First Impressions of Parallels Desktop 3.0

Posted on 07 June 2007 by


I have tried several games and so far none have worked properly

  • Counter Strike – unplayable at 5-10 fps even at 1024×768. Runs great at 1440×900 in Boot Camp.
  • Star Trek: Bridge Commander – Starts and I can hear menu music and mouse-over sounds, but no picture
  • Company of Heroes – Won’t start, get a DirectX error
  • FlatOut2 – Get a white screen and no audio

According to Counter Strike the DirectX hardware level being emulated by Parallels Desktop 3.0 is only 8.1, which comes as no surprise considering the lack of Vista Aero support (requiring DX9).

So for the moment I am disappointed. It would appear that I am not alone after reading the Parallels forums. For those who took up the $39.95 upgrade offer that ended BEFORE they could try out the new version (when it was released the price was bumped up to $49.95), got a pretty raw deal in my opinion.

I think I will just update to Boot Camp 1.3 and stick with that for games until some updates to PD3 come out. Boot Camp 1.3 adds support for the MacBook Pro keyboard backlight and updated graphics drivers for those interested.

This post was written by:

- who has written 208 posts on Gear Diary.

Mitchell Oke is a 22 year old Bachelor of Creative Technology (Digital Video Production) from Sydney, Australia. He's previously worked for News Ltd as a Multimedia Producer, and currently works as a freelance editor and videographer. He has a great love for gadgets and cars, always wanting to have the latest and greatest phones, notebooks and other electronic toys. He is a huge fan of Star Trek, Top Gear and Seinfeld, citing them as his favourite TV shows. In December 2006 he became a Mac convert, having used Windows since he was 5.

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  • http://pocketnow.com Christopher Spera

    I’m glad I didn’t jump on this then… I have the previous version of Parallels; but really don’t use it much, as I pulled down Boot Camp and am just running Windows Vista natively. Kinda stinks that things turned out like this. Personally, I think its going to be a bit before they come up to DX9…but I could be wrong