installing Windows on an iMac without OSX

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gehenna

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#1223616 27-Jan-2015 21:52

So plenty of storage, likely 7200rpm so that's your speed bottle neck. CPU and RAM will not contribute to any performance issues that you encounter... unless you're wanting to run multiple memory intensive applications concurrently.

If quickly launching apps and reading/writing files is what you want, invest in an SSD upgrade. You'll lose capacity but gain speed in spades.

Either way, Windows will be comparable in performance to a similar specced non-Mac PC.

Dairyxox

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#1223722 28-Jan-2015 07:16

KiwiNZ: I am hoping to avoid Boot camp as it has overheads that degrades performance

Really? What overheads.
Performance was 100% not degraded in my experience

Batman

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#1223729 28-Jan-2015 07:40

KiwiNZ:
gehenna: 8GB RAM on a 27" iMac with Windows running via Boot Camp will perform admirably. The RAM won't matter so much as the disk.... is it SSD or not? Probably not... either way it'll perform very well just disk access/write speeds will be slower without an SSD.

It has a 1TB drive.

at an estimate

1tb drive (very generous, disk not fragmented, lots of space esp at the outer radius where speeds are at its fastest)
- read large file 70MBps
- write large file 40MBps
- read many little files 10MBps
- wrte many little files 5MBps

my SSD
- read large file 600MBps
- write large file 600MBps
- read many little files 350MBps
- write many little files 100-300MBps

Batman

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#1223730 28-Jan-2015 07:41

capital B = Bytes
(little b = bits)
1 Byte = 8 bits

Dynamic

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#1223752 28-Jan-2015 08:41

gehenna: So plenty of storage, likely 7200rpm so that's your speed bottle neck.

The exact reason I'm using one of these WD Black Dual Drives for both space and performance. I've seen them used with excellent results.

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MikeB4

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#1223761 28-Jan-2015 08:57

gehenna: So plenty of storage, likely 7200rpm so that's your speed bottle neck. CPU and RAM will not contribute to any performance issues that you encounter... unless you're wanting to run multiple memory intensive applications concurrently.

If quickly launching apps and reading/writing files is what you want, invest in an SSD upgrade. You'll lose capacity but gain speed in spades.

Either way, Windows will be comparable in performance to a similar specced non-Mac PC.

I was under the impression that the older iMacs were using 5400rpm HDD's for quieter running.

Edit; a check of my system and you are correct it is a 7200rpm and by it's number regime its a Samsung

Dairyxox

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#1223977 28-Jan-2015 12:15

I definately dont agree that bootcamp has any meaningfull overheads.

FYI My friend has an HP elitebook folio, with the same processor as my macbook air (core i5 3427u), both 4gb ram, both have 128gb ssd.
He came over and we benched the two systems next to eachother, both running windows 7. The mac booted faster. Games ran a few FPS faster (about 3% - not meaningfull), and CPU tests were about 5% faster which I put down to better cooling (less throttle) and more optimized memory (Dual channel DDR3 1600).

However it sounds like what you want is do-able.

see here:

Reddit Article on Running Windows Natively on Mac without Bootcamp - Booya

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MikeB4

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#1224010 28-Jan-2015 12:49

Dairyxox: I definately dont agree that bootcamp has any meaningfull overheads.

FYI My friend has an HP elitebook folio, with the same processor as my macbook air (core i5 3427u), both 4gb ram, both have 128gb ssd.
He came over and we benched the two systems next to eachother, both running windows 7. The mac booted faster. Games ran a few FPS faster (about 3% - not meaningfull), and CPU tests were about 5% faster which I put down to better cooling (less throttle) and more optimized memory (Dual channel DDR3 1600).

However it sounds like what you want is do-able.

see here:

Reddit Article on Running Windows Natively on Mac without Bootcamp - Booya

Thank you for that link, I shall have a read.

gzt

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#1224156 28-Jan-2015 15:49

KiwiNZ:
gzt:
KiwiNZ: I am hoping to avoid Boot camp as it has overheads that degrades performance

Some macs shipped with a not impressive level of memory for the windows world. Imo osx base was fine with this for obvious reasons ; )

I have 8gb of Ram. I could add more. I would have to discard what's there to add more.

Hmm. Graphics drivers loaded OK?

I don't suppose the experience benchmark will give any clues?

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#1224264 28-Jan-2015 18:18

hmm i hope they fix the file icons ... very ugly, to be polite

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