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There are a number of other improvements in Parallels Desktop 15. But if your Mac has a Thunderbolt 3 interface, Parallels tells us that it is actually possible to connect the Mac to anĮGPU – external GPU – so that your Windows virtual machine can use a more powerful graphics card to boost performance for Windows games and graphics software.
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Running any 3D graphics or games software in a virtual machine needs a fairly powerful graphics card, and there are still many Macs – including some quite expensive MacBook Pro models – that still rely on less powerful integrated graphics.
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However, you’ll need to be running Mojave or Catalina in order to get the full benefits of these graphics improvements. Parallels also says its support for Apple’s Metal graphics system improves performance for 3D graphics and games by around 15%. Previous versions of Parallels Desktop did support DirectX 9 and 10, but some important graphics software, such asĪutoDesk 3DS Max, will only run with DirectX 11, so you can now run AutoDesk and other apps on a Windows VM for the first time. You can even use an Apple Pencil with your Windows apps, and the Touch Bar option provided by Sidecar (found in System Preferences on your Mac) will allow you to switch the Pencil between pen, eraser and mouse modes, so you can use the Pencil like a mouse to control apps, or just as a stylus for drawing and sketching.īut if you’re really interested in graphics and design apps then the most important new feature in Parallels Desktop 15 is its support for 3D graphics in Windows using Microsoft DirectX 11.
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Update 1 will provide official support for new features in Catalina, such as Sidecar, which will allow you to move your Windows VM across on to the screen of an iPad so that the iPad acts as a separate display just for your Windows apps (we’ve tested this feature with the beta version of Catalina, and it was fine).
However, the subscription fee does include upgrades for all future versions of the software, as well as technical support for the whole year (the standard version only gets 30 days). There are also Pro and Business Editions available, although these both require an annual subscription of £79.99/$99.99, which has to be renewed every 12 months if you want to keep using the software.
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That requires a one-off payment of £69.99/$79.99 for a single-user licence, while existing users can upgrade to v15 for £39.99/$49.99. The standard version of Parallels Desktop is designed for home users or students who simply need to run Windows apps every now and then (and maybe even the occasional Windows game as well).
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VMWare Fusion, apparently skipping any major update this year, that gives the new Parallels Desktop 15 a good opportunity to reinforce its position as the leading virtualisation tool for Mac users who need to run Windows software.Īs always, Parallels Desktop is available in three different versions. And, rather than simply submerging Parallels Desktop within the labyrinthine depths of Corel’s own website, Parallels continues to maintain its own identity, and its own website at
After all, Corel hasn’t had a great record of supporting the Mac over the years – although its recent release of CorelDraw for the Mac after a gap of almost 20 years did at least suggest the company hadn’t forgotten about Mac users altogether. However, we’ll admit we were a bit worried when we heard that Parallels had been taken over by Corel at the end of last year. And if you’ve got a decent graphics card – or maybe an eGPU that can give your Mac a graphics boost – you can even run quite demanding graphics and design software that would normally only be available for Windows PCs.Ī regular cycle of annual updates – that generally coincide with updates to macOS itself – has allowed Parallels Desktop to rule the roost in the Mac virtualisation market in recent years.
Fortunately, modern multi-core processors can run routine apps such as the Windows versions of Microsoft Word or Excel using virtualisation with no trouble at all. The disadvantage of this approach is that you’re effectively running two operating systems on your Mac at the same time, so you need plenty of memory, disk space and – above all – processor power in order to run your virtual machines efficiently.