Memory allocation in Paralles7

Hi, im new to using Parallels. I have just setup a Win7 Parallels VM in Mac OS X 10.7. I am running some application in the Win7 VM that require 2GM of RAM minimum. Parallels recommends that you only use between 512mb and 1536mb of RAM for the VM.

Why is this and are there any adverse effects of increasing the RAM allocation in the Parallels VM? I was going to order extra RAM for the MAC bring it upto 8GB so I could assign 4GB to the parallels VM. I am wondering now will this cause issues running the VM

 

The amount of RAM the program recommends is based on the amount on your Mac. I have 8GB and currently give Windows 7 2 GB. The recommended range for my system is 512 MB to 4 GB.

 

As my machine is full of a 24 Go RAM set, and Parallels 7 still warn me about increasing memory from 4 Go too more for Win 7 x64, I'd like to know as far as it may be possible to increase the memory amount in Win 7 without risking a crash or whatever.(OS X Lion would still have 16 Go RAM left !).

Thanks.

 

Just out of curiosity what happens is you max out the memory in Parallels? I wonder if you just have more than they thought likely when they programed it.

I've run my slider up into the red area, far beyond the "recommended" range and it made my Mac VERY SLOW but no crash or anything disastrous. It took seconds to open preferences to set it back to something in the recommended range.

Ensure you have a good backup of whatever is on your Mac (and PC) just in case, then max the slider and see what happens. I don't think your Mac will suffer and I don't think the Windows will complain. I only have 8Gb and gave the emulation 7 or 7.5 and lived to tell about it.

 

I just left 8 Go to Win7, opening Outlook 2010 at start up + launching blender 2.59 (+running benchmark.blend), photoshop cs5.5, illustrator and after effects in OS X Lion : just as smouth as before, except in Win7 : a bit faster than before (I don't use swap as I prefer RAM than disk) and a better Win7 experience index.

 

Glad it worked for you. I think you just have more RAM than the person making the RAM slider anticipated.