As per my question up at I'm a VMware Fusion user and am trying out Parallels since VMware has some quirks that are annoying on Mountain Lion on a retina MacBook Pro (16 GB RAM). I'm wondering about the baffling Parallels recommendation (when configuring a VM) that there is a maximum cap of 4 GB of RAM for a VM with Parallels (indeed, it recommends 1.5 GB for Windows 8). (See forum thread at Granting anything more would, in fact, slow down both the host and client, but I have no problem assigning 8 GB of RAM to a VM in Fusion; before really committing to Parallels, I'd like to know the rationale behind such a recommendation (and no, the Parallels forums don't shine satisfactory light on the subject, at least from what I've been able to dig up). If you're running in an x64 environment for both host and client then there shouldn't be any acceptable reason for needing to cap the RAM.
Parallels Settings For 16gb Ram Mac
I have a 2018 15' MacBook Pro with 16GB of Ram and a 4GB Radeon Pro 555X. And Parallels 14 with Windows 8.1 What settings would you suggest to get the best possible GPU performance for gaming & CAD? I don't know exactly why they make that recommendation, but that you say it would slow things down and that VMs usually aren't used in such a way that more than 1-2GB is necessary for Windows.
Parallels Settings For 16gb Ram Mac Mini
Apparently, Parallels support states 'because Windows is working in a virtual environment, that it only needs max 1-3 GB.' My development machine and environment is not a toy, so such an answer seems borderline patronizing and makes me think they're simply covering up for a significant Parallels limitation. I don't know exactly why they make that recommendation, but that you say it would slow things down and that VMs usually aren't used in such a way that more than 1-2GB is necessary for Windows Vista through Windows 8 and their server versions seem like rather convincing reasons. They might be covering up for something, but it's not like there's no other plausible explanation. EDIT: If I had to guess what they're covering up, assuming that they are, it might be that the 4GB limit is somehow related to 32 bit programming. I know that some other virtual machine programs have no such limitation, so this might be the issue.
As per my question up at I'm a VMware Fusion user and am trying out Parallels since VMware has some quirks that are annoying on Mountain Lion on a retina MacBook Pro (16 GB RAM). I'm wondering about the baffling Parallels recommendation (when configuring a VM) that there is a maximum cap of 4 GB of RAM for a VM with Parallels (indeed, it recommends 1.5 GB for Windows 8). (See forum thread at Granting anything more would, in fact, slow down both the host and client, but I have no problem assigning 8 GB of RAM to a VM in Fusion; before really committing to Parallels, I'd like to know the rationale behind such a recommendation (and no, the Parallels forums don't shine satisfactory light on the subject, at least from what I've been able to dig up). If you're running in an x64 environment for both host and client then there shouldn't be any acceptable reason for needing to cap the RAM.