0
0

[–] SkepticalMartian ago  (edited ago)

The problem with virtualization is that unless your hardware directly supports it, you can't dedicate physical video hardware to a virtual machine. This means that the VM will use emulation for video which is often bad from a performance perspective. This may or may not matter depending on the game. Software emulation may be fast enough depending on the title.

If your mainboard and CPU both support hardware virtualization you can install a second video card and dedicate it to the VM. Here is an example of a Linux host operating system running a windows virtual machine with hardware virtualization and two video cards, one of which is dedicated to windows while the VM is running. Performance is quite good, and both the Windows and the Linux displays can be hardware accelerated at the same time.

On intel processors, you can check if you have virtualization technology by downloading the cpu identification tool. Once installed and run, you can check under the "CPU Technologies" tab. If you see Virtualization Technology and VT-x Extended Page Tables as supported, your CPU has support. In supported mainboards, your BIOS will have a setting to toggle virtualization support. My old intel i7 920 supports this quite nicely, and many other modern CPUs in the last 5 years should too.

AMD has a similar technology called AMD-V, but you'll need a different tool to test for support. I don't have any AMDs here to test it with, but the information is definitely out there.

0
0

[–] Gamio ago 

I've done a bit of virtual machine gaming, (Star Trek: Armada 1&2 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein). Biggest issue I've encountered with it was getting the virtual machine running correctly and even then it was a fairly simple process of just booting XP into safemode and installing the correct software. A few games I couldn't get running was Fallout3 and Fear but it was easier to get them running on my native OS than it was to mess around with trying to get them running on a virtualization of XP.

0
0

[–] pangaea [S] ago 

You ran the original pc games or console versions on emulators?

0
0

[–] Gamio ago 

PC versions of course, why would I set up a virtual machine to run an emulator?

0
0

[–] wickedsteve ago 

Which games don't work?

0
0

[–] pangaea [S] ago 

a few need for speed games, halo 2