System Requirements for Parallels Desktop 16
Supported Mac Configurations
- Stay up to date with changes to video memory allocation and improved OpenGL support. Launch even more applications and popular CAD programs without slowing down your Mac. Run SketchUp Pro, OriginLab, DIALux 8, DELFTship, CTvox, and more on your Mac with Parallels Desktop 14.
- I use Parallels on my 2014 15' MacBook Pro with 16GB. I only give the virtual machine 2 processors and 2GB of memory and dont have any issues. Mac memory pressure never goes out of the green range and Parallels processor usage meter never jumps above 30% with some pretty heavy Excel files. 16GB is more than enough.
Mar 14, 2011 I have to run Articulate on Windows - no mac version. My question - if I understand correctly, Parallels creates a virtual system within the Mac OS X, right. Therefore, both OS's need memory, right? That is why memory needs to be allocated? How much memory should I allocate and will this impact performance when I am using Mac software on the. Jun 18, 2006 I experimented with my 2GB MBP and found that setting memory in Parallels preferences to 1GB, and allocating 768 MB to Windows seemed to be about the performance sweet spot. If I wanted to run two VMs at the same time, I'd up the total allocation to about 1.2 GB and 512 MB for each VM.
Minimum To run most applications such as Microsoft Office, accounting, trading, SAP, Matlab, and more. | Best Performance For graphics-intensive applications, high loads, and running multiple virtual machines. | |
---|---|---|
Processor | Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, Core i9, Intel Core M or Xeon processor | Intel Core i5, Core i7, Core i9 or Xeon processor |
Memory | 4 GB of RAM | 16 GB of RAM or more |
Storage | 500 MB for Parallels Desktop application installation Additional disk space for the guest operating system (at least 16 GB is required for Windows 10) | SSD drive |
Graphics | Intel, AMD Radeon or NVIDIA | AMD Radeon Pro graphics card |
Operating System | macOS Big Sur 11.0 (when released) macOS Catalina 10.15.5 or newer macOS Mojave 10.14.6 or newer macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 or newer | macOS Big Sur 11.0 (when released) DirectX 11 requires at least macOS Mojave 10.14, but works best on macOS 10.15.5 Catalina or newer. |
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Internet connection is required for product activation, updates and select features. |
Guest Operating Systems
- Windows 10
- Windows 8.1
- Windows 8
- Windows Server 2019
- Windows Server 2016
- Windows Server 2012 R2
- Windows 7 (SP0-SP1)
- Windows Server 2008 R2 (SP0-SP2)
- Windows Vista Home, Business, Ultimate and Enterprise (SP0-SP2)
- Windows Server 2003 R2 (SP0-SP2)
- Windows XP (SP0-SP3)
- Windows 2000 Professional SP4
- Windows 2000 Server SP4
- Boot2Docker
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8,7 and 6
- CentOS Linux 8, 7, 6
- Fedora Linux 32, 31
- Ubuntu 20.04, 19.04, 18.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS
- Debian GNU/Linux 10, 9
- Suse Linux Enterprise 15
- OpenSUSE Linux 15.2, 15.1, 15
- Linux Mint 20, 19, 18
- Kali 2020.2, 2019, 2018
- Elementary OS 5
- Manjaro 18
- Mageia 7
- Gentoo Linux **
- Solaris 11, 10 **
- openBSD 6 **
- FreeBSD 12, 11 **
- openVZ 7
- eComStation 2, 1.2 **
- ReactOS 0.4 **
- Android OS *
- macOS Big Sur 11.0 (when released)
- macOS Catalina 10.15
- macOS Mojave 10.14.x
- macOS High Sierra 10.13.x
- macOS Sierra 10.12.x
- OS X El Capitan 10.11.x
- OS X Yosemite 10.10.x
- OS X Mavericks 10.9.x
- OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.x
- OS X Lion 10.7.x
- OS X Lion Server 10.7.x
- Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server 10.6.x
- Mac OS X Leopard Server 10.5.x
- and many more...
- * — Only the version downloaded with help of the Installation Assistant with Parallels Desktop.
** — Parallels Tools are not available for this operating system.
Parallels Mac Memory Allocation
Note: Parallels Desktop for Mac emulates PC hardware, so operating systems that are not present in this list can work as well. You can download the Parallels Desktop trial and install an operating system of your choice. If it doesn't work and you believe it should be supported, let us know at Parallels Forum.
Parallels Tools for Linux require X Window System version 1.15-1.20 and Linux Kernel version 2.6.29-5.1.
Parallels Tools for Linux require X Window System version 1.15-1.20 and Linux Kernel version 2.6.29-5.1.
Moving Your PC?
PC system requirements to move your PC to your Mac (using Parallels Transporter Agent):
Parallels For Mac Free Download
- 700 MHz (or higher) x86 or x64 processor (Intel or AMD)
- 256 MB of RAM
- 50 MB of available hard disk space for installation of Parallels Transporter Agent
- Ethernet or WiFi network adapter for migrating over network
- External USB drive for migrating via external disk
- Supported Windows: Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 *
- * — To migrate Windows Vista or older, Transporter Agent from Parallels Desktop 13 should be used. Download the Parallels Transporter Agent.
Parallels For Mac Memory Allocation Tool
Virtual machine’s capabilities are seemingly endless. Whether a Mac user needs Windows for gaming, Microsoft Office, or design programs – Parallels Desktop for Mac has you covered.
One important question remains: How do users know when to allocate specific resources to the virtual machine based on their needs?
It is a widely-discussed myth that a virtual machine needs ALL of the host machine’s resources in order to run effectively. This is simply not true.
In order to avoid mistakes with a virtual machine’s configuration, our team would like to shed some light on the matter by dispelling three common myths about virtual machine performance.