Parallels on MacBook Pro 15in. - ideal settings

[insurroundsound]

Hello, I just picked up a new mid-2015 macbook pro 15" with 16gb ram, 512gb storage, and dedicated graphics card [upgraded to newest OS as well]. I want to install a new copy of Parallels on the machine with a new copy of windows 10 pro. I've never used Parallels before, as I've always used BootCamp in the past. Did a little research on the subject, and from what I can tell, I can pick how much memory [resources] to allow Parallels to use of my macbook pro.

I only plan on running 1 virtual machine ever [windows] and have no desire to be running multiple VMs. When using the windows side of things, I will not be doing any heavy-resource stuff on the mac side, like video editing, etc. Expect it to be document reading, web browsing, etc [I'm not a gamer, either]. I have to use windows for my audio video control system programming [Crestron], if there are any other Crestron programmers out there using Parallels and would like to chime in on their settings.

Based on what I've read so far, would the following settings be good for me?
-allocate 2 cores [VM 4] to parallels
-allocate 12gb ram to parallels

I figured this would leave me with 4gb ram for basic usage in the mac world while getting my programming done on the windows side....could i allocate 3 cores [VM 6] to the windows side? and just use 1 core on the mac side?...or would that result in sluggish performance on the mac side?

What would you consider to be the ideal settings for a parallels usage with a macbook pro 15" of my configuration? Are there other performance settings inside parallels [or mac] that I need to be aware of? Thanks in advance.

 

[insurroundsound]

well...looks like i found the answer to one of my questions....went to purchase the parallels license and just noticed that there's a 8gb ram memory max allocation for a VM....unless i purchase a business edition, but i don't need/use those services

 

[S.B.G]

well...looks like i found the answer to one of my questions....went to purchase the parallels license and just noticed that there's a 8gb ram memory max allocation for a VM....unless i purchase a business edition, but i don't need/use those services

Have you considered VMware Fusion 8? Its 30% off right now.

 

[insurroundsound]

darn...missed that...i picked up parallels already........i installed it utilizing 4 VM processors, 512MB graphics memory, and 8GB ram...my windows programs seem to be running pretty quick....

any other small optimization settings for parallels I may be missing, or maybe should be aware of?

 

[campyguy]

Gawd, you're only about 1/3 of the way there! For PD, my use is pretty much Office and Project; I have real PCs in my office for heavy lifting. I own Win 10 Pro 64-bit and run it in PD 11 Pro, and I don't game or use any resource hogs.

Generally, I find no difference between a 1-core or 2-core or 4-core set up or 3/4/6/8GB RAM set up or 512/1024MB VRAM set up. So, my use is 1-core, 4GB RAM, 1024MB VRAM. I run my VM in a Standard User Account that is set up for the VM, email, and Mac Office 2016.

The tweaks you need to make, if you haven't picked up on web comments, are to Win 10 - disable the privacy and peer traffic (http://arstechnica.com/information-...-much-privacy-by-default-heres-how-to-fix-it/) items you don't use.

If you're not on the 1511 build, you'll get that update eventually and then you'll need to re-review what peer services MS re-enabled.

Also, God Mode works in Win 10. Look it up then if you wish make that happen and tweak the settings that suit you.

 

[pseudoware]

Yeah man, that set up is overkill. For my 8GB MBP, 1-core, 2.5 GB RAM VM works fine. I dialed down from 4 GB RAM and haven't looked back. I'm running a typical W10 .NET dev environment in Parallels w/o issues.

 

[Gjwilly]

Parallels will ask you which version of Windows you're installing and it will setup the defaults for you. No real reason to mess with them.