UUronL

You're not wrong, but the newest Intel chips - the exact cores being used in the Macs (aside from the solos) have hardware virtualization. The Parrallels VM can access hardware resources directly... which helps explain why it is able to do at least as good a job as Bootcamp (theoretically they should be equal). In tests, it actually does better than Bootcamp on the same hardware, meaning that there is room for Apple to improve Bootcamp since this kind of outcome -should never happen-.


You are correct that running two OSes simultaneously would require more physical memory, but that isn't a huge deal - some find it more of an issue to shutdown and reboot to switch between environments...

swajames

You're right, that does sound a little odd! Bootcamp's job is just to enable the initial install (partitioning and set up initial drivers) and then get around the fact that Intel Mac's use EFI and not standard BIOS so like you I'm also struggling to see how Parallels (which must coexist and share CPU resource with OS X) could possibly be faster under any circumstances than a totally native Wintel set up (which essentially what Bootcamp provides). I do think virtualization is a much better way to go for most users most of the time but some recent tests in the UK showed the MacPro under bootcamp to have some of the highest (if not the highest) scores yet seen on windows benchmarks.