A fairly basic question about Parallels I should think.
When Parallels is not running, do the settings defining the amount of RAM available to each operating system still have an effect? For example if I have 32G of RAM and I have allocated 16G to my Windows VM do I get all of my 32G of RAM when Parallels and therefore the virtual machine are not running?
Follow up question. What about if Parallels is running, but the VM itself is not?
When Parallels is not running, the RAM otherwise allocated to virtual machines is available to the host OS.
When Parallels is running but the virtual machine environment is not, the RAM is still avaiable to the host OS.
When you have multiple VMs set up and only one environment is booted and running, the RAM allocated to the other, non-running virtual machines is available to the host OS + the environment that is running.
If this were not so, I’d be in a bit of a jam, having a show-offy slew of operating system environment: FreeBSD 7.1, Windows 3.11, Windows 95, Windows NT Server 4, Windows 2000 Server, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows 10, Mac OS X 10.5 Server, OS X 10.6, OS X 10.7, OS X 10.8, OS X 10.9, OS X 10.10, and OS X 10.11 … the early builds of Windows don’t need a lot of RAM but the OS X and later builds of Windows sure do. And this is on a laptop with 16 gigs of real RAM to portion out.
Mac OS X uses virtual memory anyway, as does the OS running in Parallels (most likely, anyway). This means that just because you have RAM allocated in the VM, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s being used. It could still be free.
In the pre-Mac OS X days, we actually had to assign memory sizes to applications, and when those applications were launched, that memory was locked up and unavailable, even if it wasn’t being used.
Thanks. I just have to accept that my Mac doesn’t run XCOM 2 very well then and there is nothing I can do about it :(.
Are you trying to play in Parallels? :eek:
If you’re trying to play in Mac OS, then maybe you have less capable video card.
Yeah, if you are trying to play games with parallels, that’s a long road leading only to disappointment. Boot amp, on the other hand, will let you run Windows natively and will lead to a decent experience, depending on your video card.
No it’s playing in native OSX with Parallels closed. I didn’t bother checking the video card specs against requirements because XCOM ran perfectly fine on it and I didn’t think there was anything special happening graphically. It still works ok, I just have to lower the graphics a bit. XCOM is the type of game where graphics are secondary, IMO, anyway.