Sc2013 in any sort of virtual machine though, it's a 3D game and they're just not meant to be virtualised. If you had a Mac Pro, or equivalent PC hardware... maybe. But still probably no.

Your best bet would be bootcamp.

[regionlong 3]

I am running SimCity 2013 on Boot Camp with MacBook Pro Retina... The game generally runs smoothly, but sometimes it refuses to launch, which is really really really frustrating...

[yomatiase 0]

I have an 2008 iMac 24" Core 2 Duo 3.06ghz 4Gb Ram Gforce 512Mb vram, running Parallels 7 on Mountain Lion.

I tried simcity 2013 and it only runs at 1024 x 768 with most of the setting on low.

Its playable, but it looks awful.

Im installing bootcamp 4 with win 7 to try it out.

[Silvertwister 1]

To help you all better understand what you're experiencing, Parallels and VM Fusion are both virtual machines with no direct access to your graphics hardware and with reduced access to CPU and memory thanks to what is called a virtualization layer.  Boot Camp is designed to run Windows more or less natively as if you had a PC with drivers that directly access all of your hardware normally (because despite all the extra money you spend on a Mac, a Mac and a PC have the exact same hardware in them).  This is why games that use 3D rendering perform abysmally on Parallels and VM Fusion but Boot Camp seems to run them well.  When gaming, go Boot Camp all the way.  Also, if you don't already have one, grab a two button mouse.

[Silvertwister 1]

Also, for Yomatiase, your 2008 iMac should have a Geforce 8800 GS in it.  That's one generation above the minimum specs required by the game, so while you will see a significant improvement in performance compared to parallels, you will still be fairly limited in how high you can turn up the graphics.

[curres 0]

I have it running on my 27 inch, late 2012 iMac under parallels with Windows 8. It's working great and looks fantastic. I would like to bootcamp the thing, but I only have a licence for Windows 8 which is not currently supported by Bootcamp. I'll probably go bootcamp when Mac OS 10.8.3 is released. Really looking forward to the Mac version though.

[timmie 988]

In my experience, you should only use Parallels if you have a powerful Mac. I have a rather powerful 15" MBP from early 2011 (2,0 GHz i7, 4GB of RAM, AMD Radeon HD 6490M) and even simple tasks slow down both Mac OS and Windows 7. I've upgraded to 8GB of RAM since and it makes a big difference, but I still use Bootcamp for SC4, so I guess SC2013 won't be great in Parallels either.

[curres 0]

Have it running in boot camp now under windows 8. Nice and smooth, although I get the flickering building issue from time to time.

[SP4CEY 1]

I have it running with settings maxed out 60fps on a 2012 rMBP 2.3Ghz using bootcamp Windows 7.

[warrior 169]

I've been playing it in Parallels, and it's been fine. I've even had Visual Studio running in the back, as well as Mac apps like Tweetbot, Mail, Xcode, and the game wasn't affected noticeably, although the Mac slowed down, for instance it would freeze for a few second when swiping between spaces, but nothing major. That was playing on the highest settings (strangely I often got better performance with the Lighting on Ultra rather than Low-High), when the city got bigger I then had to close the apps in the background and start reducing the settings a bit.

 

This is on a retina MacBook Pro 15", power cable plugged in.

[daktre 0]

I started playing today on my Macbook Pro early 2011 model using Parallels running Win XP. It runs quite well, although it is better to run it after closing all possible Mac applications. It did take a long time to update the game after I downloaded it (2 hours or so?), but it started off quite well. The graphics are not too shaky and display well. On trying to open relatively heavy mac applications like Mail, the Parallels window seems to freeze temporarily. Otherwise a smooth run although I am waiting for the June 11 Mac version. 

[Rufus Honker IV 100]

Mac users, I would wait until it is released for Mac. 

 

My suspicion... just my suspicion... is the reason they kept their mouths shut for so long on the Mac release date is that they want to drop patch 2.0 first.  I suspect patch 2.0 with land between now and the Mac release date.

[honam1021 1]

I am running SimCity 2013 on Boot Camp with MacBook Pro Retina... The game generally runs smoothly, but sometimes it refuses to launch, which is really really really frustrating...

Try to run the game at the screen's native res