Windows 7 and Mac

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falconman

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 17, 2007
Messages
489
I just upgraded from Windows 7 Beta to Windows 7 RC and it runs very surprisingly well. Ive had no issues so far. Has anyone had found anything cool or had problems?

Ive run it through bootcamp and VMware Fusion 2 with no problems or hang ups yet (knock on wood)
 
It has no real reason not to run. Intel Macs don't exactly run mystery hardware. For my unibody 17" for example I use nVidia's stock graphics and chipset drivers, and stock realtek audio drivers. The trackpad is a way oversensitive and has limited adjustability, but it works.
 
I've had problems with the integrated mic in my 1st gen Macbook Pro. Other than that things have been great.
 
Other than the trackpad, everything seems to run fine.

I tried on both the unibody Macbook and the whitebook and Win 7 works fine. Bootcamp options are a little different though for the different Macbooks.
 
Frankly with the right methods (I dont know exactly how, not that well taught in EFI...) I think win7 could potentially run native without any help from bootcamp on mac hardware since it supports EFI on its own.

No real advantage of course, just sayin ;)
 
What I would like to know, and maybe others too, is if windows xp compatibility mode works with paralles or vmware on the mac. There could be some issues... just a guess though.
 
Grentz said:
Frankly with the right methods (I dont know exactly how, not that well taught in EFI...) I think win7 could potentially run native without any help from bootcamp on mac hardware since it supports EFI on its own.
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So your saying you could wipe out osx and install Windows 7 on a mac?
 
falconman said:
Yea its very close to possible now...
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I'm wondering about hardware though. Say a PC vs Mac GPU, even if the card is made for both, I wouldn't expect Windows drivers to be able to control the Mac version GPU.
 
Relativist said:
What I would like to know, and maybe others too, is if windows xp compatibility mode works with paralles or vmware on the mac. There could be some issues... just a guess though.
Click to expand...

From what I have seen, XP mode really is nothing more than Virtual PC running in the background with XP and then allowing the XP apps to be integrated through to the Win7 layer. It does require a processor that supports Virtualization technology. Besides that I would think it would work fine, just make sure you have a beefy machine as you are essentially running XP and Win7 at the same time.

bigdogchris said:
So your saying you could wipe out osx and install Windows 7 on a mac?
Click to expand...

Potentially yes. All that really differs a Mac from a normal PC laptop at this point is the EFI instead of a BIOS. This has been used in servers for many years on the PC side (EFI is an intel invention, not Apple!), but not for consumer OSes. Now though, Win7 (and a few select versions of Vista) support EFI native.
 
Potentially you could run the nexted XP mode inside of Fusion. You can, for instance, run an XP VM inside an ESX VM inside of Fusion - depends on how VPC handles the VT passthrough
 
Ok so it might work, I'll be getting a chance today to test it on the parallels with Windows 7 RC.
 
FWIW, I am running Windows 7 x86 on my CoreDuo iMac WITHOUT OS X installed at all. All the drivers where pulled in via WU and it runs amazingly well. Better than Leopard IMO. And with only 1GB of RAM.

Sad day as my old iMac was the last OS X machine I used daily.

And to those questioning if its possible to have Windows installed on a Mac without OS X, if some of you remember, I had a post where I showed off my iMac running WHS full time. When you install WHS it wipes out ALL other partitions.
 
I thought about this as well, wanting a small computer like the mini (Dell's Studio Hybrid is overpriced), throw in a Corsair SSD and cheap 4 GB DDR3, and Win7. I'm sure all the drivers would already be there or via update.
 
Apple laptops do most decidedly _NOTE_ have stock standard Nvidia chips. They have two seperate Nvidia 9 series chips. One at a lower clock rate and with certain cores disabled (for low power mode and 2D) and a higher revisioned chip with higher clocks that is full featured, but uses more power. By default, the high-power chip is used. The bootcamp drivers do not support the GPU switching methods, nor even a method by which to choose which GPU you want to run on (forsake 3D for improvements in battery life, etc). It was a custom hardware hack that was designed jointly by Nvidia and Apple, and is only available in Apple laptops currently.
To the other discussions: Yes, Windows 7 can run native, by itself on an Apple MacBook/MBP. Even Vista supported EFI, but you had to activate features to take advantage of it, where Windows 7 natively will try to use it if it is there. Some hardware features are on custom chips or proprietary solutions. Don't expect 100% of the features to be able to be utilized until Apple decides they will offer better BootCamp drivers.
As far as virtualization is considered, VMware, VirtualBox and many others will run without VT enabled, but they lose some security and functionality. VT bits enabled in both processor and motherboard (BIOS/EFI) will enable some features that speed up and help to secure virtualization in several products (including VirtualPC, VMware, and others). The "coherence" or nested modes for Virtual XP under Windows 7 Professional and above work pretty darn well. Much like how the coherence or fusion modes work under Parallels and VMware for Mac OS X.
For more information on it, I suggest you go through the documents on TechNet's springboard site. They have huge documents on how VT functions and the Virtual XP functions in Windows 7: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dd361745.aspx
 
The nVidia 9400M+9600M GT thing may be unique to Macbook Pros, but nVidia had the technology available before them: http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/11/21/hybrid_sli_on_desktops/ . They also advertise the multi-GPU aspect right on their chip site: http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_9600m_gt_us.html

The stock nVidia 186.03 notebook GPU driver on nvidia.com will happily power the GPU in a Macbook Pro. No, it can't switch them, but that's an OEM-specific part of the puzzle, as nVidia's stock drivers are well.. stock. For the record, even Leopard doesn't do the GPU switching on-the-fly, which the hardware can certainly do. Leopard forces a logout to reset the GPU.

GPU switching aside, Windows 7 works fine on my 17" unibody. There's proper drivers for everything, I got boot camp x64 installed, and all the expected things work. The trackpad is way oversensitive but I think that's a purely "Apple not trying hard enough" thing.
 
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