Running win app via Parallels on Mac Pro

First of all, parallels sucks, use VirtualBox (FREE)

Second, you can allocate resources for your virtual machine. Your performance should depend on that more than anything else.

 

You are better off

getting the 2.66 single-quad config and then goto velocity micro and get the W3580 for less than 600 dollars.. You will pay close to 1500-2000 dollars more from the 2.66 to the 3.33.

My machine now has a 3.33 processor in it and its working great!! Why spend 2000 more when you can get the w3580 for a hell of a lot cheaper and do the upgrade yerself.

 

I run Parallels on a MBP with 4G RAM and it's entirely fine.

It does tend to want a lot of RAM, and to hold onto it, if I could upgrade my MBP to 8G RAM I would, but it's max'ed out.

Unless you're running a lot of Mac apps at the same time you're running Parallels, I'd tend to think 8G RAM would be fine.

Side note: like a lot of others, I run hot and cold wrt Parallels. Yeah, it works and generally works pretty well, but support isn't all that great and I don't like the high prices charged for upgrades, so I'm a major version behind already.