Poor performance in OS X when running Parallels

Hi everyone,

I'm new to the forum and I'm desperately looking for help. I've tried searching through the posts to see if I could find any hints as to how I can improve the performance of my MacBook Pro (1.83 GHz Core Duo) when running Parallels, but everything I've found to date has been to no avail.

I'm trying very hard to like Parallels and use it but frankly I'm constantly having to shut it down as the performacne in the OS X environment is so bad. I've set my memory as recommended and ensured that the cacheing is optimized for OS X but still no luck.

It seems to be the worst when I am running Office for Mac (2004) but most applications are also affected. It's disappointing as I don't have to use the Windows environment that much so I'd love to have it running in the background and access it on occasion when needed. Unfortunately, it almost completely shuts down everything else, so that I have to quit it and resort to either rebooting into Boot Camp or using Remote Desktop Connection.

Any tips or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

J

 

i notice some slowdown in osx when parallels is opening windows. i have max memory set to 1024 (half of the 2g installed):

parallels desktop > preferences > memory > manually [1024] mb​

and i have parallels allowing 768 megs of the 1024 to be used:

parallels desktop > edit > virtual machine... > memory > ram [768] mb​

i found that going with the parallels recommended maximum (in this case 924) is slower than kicking it back by 20% or so.

don

 

I have almost an identical setup:

1.83GHz CoreDuo, 2GB of ram, with a 15GB fixed side HDD for Windows.

My suggestions:

1024MB max for Parallels, 768 for windows.

If you have an expanding disk for XP it will slow down some.

I run windows/os x all day long along each other with this setup (basically on the slowest CoreDuo you can get too) with great performance in OS X and XP (I have Guest VM set to have higher disk caching priority as well.)

I do heavy development in both environments simeltaneously, while doing a lot of network related testing; basically putting a lot of load and processes/threads in both operating systems at the same time... usually while pushing an external monitor at the same time.

So, I would definitely say its in your setup.

You didn't mention how much RAM you have though.. 2GB is essential if you want good performance in both operating systems simeltaneously. It isn't that expensive... when I ordered my 2GB it was cheep (I got good ram too, mushkin.) for $190 shipped overnight

 

Thanks for the replies.

It looks like the major difference is the RAM. I've only got 1 GB. Never thought of that.

I'll talk to my IT rep to see about getting some more.

Thanks for the tips.

J

 

Just FYI, when running Parallels, one of the cores is now being used for the VM, and the other cores is being used by OSX ... which means that the performance is already been degraded A LOT in OSX . Also, you mentioned that the performance became really bad when running MS Word, which is running in Rosetta ... Running apps in Rosetta is already a heavy job for OSX when it's using all the cores ... and now you are only using 1 core to run it ... it's for sure that the performance is really bad ...
If you don't need to use the Windows side all the time, I think it's better to open it whenever you need it instead of leaving it open in the background.

 

All very true, but if he is able to get 2GB of RAM without much hassle, it is well worth the while.

I can run photoshop through rosetta with windows open (yes, not as fast as it should be.. but it is still highly usable.) When I first got my MBP, I had only 512MB of RAM, and running photoshop as the only app wasnt even usable.

For virtualization.. I still think that having 2GB of system memory is essential

 

His problem is RAM. If you go to 2 Gig, the performance problems will be gone. I run Photoshop in Rosetta, Office in Rosetta, and XP Pro primarily for MS Project and GotoMeeting all day long. I have all of these open (including Entourage and Camino) for about 3 months without shutting down or rebotting and everything is running fast and fine.

BTW, my experience says it is best to experiment with Windows VM memory as follows:
Start allocating 1G
Slowly lower memory setting (I did 128M increments) until you notice windows performance degrade for your workload.
In my particular case I was able to lower windows to 384M, leaving 1.75G for OSX.

Now both sides scream. More memory for Windows can produce slower performance in both windows and OSX depending on each persons particular workload.

 

Don't know how Mac handles it's memory allocation, but I run 3-4 windows VMs under VMware on Linux and my baseline real ram usage is around 400mb on a 2gb pc. It goes up by 10s of mbs when starting up apps just like it would in windoze. Rosetta is a well-known pile of dung. Don't know why anyone would use it while they had a windoze VM available. After all that's why Parallels exists. It's not an emulator, it's an efficient virtualizer that makes Rosetta a past generation solution.

 

Ease of use... I much prefer to use Photoshop on OS X, and if I can use it there, why waste the space in Windows? The same can be said for some other bloated suites of software... but I think we all hope that the next iteration is released in UB soon so this becomes a non-issue anymore.

Since I've gone "Mac" with my MBP I've been trying to pay attention to the system and how it functions... I've been noticing that it will allocate memory to applications pretty liberally. I think this is by choice. Lets say you have 2GB of ram, and you launch iTunes while there is 1.6GB of free memory. Why should OS X allocate only the minimum amount of memory to iTunes to start, if iTunes is capable of utilizing more pages faster, then why not give it some memory not in use to make it faster. As a result, if you monitor processes through Activity Monitor, you can see how quickly memory is "used up."

But the labeling of memory in OS X becomes confusing, because once memory has been allocated to something, it never seems to make it back to the "free" state, rather it becomes inactive. That is also not to say that the memory allocated to programs cannot be dynamically changes when new programs are launched and request memory allocation.

I've got mixed emotions about the liberal use of memory, but if utilized and managed properly; can you think of a reason why your RAM shouldnt be utilized when it is inactive, rather then starving an application of memory...

 

I hope you are using 10.4.8 because there was a big speedup with 10.4.8 for Rosetta
Rosetta is actually a pretty amazing piece of software that it works so well.

 

Hi everyone,

Thought I'd let you know that I installed another 1 GB or RAM and the differnece is night and day! Now it works as expected.

Thank you all for your help.

Now... I notice that when Parallels is running the CPU usage in the Activity Monitor in Mac OS Xis rading about 106% and the fan starts running like crazy. It doesn't seem to slow me down at all but it still does concern me to a certain degree.

I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the fact that my Parallels is using my Boot Camp partition but any thoghts are appreciated. I'm going to try and install the new beta 2 relelase and also go back to my original VM to see if the CPU usage is the same.

Thanks again.

J