What should the video memory setting be??

I have a 15.4" macbook pro screen that 1440x900 in mac and was wondering what my video memory should be in the paralells preferences setting?

I also have 3GB of ram. I'm not not if me giving you the pc specs would help in determining the best video memory for my mac configurations.

What does this mean also?

thanks,


Dorian

 

Hello!

The recommended video memory size is 16 MB

Best regards,
John

 

Thank you I appreciate your help.

Dorian

 

Further Explanation / Details Please?

Hey, thanks, we can read the 16MB recommended on the control panel, but the real questions is why?

Why only 16MB? This is an awfully low amount of Video memory these days. Parallels brags about 3D performance, but nearly any 3D app or game will require way more than 16MB...

What will happen if we set it to 32MB? Higher? Crashes? The end of the world?

 

There is usually no need to set the video memory higher because the 3D acceleration that Parallels has does not use the video memory you allocate for the VM, it just allocates memory as needed. The video memory setting is just to allow for higher resolutions to be displayed.

 

The "virtual" graphics adaptor in Parallels is more like the sort of 2D-only "business graphics" adaptor you'd find built into the motherboard of a PC a few years ago.

16MB is more than adequate for such a system. You need enough RAM to hold a framebuffer for the VM's screen ( about 5MB for a 1440x900 MacBook) plus some space for caching bitmaps. If you're running coherence across two cinema displays then you may need to up it to 32MB...

As you say, 3D games need far more than that, but in Parallels, 3D acceleration is done by intercepting OpenGL or DirectX instructions and passing them on to your Mac's physical graphics adaptor. I assume this means that 3D apps can allocate VRAM from the real graphics adaptor (which might have 256MB+ of video memory on a higher-end Mac).