Intel Mac running Windows XP

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The July 2006 issue of Maximum PC has an article on running Windows XP on one of the new Intel Macs.

The hardware was the Intel-based iMac with and Intel Core Duo CPU running at 1.83GHz with 1GB of DDR2/667 RAM with 160GB Seagate 7200.7 drive, an ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics card and OSX version 10.4.5 "...flashed the firmware to support Boot Camp."

"For performance testing, we picked applications that had been updated on the Intel Macs to run native x86 code in Universal Mode, and that were also compatible with Windows XP....Doom3, Bibble Pro4.7 and a beta version of Noise Ninja"

"Additionally, we wanted to see how much of a performance drag Mac users suffer when running the emulation layer required by many older PowerPC-native applications. For this, we ran Photoshop CS2 which has not been updated to run in Universal Mode."

"Finally, we fired up a beta verson of Parallels Workstation and created a virtual install of Windows XP. Parallels is like VM Ware Workstation and Virtual PC 2005 except it supports Intel's new Virtualization Technology (VT) in OS X."


The Verdict?

"The Mac runs Windows XP better than it runs OS X...On Mac hardware, apps run significantly faster in Windows XP than they do in OS X."

"Our tests also put to rest a belief that running Windows XP within OS X using Parallels virtualization software is faster than running Windows XP directly on the hardware. It's not."

(Source: Maximum PC, July 2006, pages 49-50)


Pretty interesting isn't it?

Mac version of Photoshop CS2 ran 63.22% slower than the Windows XP version...

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