Enjoying Parallels 8, it does seem faster. One note, I had some games that slow down remarkably when I have Google Chrome and/or Adobe Shockwave/Flash (which is part of Chrome, I don't install Flash on my machine) are running in the background. I get significantly better performance while gaming in Windows if I quit these apps, or just force quit Adobe Shockwave/Flash when it's running, because what I really don't need while playing a game in Parallels is animated Flash banners blinking in a browser I am not even using. So my question is, has Parallels identified Google Chrome and/or Flash as things which slow down the Windows VM, and have you experimented with options for "freezing" these apps so they take no processor time unless they become the selected app, etc? It seems like including an option to lower the processor time of certain processes like Flash or Chrome might yield results. (Note about Google Chrome, I am a heavy user with 75+ tabs open at any time. Though Parallels has plenty of memory so that shouldn't really matter...)
I am also on PD8 and I found chrome unusable on some sites, say like "CNN.com". I just added "-disable-plugins" on my Chrome shortcut and I am finally able to scroll up and down on CNN. I've seen it so bad that Chrome would just black out on these pages. I am running on the new MacBook Pro (released June 2012) with 8GB memory (4GB System Memory and 256 video memory DirectX 9 for Win7).
I'm having a similar experience with some sites, though CNN is not one of them. And I have the same "black out" problem with some sites (i.e. caysa.org, update: this one does have flash). Any YouTube video is extremely choppy in Chrome browser, but just fine in IE and FF. I'm running Win7 in PD8 on my Mid 2010 MacBook Pro 17 with 8GB memory, allowing 4GB to the Win7 VM. I've tried setting 3D Acceleration from DirectX10(Experimental) to DirectX9. And I've turned off the "Enable Full Resolution", but that doesn't help.
I see the same with "caysa.org" too, just so everyone knows. I run Chrome with plugins disabled and it smooth on the scrolling. I did not wait around long enough to see if the screen will blackout.
