If you've been watching the channel
since last year, you would know
that I've already made a couple
of videos on Parallels
and you would also know that I'm a pretty big fan of it
and I actually use it fairly frequently.
Now, if you're not familiar with what Parallels is,
it's essentially software what allows you
to run Windows 10 inside a virtual machine on your Mac.
And the cool thing about it is you can play games,
you can use Microsoft Office apps
and anything else that you would prefer to use
in a Windows operating system instead of macOS.
Now, if you do want to install it,
I actually have a how to video I made a few months ago.
So I'll link that down below.
Definitely check that out
if you want to install it and use it.
But getting straight to the point,
I got an email the other day
that Parallels is actually updated to 16.5.
So if you guys didn't already know,
version 16 was essentially a beta
and it's been in beta up until a few days ago.
By the way, if you're on version 16
and you want to go to version 16.5,
open up Parallels, click the little button here
and then go to Check for Updates
and that will allow you to install 16.5.
So what's actually new in 16.5?
Well, to be honest, not a whole lot.
You probably won't notice a huge difference
but I will talk about some differences
that I think are going to make a big difference to you.
So first of all, 16.5 now features full native support
for M1 Mac computers.
So that means it's developed, it's optimized,
it's entirely supported by Apple's ARM M1 chips,
which is really good to see.
And this is obviously going to allow applications
to run faster and more efficiently.
There are a couple of performance improvement
that Parallels has quoted,
such as less energy being used,
better DirectX 11 performance
and just better overall virtual machine performance,
up to about 30%.
And during my testing, I've actually been able
to pretty much replicate that result.
So before we actually get into Parallels,
as you can see here,
I've already got it loaded up,
let's come into the Parallels settings
and let's come to Configure
and as you can see here,
I'm only running four processors
and four gigabytes of RAM.
So this is generally what Parallels recommends,
using no more than about 50%
of the system resources to run the Parallels VM
or virtual machine.
Now, I have tested with six cores and six gigabytes
and eight cores and six gigabytes,
all different combinations,
which you guys can see in the previous videos.
But for the purpose of this video,
I'm going to leave it at four processors
and four gigabytes of memory.
Now, touching on memory,
I do recommend 16 gigabytes
if you're going to be running VMs
as you can see in this video linked
in the top right-hand corner.
So let's move into Parallels now
and we're actually going to open up the browser here
because I have some Geekbench scores.
So if you guys remember, in a previous video,
I got 1,518 for the single-core score
and 4,988 for the multi-core score.
So barely any difference to the single-core score,
which is to be expected
but we can see a somewhat noticeable increase
for the multi-core score
but again guys, we're only using four cores
for the testing,
so it's not going to be anything crazy.
Now, moving on to Cinebench,
the results were somewhat similar.
So in my previous videos on the beta version of Parallels,
I was able to get 511 for the single core
and then for the multi-core score, 1,833.
So you can see again, a somewhat significant increase there
but nothing too crazy.
Now, the one thing I do want to mention
and where I've seen the most improvement
is actually the number of games you can play.
So as you guys are probably already aware,
this isn't the full version of Windows,
this is actually another beta version.
So this is the beta version of Windows ARM.
So what this means
is you can't actually natively run x64 apps.
It has to be emulated within Windows.
So that means that some of these games
you can't natively play
but some of them will work
because Windows is actually able
to emulate an x64 environment for them
to actually load up and play.
So in a previous video,
you guys would have seen
that I tried to launch a whole bunch of games.
Most of them didn't work.
I am pleased to say now that some do work,
so some additional games do work.
Most notably, I've been able to place GTA V
and also Hitman: Absolution,
among a couple of others.
Now, you're not going to be playing them at 60 FPS
full 1080p settings.
At the end of the day,
this is a Mac but they still work fairly well.
What I'll do is I'll actually pop up some B-roll
on the screen right now
of me playing Hitman: Absolution.
So this game came out about 2015
and as you can see there,
it definitely is playable.
There are obviously quite a lot of dropped frames
and it's not super smooth
but what you guys have to understand
is this is a fanless-based model MacBook Air,
running an ARM version of macOS
inside a virtual machine,
only using 50% of the CPU in the RAM
and on top of that, Windows 10 x64
is actually emulating this particular game
to run in x64 mode.
So that is very, very incredible,
regardless of what kind of frame rates
or performance you're going to get on this game.
The fact that it's running at all
above like 10 FPS is pretty amazing.
So that's probably one of the biggest differences here
and guys, that's not so much an issue with Parallels.
That's going to be from Microsoft
because they don't necessarily seem
to be rushing the development
and updating of x64 emulation
in their Windows 10 ARM inside of previews.
Again, that's still very much a beta.
And a couple guys asked me if Valorant is working.
Unfortunately no, it's not.
I was able to install it,
I was able to install the launcher
but when I actually go to click play,
it just constantly asks me to restart the Mac.
And obviously, that doesn't work at all.
As you can see here, that's the error message.
But like I said previously, guys,
we're getting there very, very slowly.
Over time, you'll slowly see more and more games come out.
So I think in the next 12 months,
it's going to be pretty exciting
to see where Parallels and the ARM version
of Windows 10 ends up.
Anyway, that's it for me for this video.
If you have any questions or things you want me to test
in Parallels, let me know.
But apart from that, thanks for watching
and I will catch you in the next one.