Parallels 6 vs 7 - Laptop Resource Usage Comparison

I upgraded from Parallels 6 (build 11094) to Parallels 7 (latest build 14922) on my MacBook Pro 13 (mid 2010). While the update occurred without installation problems, P 7 has much higher idle CPU resource usage which was reducing my projected battery life by about 15% even though the VM was paused. P 7 might have had slightly faster app start times, but the battery life reduction is not OK for my use. I also noticed unstable Guest VM memory usage and had printing font problems.

I reverted back to Parallels 6 after one day and all is OK again - when the VM is paused, there is very little CPU usage by any Parallels component and Parallels has near zero impact on battery life. The "off" load is important to me, since I leave Parallels enabled but Paused on my MacBook Pro all the time so I can quickly start a variety of Windows applications. None are graphics intensive.

To help others, and perhaps Parallels Development, here is what I observed on CPU and memory resource usage. My MacBook Pro 13 (mid 2010) has 2.4 GHz C2D CPU, 4 GB, Snow Leopard (10.6.8) and the Guest is Windows XP (768 MB allocated) running off a Boot Camp partition. The CPU % and memory values are from Activity Monitor. No other Mac user applications were running, just the long list of OS X background services.

I also recall early builds of P6 having a similar issue with high CPU and memory resource use that was ultimately fixed.

Parallels 6 11094 Resource Usage

XP active and running 1 office app
prl_vm_app process 6.0% CPU, 133 MB
Parallels Desktop 0.4%, 79 MB

XP Paused, no Windows app running
prl_vm_app process 0.3%, 133 MB
Parallels Desktop 0.0 mostly, 79 MB

Parallels 7 14922 Resource Usage

XP active and running 1 office app (same as P6)
prl_vm_app process 13%, 200-700 MB (varying w restarts and time)
Parallels Desktop 5.2%, _missing__

XP active and running 1 office app - turn OFF the USB Camera configuration option
prl_vm_app process 6%, 200-700 MB
Parallels Desktop 5 %, _missing _

XP Paused, no Windows app running
prl_vm_app process 0.3%
Parallels Desktop 5%

The other Parallels processes shown under Activity Monitor have very low resource use (prl_naptd, prl_disp_service). All the processes have some variation on the CPU %, these numbers are approximate.

Observations on my system and data
P7 Parallels Desktop is currently a continuous CPU resource load at 5% of a CPU, sufficient to reduce battery life by about 15% in my office app usage even when the VM is paused.

The USB Webcam option in P7 is a resource load adding another 6% of CPU on my system (when the guest is active). (Turn it off by default)

The XP VM memory usage grew dramatically under P7 but also varied. Something is definitely off.

After reverting back to P 6, I did the upgrade to the recently released P6 12106 build. No resource differences found with that build, still works great.

 

I'm having similar undesirable results on Lion with Parallels 7. My battery life plummeted from over 4 hours to 3 hours or less just by installing Parallels. I have the VM sleep when no app is open, and yet I'm having a quarter of my battery life stolen. As such, I had to uninstall Parallels 7 yesterday (no the latest patch didn't help the situation any) and revert back to Fusion 3 (which I am near convinced VMware broke deliberately as I had zero issues using it, Quicken only, before Fusion 4 came out and that blasted warning message started telling me that it wasn't designed for Lion). I'm disappointed there's no clear documentation on how to stop everything Parallels is doing when you want to have a VM paused.

 

Oh, and with Parallels installed but with a VM in sleep my MBPro (2010 model) runs the fan like a banshee. Uninstalled, running Fusion 3 with the VM actually running, no such nightmare.

On a positive note, yes, Parallels starts and runs the VM very well compared to Fusion. I just can't keep running it on my laptop this way sadly.

 

Thank you for advice

Thank you for this experience-driven info. I will stick with 6.0 for now.