Best Hardware for Parallels: Multi Core Vs. Clock Speed?

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Bill Hall

Member
Hello- I'm a longtime user of Parallels and I still find it to be the best VM for Mac. Keep up the good work.

Background: I do the usual office type stuff (I run very very large excel files with lots of VBA) on my Mac and my PC. I'm a road warrior so the 13" MacBook Pro is my standard. It has come time for me to upgrade my MBP and I'm going to go with a 2018 13" MBP.

Question: What is best for advanced office stuff on a MacBook Pro in both Windows Guest and Mac at the same time- High clock speed dual core i5, High Clock dual i7, or lower clock i5/i7 Quad core?

Thoughts? Thanks!
 
Hi Bill.
Quad-core processor will be more preferable in any way, even if we compare e.g. 3GHz dual-core with 2,5GHz quad-core. But in this very case from what I can see at the official Apple site all the latest MBP 13" are equipped with 2.3GHz CPUs, both 2-core and 4-core ones. Though I might be wrong as in different locations there can be different purchase options.
 
Hi Michael- Very helpful, thank you. I think you are correct re: base clock speeds. I completely forgot that the newer intel chips have a lower clock and higher max in order to be more batter efficient. Now, once we start getting into thermal clocking, this is very different and well beyond my initial question since I don't usually max the processor out using excel :D

Thx!
 
Bill Hall said:
Any thoughts on i7 vs i5 for parallels? Thx!
Click to expand...
Well, Parallels Desktop is compatible with both i5 and i7. i5 is quite enough for running Excel, but if we compare CPUs of the same generation, i7 will be better.
Again, 13" MBPs are running on i5 only. i7 is installed in 15" versions, but you said you need 13" version to work in travel.
 
Thanks Michael- The top of the line 13" gives an option for a quad core i7 for US$300. Its a big upgrade. In order to try and future proof myself, I'd probably opt for the i7 and 16GB of ram.

Thanks for the attention... Looking forward to Parallels 14 (when it available).
 
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