How to speed up Parallels Desktop 7 ?

[ColoArtist]

I can confirm the mid-2009 MBP can handle 8GB of memory, because I've got one and did the upgrade.

My experience with Parallels running Win7 on that MBP, even with 8GB of memory, is that not only was it slow, I had to close out almost every other app before firing it up or it would run at a snail's pace...even with 4GB assigned to Parallels.

I didn't do an SSD upgrade, so hopefully that would make enough of a difference to make Parallels/Win7 more useable.

FYI...on my 2.7GHz/16GB/512GB rMBP I can have Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Aperture, Safari, iTunes, Mail, Calendar running and open Parallels/Win7 without any problems. Not only that, Parallels much, much, much faster...opening and resuming takes under 5 seconds. The desktop is instantly available. IE will launch and display a window in around 2 seconds. SmartGuard will delete and make new Snapshot in under 1 1/2 minutes.

When all of that is running along with Parallels, the machine is using about 12GB of memory.

Just sayin'.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

I am using a Core 2 Duo (mid-2009) Macbook Pro on Mountain Lion (clean installed). Parallels Desktop 7 is quite slow (running Windows 7). I have the 'beach-ball' frequently and it isn't smooth to use. Anyone has some optimisation tips?

Use only one virtual core and 1/4 - 1/2 of the installed RAM as the virtual RAM. I had similar problems on this hardware with VMware, if i used more than one virtual processor core and/or more than 1/2 of the installed RAM.

On Sandy Bridge an newer processors EPTs (Extended Page Tables) reduce the memory and virtual memory management overhead. VMware Fusion v3.x.x and later can use EPTs, if you enable this option in the virtual machine preferences. VMware requires much less CPU time if i enable the EPTs.

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Early '11 to present are 16GB

Intel (ark.intel.com) says 32 GB.

Here is an example (Early-2011, Quad-Core, 2.2 GHz, 17" MBP):
http://ark.intel.com/products/50067/Intel-Core-i7-2720QM-Processor-(6M-Cache-up-to-3_30-GHz)

 

[dyn]

EPT's are used with cpus before Sandy Bridge too (15" MBP mid 2010 is pre-Sandy Bridge but the Core i5/i7 in them will support EPT). Or as the wikipedia link you posted says it:

Intel states that the feature is available in all their Nehalem-based CPUs with virtualization support; namely in Core i7, Core i5, Core i3, Pentium G6950 and appropriate Xeons. It is not available in Core 2-based and earlier Intel CPUs.

 

[KScottMyers]

Your best options...

• Configure your VM to use as many CPUs as possible
• Dedicate at least 3GB of RAM to the virtual machine
• Use an SSD for OS X and the VM image

Your VM will run almost like its native to the machine.