VM software that supports 3D cards?

[Titan]

I'm running vista but want to port the contents of an old XP machine to a VM on my main rig. I would like to run some old games (DX 7 class or older) and am wondering if there is an effective way to run 3D games with support for hardware graphics cards. I thought one version of VMWare did this, but it was turned off by default and you had to enable it by hand in a config file, the support was buggy. Has it gotten any better?

 

[Crusty]

Have you tried running the games in compatibility mode in Vista?

 

[Titan]

Have you tried running the games in compatibility mode in Vista?

Oh yeah, forget about it. I'm looking at games that were designed for win 95/98 and just barely are compatible with XP. Like 10+ year old games.

Doing some googling, looks like VMWare will cut it.

 

[theevilsharpie]

VMware provides 3D support, but I'm not sure if the performance will be up your expectations.

I'll second Crusty and suggest that you try the game on Vista before attempting to run it in a VM. Even with Vista 64-bit, I could play almost everything I threw at it.

 

[Titan]

I'll give it a whirl, but last time I looked, Dungeon Keeper (1 or 2) and Mechwarrior 3 both didn't run. Often they crashed in XP. And those are both damn good games.

My reason for the VM system. Is I have my 16 windows tetris game on an XP system, and I don't want to lose the scores, I have to port the system registry over. And I don;t think 16 bit apps run in Vista-64, SP1, which I am running now.

 

[theevilsharpie]

Games that require 3D acceleration I would try in Vista first.

2D games or software 3D will run fine in a VM.

 

[Golgatha]

I'm running vista but want to port the contents of an old XP machine to a VM on my main rig. I would like to run some old games (DX 7 class or older) and am wondering if there is an effective way to run 3D games with support for hardware graphics cards. I thought one version of VMWare did this, but it was turned off by default and you had to enable it by hand in a config file, the support was buggy. Has it gotten any better?

VMWare Workstation 6.5 supports up to DX9 games, but the 3D support is still software based, so forget any 3D games from the last 5 years or so. I tried to run Aion in a VMWare XP Pro host OS and it did run, but it ran like cold molasses.

 

[Golgatha]

Oh yeah, forget about it. I'm looking at games that were designed for win 95/98 and just barely are compatible with XP. Like 10+ year old games.

Doing some googling, looks like VMWare will cut it.

For 10 year old stuff, you should be fine. I run Final Fantasy VII, VIII, and Total Annihilation under VMWare Workstation and they run fine.