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Parallels 7 and 8GB ram...Windows 7 32-bit or 64-bit?

L

LonezWolf1991

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 2, 2009
28
0
Hey all,
I finally got parallels 7 and I wanted to install windows 7 on it. I usually gave the VM 2GB ram in the past, but now I have 8GBs so I can give windows a bit more. Can someone tell me their experiences with 32 or 64bit versions?
Thanks!
 
LonezWolf1991 said:
Hey all,
I finally got parallels 7 and I wanted to install windows 7 on it. I usually gave the VM 2GB ram in the past, but now I have 8GBs so I can give windows a bit more. Can someone tell me their experiences with 32 or 64bit versions?
Thanks!
Click to expand...

The bit is in relation to hard disk space, in lamen's terms; your RAM has nothing to do with it.

IIRC.

64 bit is the better option though.
 
Young Spade said:
The bit is in relation to hard disk space, in lamen's terms; your RAM has nothing to do with it.

IIRC.

64 bit is the better option though.
Click to expand...

Well I think it has. In case the OP will assign more than about 3.2GB RAM to the VM, Windows 32bit will not be able to utilize that. So that for more RAM than this, it is better to go with 64bit.
Better or not depends on what you are doing under Windows.
 
Under parallels, I will be doing some visual studio programming and OrCAD which is circuit simulation...and every now and then a light game like guildwars.
 
Honbe said:
Well I think it has. In case the OP will assign more than about 3.2GB RAM to the VM, Windows 32bit will not be able to utilize that. So that for more RAM than this, it is better to go with 64bit.
Better or not depends on what you are doing under Windows.
Click to expand...

Ah. Well I suggested the 64 bit regardless; that would serve his needs.
 
If you ever think you'll need more than 4g ram in your VM than you should use the 64b. But, if you think you are going to need more than 4g of ram you should use Bootcamp. Once you've got Windows installed and running there then you can use Parallels to access the bootcamp partition from inside Windows. Best of both worlds.
 
Young Spade said:
The bit is in relation to hard disk space, in lamen's terms; your RAM has nothing to do with it.

IIRC.

64 bit is the better option though.
Click to expand...

LOL

64bit is in relation to cpu and memory addresses, you need 64bits in order to address more than 4GB of ram, if he's not going to give the VM's more than 4GB then 32bit is good enough.
 
DustinT said:
If you ever think you'll need more than 4g ram in your VM than you should use the 64b. But, if you think you are going to need more than 4g of ram you should use Bootcamp. Once you've got Windows installed and running there then you can use Parallels to access the bootcamp partition from inside Windows. Best of both worlds.
Click to expand...

Originally I wanted to bootcamp windows, but I really like the idea of an expanding disk image that parallels uses, and it really helps since I have a SSD drive.
 
LonezWolf1991 said:
Originally I wanted to bootcamp windows, but I really like the idea of an expanding disk image that parallels uses, and it really helps since I have a SSD drive.
Click to expand...

I have a real partition on my drive in case I want to boot straight to windows and get closer to the metal, but I've also set up Parallels to use that partition as the source of its Virtual Machine. This set up works well for me in practice.
 
I'm actually curious as to how that works...I mean you have bootcamp drivers and parallels drivers installed, how does it not cause any issues with windows?
 
LonezWolf1991 said:
I'm actually curious as to how that works...I mean you have bootcamp drivers and parallels drivers installed, how does it not cause any issues with windows?
Click to expand...

Huh? Problems with what?

If you're questioning the relation to Parallels and bootcamp; when you use Parallels, it creates a virtual machine file that ranges from 15gbs (the lowest I've seen) to however high you want it to be.

When using the Bootcamp partition, instead of creating that virtual drive, it just uses the partition as a (gate) to the files. Kind of like wrapping the entire partition up in the virtual machine "skin" so it can read it.

It provides benefits such as dragging/dropping between the two among other things.
 
LonezWolf1991 said:
I'm actually curious as to how that works...I mean you have bootcamp drivers and parallels drivers installed, how does it not cause any issues with windows?
Click to expand...

Young Spade said:
Huh? Problems with what?

If you're questioning the relation to Parallels and bootcamp; when you use Parallels, it creates a virtual machine file that ranges from 15gbs (the lowest I've seen) to however high you want it to be.

When using the Bootcamp partition, instead of creating that virtual drive, it just uses the partition as a (gate) to the files. Kind of like wrapping the entire partition up in the virtual machine "skin" so it can read it.

It provides benefits such as dragging/dropping between the two among other things.
Click to expand...

Early versions (versions 1&2) of parallels messed up boot camp video drivers when sharing the boot camp partition. This caused games to perform slowly or fail to run. I assume newer versions don't have such issues.

When booting from the boot camp partition its more than a wrapper to use the already allocated disk space, parallels and fusion do some magic with the windows systems files to use the correct drivers regardless of which boot method you use. Also had application and windows activation issues on those early releases. Hopefully, those are resolved by now as well.

Cheers,
 
panzer06 said:
Early versions (versions 1&2) of parallels messed up boot camp video drivers when sharing the boot camp partition. This caused games to perform slowly or fail to run. I assume newer versions don't have such issues.

When booting from the boot camp partition its more than a wrapper to use the already allocated disk space, parallels and fusion do some magic with the windows systems files to use the correct drivers regardless of which boot method you use. Also had application and windows activation issues on those early releases. Hopefully, those are resolved by now as well.

Cheers,
Click to expand...

So essentially, when you're booting windows through bootcamp, it knows which drivers to load and the same case is for parallels when loading the bootcamp partition, correct?
 
LonezWolf1991 said:
So essentially, when you're booting windows through bootcamp, it knows which drivers to load and the same case is for parallels when loading the bootcamp partition, correct?
Click to expand...

That is my assumption, however, after the bad experiences early on, I haven't tried using the bootcamp partition in either program. I'm sure other users can chime in since there are plenty of people doing this with more current versions of these programs.

Cheers,
 
I installed Windows 7 64-bit under Bootcamp and have 8GB to run it. When I don't want to restart my computer, I just run it with Parallels with 4GB. It is running perfectly for me
 
Young Spade said:
The bit is in relation to hard disk space, in lamen's terms; your RAM has nothing to do with it.

IIRC.

64 bit is the better option though.
Click to expand...

Oh man, where do I even start with this one... Please, and this is a life lesson, learn it before you speak it. When you're sure you know it, confirm once again. Then by all means educate others.

Here's a quick overview:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit
 
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