Parallels versus Bootcamp in loaded i7 iMac...

Hi folks.

I've been using an iMac 24" C2D with 2.8GHz cpu and 4Gb ram for these past 2.5 years, through a couple of releases of Parallels, and I've found it barely able to cope with a Windows 7 installation although XP ran okay.

I'm fortunate enough that I'm about to get an iMac i7 27" with 8Gb ram, SSD and 1Tb discs and a second 27" display.

What I'd like to know is, before I shell out for Parallels 6, is this system going to be able to run Windows 7 64-bit properly and at a decent speed. I've found that the C2D iMac struggles, although it is possible to work with it. It takes a while after boot-up before it starts being even remotely responsive, despite trying a number of variations of memory allocation and so on. I ended up reverting to a BootCamp installation for that machine but I would prefer to have everything working properly in Parallels on this new machine if possible.

Could it have been a memory problem with the C2D iMac? I allocated 2Gb ram to Windows 7, then 2.5Gb, but it still wasn't running right. Any more memory allocated and I got the feeling that it was then starving OSX of memory. This shouldn't be a problem on the new machine - I could easily allocate 4Gb without really troubling OSX - but before I spend more money and time trying it out, I wanted to check with other users to see how they've fared with a modern i7 iMac and Parallels.

Also, will I be able to run with a spanning desktop across both 27" displays properly in Parallels 6? I'm going to be running Visual Studio 2010 and SQL Server for development purposes so the more screen space I have the better.

Thanks,

John

 

Anyone able to help?

 

Hello, I'm new to the Mac but I just did install W7 using Parallels on a new iMac running just 4GB total memory, with 2GB allocated to windows. So far no problems and it seems to run pretty well with no noticeable lag. I haven't done a whole lot with it though so it's a bit soon to tell how it will respond under heavy use.