3DS Max On Parallels or Boot Camp?

I would think you should at least give Boot Camp a test drive. The problem with either Parallels or Fusion is the sharing resources part. It's great for jumping back and forth but system resources can get stretched thin in a hurry.

I'm pretty sure that in Parallels your video performance is going to be a serious issue. In a virtualized environment like Parallels or Fusion this video performance is fine for Word, Excel, Acrobat etc., but doesn't come close in apps that require a big contribution from the video card.

If it's Vista that you loaded via Parallels, then check the Windows Experience Index that can tell you a lot about system performance.

Either Vista or Windows 7 will allow access to more than 4 GB of ram. With Boot Camp you will have full system resources, with Fusion or Parallels you will not. With either of the virtualized options I believe your video performance will be extremely disappointing.

Not sure what you are asking re the ethernet cable. Are you asking about networking two different computers? Or networking the Mac and Windows partitions of one computer?

64-bit Windows 7 Release Candidate

Setup on its own drive and you can create some NTFS and FAT volumes if needed.

if i'm reading that correctly.... Yes you can network the Mac and a PC. If you are using a router, just set up the router to be the DHCP host, and set the Mac and PC to get their IP's from the DHCP. Most routers are preconfigured this way.

No, you cannot network the Mac partition and the Win partition, unless the Win partition is running via a virtual machine (via parallels or VMware).

Of course you can always use a crossover cable, and/or internet sharing....

What are you trying to do? File sharing, or running a server?