UTM/QEMU vs Parallels running WinARM 10

[jlc1978]

I installed UTM (a QEMU frontend) to see how it stacks up against Parallels. After several tries, I got it up and running. Speed wise, UTM w/4 cores gets a Geekbench about what Parallels gets with 2 1230/2903 vs 1355/2176. 6 core Parallels blows it out of the water at 1489/5448. For comparison, my HP Envy with a Ryzen 5 4500U gets around 1098/4700.

Unfortunately, it simply is not stable on my MBA. After setting it up, running Win10 and shutting down Windows from within Windows it goes into repair mode and fails to open on my next attempt. I'm sure there is a way to get it to work but I have not been able to figure it out. If I could get it to work it'd be a useful stop gap, given its price of free or $10 from app store to support development, until MS decides what to do with Win ARM licensing.

 

[swandy]

Thanks for this post. I just read about UTM - I am trying to run an older Windows app - Lotus Approach - and it open my databases but doesn't completely work on Windows 10 or 11 for ARM under Parallels. (Also same behavior running under Crossover 21.) But I was hoping that Parallels would eventually figure out a way for us to run older (read non-ARM) versions of Windows and supposedly from what I read UTM will do that - run Intel versions of Windows on an M1 Mac).

 

[KingOfPain]

I‘m very sure that the OP ran Windows 10 on ARM on UTM as well, since the emulated x86 versions will be a lot slower.

Depending on how old the software is that you want to run, you could either try PCem (mostly for Win9x, I think I had problems installing Win2k) or CrossOver (which is basically an easier to use WINE):

GitHub - PCemOnMac/PCemV17macOS: Port of the PCem PC emulator for macOS. Comes with OpenGL 3.0 support built-in

Port of the PCem PC emulator for macOS. Comes with OpenGL 3.0 support built-in - PCemOnMac/PCemV17macOS

github.com

CrossOver runs the Windows software you need on Mac and Linux.

Don't buy a Windows license, don't reboot and don't use a Virtual Machine. Try a free trial of CrossOver to run your Windows software on Mac and Linux.

www.codeweavers.com

 

[jlc1978]

Thanks for this post. I just read about UTM - I am trying to run an older Windows app - Lotus Approach - and it open my databases but doesn't completely work on Windows 10 or 11 for ARM under Parallels. (Also same behavior running under Crossover 21.) But I was hoping that Parallels would eventually figure out a way for us to run older (read non-ARM) versions of Windows and supposedly from what I read UTM will do that - run Intel versions of Windows on an M1 Mac).

It will but much slower. Worth a try, especially since it is free.

I‘m very sure that the OP ran Windows 10 on ARM on UTM as well, since the emulated x86 versions will be a lot slower.

Yes. I have not tried the x86 emulation although raw speed is not as important as I am only running Office, Visio and PowerBI. If I could get it stable I'd give x86 Windows a try; as well as buy the app store version to support them.

The upside is as Apple's ARM chip gets better the speed of x86 emulation may increase to the point an ARM version is not needed.

Depending on how old the software is that you want to run, you could either try PCem (mostly for Win9x, I think I had problems installing Win2k) or CrossOver (which is basically an easier to use WINE):

I've always found Crossover to have odd bugs so never really became a fan of it.

 

[bobcomer]

Yes. I have not tried the x86 emulation although raw speed is not as important as I am only running Office, Visio and PowerBI. If I could get it stable I'd give x86 Windows a try; as well as buy the app store version to support them.

The upside is as Apple's ARM chip gets better the speed of x86 emulation may increase to the point an ARM version is not needed.

Slow doesn't really cover how slow it is on an M1 MBA (thermal issues) An MBP might be able to do better. One gotcha with UTM though, networking is pretty rudimentary, It uses a NAT/Port forwarding scheme that really isn't a full networking stack. If it works for what you want, great, if it doesn't, well...

Windows XP in the VM worked the best for me. I was hoping the M1X would speed it up enough, or someone would come out with a full x86 emulator product, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[jdb8167]

One gotcha with UTM though, networking is pretty rudimentary, It uses a NAT/Port forwarding scheme that really isn't a full networking stack.

Since UTM uses Qemu as its VM it could supply all the sophisticated networking available with Qemu. This includes the simple user version that UTM sets up right now to a sophisticated para-virtualized network driver that supports any networking supplied by the guest OS. The ability to change Qemu startup command lines seemed like a work in progress though when I tried it last. I don’t know if anyone is working on updating it.

 

[bobcomer]

Since UTM uses Qemu as its VM it could supply all the sophisticated networking available with Qemu. This includes the simple user version that UTM sets up right now to a sophisticated para-virtualized network driver that supports any networking supplied by the guest OS. The ability to change Qemu startup command lines seemed like a work in progress though when I tried it last. I don’t know if anyone is working on updating it.

So there's hope, good to hear!

 

[jlc1978]

TL; DR: UTM is a good alternative to Parallels for the casual user or one who wants to only run one or two programs with Windows and don't need all the polish, and price, of Parallels..

Got UTM to work. Turns out you need to convert the vhdx file before installing or else you risk it getting corrupted and not restarting after initial setup. Now it's working fine.

Speed seems decent:


Platform Architecture Single-core Score Multi-core Score
QEMU Virtual Machine virt-6.0 1000 MHz (8 cores) 1317 3207
QEMU Virtual Machine virt-6.0 1000 MHz (4 cores) 1230 2903
Parallels ARM Apple Silicon 1000 MHz (6 cores) 1489 5448
Parallels ARM Apple Silicon 1000 MHz (2 cores) 1355 2176

Cons:
High res doesn't fill the screen unless you enable remote access and go in via MS Remote desktop, then you get a full screen display. Remote desktop display has a bit of lag at times.
You have to shutdown and restart Windows each time, no sleep mode for fast restart.
Not as tightly integrated with MacOS as Parallels.

For the price of $10 or free it's a viable alternative.

 

[KingOfPain]

Slow doesn't really cover how slow it is on an M1 MBA (thermal issues)

Thermals might become an issue later on, but on my M1 MBA it takes Windows XP over 3 minutes to boot to the desktop in UTM! All the while the CPU doesn‘t really go above 50°C, so way below the throttling temperature. There is definitely something else going on.
Maybe it would be faster if the CPU were forced to a specific model without MMX, SSE, and all that jazz, but I doubt it would improve to a speed that I would call useable.

It‘s been over a decade that I ran Virtual PC on my G5 and I‘ve only used Windows 2000, not Windows XP, but even with nostalgia taken into account I‘m very sure that it was a lot faster.
Of course a PPC optimized dynarec by Eric Traut is more efficient than QEMU‘s TCG, but the x86 emulation feels exceptionally slow.

The upside is as Apple's ARM chip gets better the speed of x86 emulation may increase to the point an ARM version is not needed.

From what I‘ve seen so far, especially the speed comparison between CrossOver and Windows 10 on Parallels, I wouldn‘t hold my breath.
It isn‘t really viable to statically recompile an operating system, so unless you already have a native OS (like Windows on ARM) or an abstraction layer (like WINE) that lets you statically recompile the application, you will never get the full speed increase of Rosetta 2.
The reason why CrossOver isn‘t Apple Silicon native yet is so it can use the fallback dynamic recompilation of Rosetta 2. I somewhat doubt that it is going to get much better than that.

Got UTM to work. Turns out you need to convert the vhdx file before installing or else you risk it getting corrupted and not restarting after initial setup. Now it's working fine.
Speed seems decent:

I also converted the image it the native format when I tried Windows 10 with QEMU.
It makes sense that there isn‘t that much difference for CPU benchmarks between QEMU und Parallels, since both have to use Apple‘s hypervisor.

Sorry for somewhat derailing your thread, but I wanted to make clear that QEMU is too slow to use for PC emulation on the M1, in my opinion.
From my point of view the options for Windows emulation in increasing speed order are:
- QEMU x86 (one has to stress that Q stands for quick)
- DOSBox-X (Win9x only)
- PCem (I had problems with Win2k and WinXP but they should work in theory)
- CrossOver
- QEMU with Windows 10 on ARM
- Parallels with Windows 10 on ARM

I haven‘t tried it yet, but I assume that Bochs would be even slower than QEMU, since Bochs had been the slowest PC emulator when I tried it on previous platforms.

 

[bobcomer]

Windows 2000 is a lot lighter than Windows XP, but it wouldn't run in UTM for me, it always BSOD's on boot.

fwiw, changing the XP theme to classic helps a little.

My MBA went up to over 100C when running UTM. How many cores have you tried?

 

[thedocbwarren]

Windows 2000 is a lot lighter than Windows XP, but it wouldn't run in UTM for me, it always BSOD's on boot.

fwiw, changing the XP theme to classic helps a little.

My MBA went up to over 100C when running UTM. How many cores have you tried?

I have yet to find anything working with any real stability or quality with UTM. Great concept that works like rubbish.

 

[jlc1978]

From what I‘ve seen so far, especially the speed comparison between CrossOver and Windows 10 on Parallels, I wouldn‘t hold my breath.
It isn‘t really viable to statically recompile an operating system, so unless you already have a native OS (like Windows on ARM) or an abstraction layer (like WINE) that lets you statically recompile the application, you will never get the full speed increase of Rosetta 2.
The reason why CrossOver isn‘t Apple Silicon native yet is so it can use the fallback dynamic recompilation of Rosetta 2. I somewhat doubt that it is going to get much better than that.

Yea, I agree; I was think more along the lines of Apple Silicon getting enough of a performance boost so that it could recompile and run at the speed of a mid to lower level PC so apps like Office run fine but forget games.

As you say thought, the best solution is Windows on ARM.

Sorry for somewhat derailing your thread, but I wanted to make clear that QEMU is too slow to use for PC emulation on the M1, in my opinion.
From my point of view the options for Windows emulation in increasing speed order are:
- QEMU x86 (one has to stress that Q stands for quick)
- DOSBox-X (Win9x only)
- PCem (I had problems with Win2k and WinXP but they should work in theory)
- CrossOver
- QEMU with Windows 10 on ARM
- Parallels with Windows 10 on ARM

No worries. Wanting to run x86 Windows on an ARM MBA/MBP will be an exercise in futility.
What I really want is UTM on my iPad Pro with an M1 chip downloadable from the app store.