Playing windows games on my iMac?

I have a pretty good iMac I bought it about 18 months so it's not the brand new one it has 8 gig memory and I have just installed mavericks. I am getting frustrated that I can't buy a lot of the games I see advertised. I really want to buy Skyrim but it won't run on a mac I have been told to buy parallels but before I spend the money does it allow you to play the top windows games? I assume I will have to buy windows 8 as we'll so just wanted to ask before I fork out about £130

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
Don't use apps like Parallels if you want to play games.
The first thing you should check is your iMac model, so open  > About this Mac > More Info. Then, check which Windows versions you can install in this website > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5634?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
As your iMac is recent, you should be able to install Windows 7 and 8, both in 64-bit. You have to buy a full Windows version.
To install Windows, Apple provides you the Boot Camp Assistant (in /Applications/Utilities), which guides you through the steps. Follow these steps to install Windows > http://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1636/en_US/boot_camp_install-setup_ 10.8.pdf
Remember to install the most recent drivers for your GPU in Windows

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