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Parallels 16.5 Can Virtualize ARM Windows Natively on M1 Macs With Up to 30% Faster Performance

Chompineer said:
It should, provided that program is 64 bit, as IIRC windows 10 ARM won't run 32 bit software.
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It’s more complicated than that simple statement. Windows 10 on Arm is a 64-bit OS that translates x86 32-bit to Aarch64 to run Win32 software. Recent versions of Windows on Arm can also translate 64-bit AMD64/x86-64 Windows software to Aarch64. These all run on the M1 since it is translating to Aarch64 which the M1 supports.

What doesn’t work on the M1 is running native Arm 32-bit Windows 10 on Arm software. The M1 has no support for the Arm 32-bit instructions. There are many parts of Windows on Arm that are still native Arm 32-bit. Those applications won’t run.
 
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Mr. Dee said:
I wrote an article on Microsoft Community about how setup the Windows 10 ARM Insider Preview in the Parallels Desktop Preview on M1; the article got over 15k in views and Microsoft promptly deleted it. So, I suspect they don’t condone this.
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Yes, likely for several reasons:
  • The Insider Preview is intended for existing Windows on ARM devices for which Microsoft receives a license fee (or directly sells the device).
  • Microsoft hasn't yet made Windows on ARM available for retail sale. If they do, they will charge a fee for it.
  • One reason Microsoft might not have made Windows on ARM available for retail sale is that they haven't concluded whether it is worth it to support when the market is currently limited to Apple Silicon Macs.
  • Another reason is that perhaps Microsoft has concluded that Windows on ARM is not yet mature enough to support on Apple Silicon Macs. 64-bit x86 support is not yet official, and there are 32-bit Windows ARM apps in the Microsoft Store that will not run on an Apple Silicon Mac.
 
whiteonline said:
I don't get the appeal.
If you need to run virtualized Windows, it's most likely you have a x86 application dependability. Windows 10 ARM will only execute x86 apps from the Windows store.
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You can install apps directly. You don't need to download them from the Windows Store.
 
Niklas_nick said:
How’s gaming performance? Does it work reasonably or is there too much performance loss in virtualisation and windows for ARM x86 emulation?

That would be pretty much my only use case for windows on a Mac as I’ve recently rediscovered a classic (Anno 1404) and borrowed a friends old windows laptop for that.
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Some games work great and others not at all. I have been uploading some of the results to YouTube. Most of the recordings have been made over screen sharing to an iMac 2011 instead of recording direct as it was having an effect on frame rate.

I have looked at some relatively modern games Shenmue 3, Yakuza Kiwani 2 , We happy few and Prey and some older ones bioshock infinite, Wolfenstein old blood and Alan wake and others with more to come
There are others out there too doing the same thing but here are mine:
 
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Philip_S said:
AIUI the main problem is that the M1 doesn't have enough extra processing rings to layer up a full x86 VM inside its own user-mode processes.

Solidworks 2017 and 2019 works in VirtualBox, and even will run FEA and the photorealistic renderer, though it performs poorly for moderately large assemblies (even more so than on a similarly memory-limited native Windows machine). I did a bit of work in 2018 in VMware fusion, but only used it for simple part models: I think VMware might have been as much the problem as Solidworks.
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It runs in VirtualBox and VMware, but does not really work for its intended use. Not even enough for a student...
If you take the official requirements for running it native under Win10, the setup is already demanding enough.
 
lxmeta said:
It runs in VirtualBox and VMware, but does not really work for its intended use. Not even enough for a student...
If you take the official requirements for running it native under Win10, the setup is already demanding enough.
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It’s pretty slow and even moderately large assemblies are a pain, but it is a lot better than using Citrix. These days I’m at an Inventor shop anyway.
 
Robbo1 said:
Anyone try to run Quicken for Windows yet?
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I was running Quicken for Windows under Parallels for at least the past 10 years. Quicken for Mac had been under featured compared to the Windows version. I tried the current Mac version (6.1.1 is a universal app) a month ago and it works really well and does what I need. (Bill pay, reports, etc) Imported the Windows register / category / payee files with 10+ years history with few issues. No cost to try if you're on the Quicken subscription and switch you're happy I can now drop the Quicken Windows version, Windows 10 and Parallels and their yearly subscription) and be Apple Silicon ready whenever. FYI
 
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chucker23n1 said:
That should work, yes.
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I can't seem to get the installer to run for Visio. Did you get it to work? I get a vague error "Something went wrong" when trying to install Visio 2019 and Project 2019 on the latest Parallels running on a brand new Mac Pro M1 laptop. I was able to install Visual Studio 2019 and MS Office 365 including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc...
 
PharmlyDoc said:
Can Windows 10 ARM through Parallels on the M1 run Microsoft Visio 2019 edition?
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I'm not able to get the installer to run. All I get is a "Something went wrong" message after a few minutes loading the installer from a mounted CD ISO file. Did you get it to work?
 
talbott said:
I can't seem to get the installer to run for Visio. Did you get it to work? I get a vague error "Something went wrong" when trying to install Visio 2019 and Project 2019 on the latest Parallels running on a brand new Mac Pro M1 laptop. I was able to install Visual Studio 2019 and MS Office 365 including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc...
Click to expand...
Does the setup have an "Other options" link? Try explicitly picking 64-bit there.
 
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chucker23n1 said:
Does the setup have an "Other options" link? Try explicitly picking 64-bit there.
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I tried that and got a different error. Maybe because when I installed Office it installed the 32-bit version of MS Word and Excel. And you can’t mix and match 32 with 64 in the Office suite.
 
I just got a MBA M1 and thought I'd try to the Parallels 16.5 + Windows 10 on ARM Insiders Build. For those saying how well it performs, I'd love to know how you set it up. Runs like crap on my end. Slow and not useful for much. Locked at 1GHz. I've tried 2C/4GB, 4C/6GB, 6C/8GB, and messed with numerous other settings to try and get something resembling performance out of it. Maybe someday it will get there, but it isn't a deal breaker for me. A first step, but a long way to go.
 
ishraqiyun77 said:
I just got a MBA M1 and thought I'd try to the Parallels 16.5 + Windows 10 on ARM Insiders Build. For those saying how well it performs, I'd love to know how you set it up. Runs like crap on my end. Slow and not useful for much. Locked at 1GHz. I've tried 2C/4GB, 4C/6GB, 6C/8GB, and messed with numerous other settings to try and get something resembling performance out of it. Maybe someday it will get there, but it isn't a deal breaker for me. A first step, but a long way to go.
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How much RAM do you have?

The M1 has four performance cores, and you probably shouldn't allocate more than half of those to the VM. Same for the RAM. So if you have 8 GiB RAM, 2C/4GB is probably your best bet. If you have 16, you can try 2C/8GB.
 
macizcool said:
Can someone explain why it's impossible to emulate x86 on an M1 processor? VirtualPC was able to do it on a PowerPC processor.
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its not impossible. however it be significantly slower than virtualising. also it depents if scuh companies write emulation software. a M1 can definetly emulate x86. Rosetta2 translate x86 Instructions to ARM. thats a emulation
 
chucker23n1 said:
How much RAM do you have?

The M1 has four performance cores, and you probably shouldn't allocate more than half of those to the VM. Same for the RAM. So if you have 8 GiB RAM, 2C/4GB is probably your best bet. If you have 16, you can try 2C/8GB.
Click to expand...
I should have mentioned that: 16GB. Did give 2C/8GB a shot, but running into same issues with performance. Locked at 1 GHz and pretty terrible performance in general. Definitely doesn't appear to be a thermal throttling issue as this MBA is not even breaking a sweat.

I messed with the limited Power Options in Windows because I know settings in there can limit the bandwidth, but nothing in there. I suspect it is just with Windows 10 on ARM that will be resolved in time.

Unless no one else is running into this 1 GHz lock. I'd be curious to hear.
 
ishraqiyun77 said:
I should have mentioned that: 16GB. Did give 2C/8GB a shot, but running into same issues with performance. Locked at 1 GHz and pretty terrible performance in general. Definitely doesn't appear to be a thermal throttling issue as this MBA is not even breaking a sweat.

I messed with the limited Power Options in Windows because I know settings in there can limit the bandwidth, but nothing in there. I suspect it is just with Windows 10 on ARM that will be resolved in time.

Unless no one else is running into this 1 GHz lock. I'd be curious to hear.
Click to expand...

The 1 GHz thing may just be something Parallels tells Windows as the spec of the virtual CPU.

I don't have an M1 Mac, so I can't really comment on what performance is like.
 
JosephAW said:
Why not just run Windows ARM or Linux ARM natively on M1?
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There currently isn’t any way to do that. There is a development version of Linux that runs off a USB stick with no GUI but that is as close as you will get right now. The people working on Linux on Apple silicon are making good progress but they are a long way from a usable system. There is no one working on getting Windows working natively on Apple silicon that I’m aware of.
 
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