Windows 10 on M1 Macs is INSANE with NEW Parallels 16.5!

Parallel 16 has been updated, with full support for apple’s m1 max, resulting in much better performance running the armed version of windows 10 as i’m gon na show you guys in this video with some benchmarks and gaming footage, and the best part is that it’s actually pretty Quick and simple to get it installed on your m1 mac. In fact, i actually think it’s, even quicker than installing bootcamp on intel base max so i’ve got to be honest. The future for apple silicon max is looking very bright now before i get into the improved performance of parallels 16.5 and windows 10. As you can see, right here got my mouse connected windows, 10 swipe i’m in mac. That’S amazing parallels is so good before we get into that. Let me first show you how to set the entire thing up step by step, so you can get it running on your m1 mac. First of all, you’ll need to download the latest version of parallels by going to their website and simply clicking download. Now they do offer a full 14 day free trial. So i would go with that option to try it out and it should start downloading automatically. Once finished open the dmg file within your downloads, folder and then double click on the icon. That pops up to begin then go through the next couple of prompts and once it’s finished, installing accept the license agreement and give parallels access to the folders that it needs to properly run it’s going to let you know that your mac has an m1 chip.

So click continue and at this point we’re going to need to get the windows vhdx file head to google and type in windows, insider program, click on the first result and then click on the register button. In order to do that, you’re gon na have to sign into your account so go ahead and do that now, when you’re logged in you’ll be sent to this page and as you can see, i’ve already registered. So instead you’ll see a register button and there are just a couple of prompts and agreements to go through and then it’ll. Let you know that you’ve joined head to google again and type in windows 10 on arm insider preview, then click the first result and then right here you’ll be able to download the vhdx file that we need, which is a pretty large 9.1 gigabytes once it’s finished. Just drag and drop it onto the center of the installation page and then click continue. I then chose the games only option since that’s what i’ll be using it for, and i also check the customize settings box as well before clicking create after a while. The settings will then pop up and, as you can see in the cpu and memory settings, the default is set to 4 cpu cores and 4 gigs of ram. Now, if you have the 16 gigabyte m1 mac model, which i definitely recommend getting, then you can set it to 8 gigabytes or even 12, if you’d like to and then once you’re finished with, that hit continue go through the rest of the prompts and then, after Just a bit, the installation will be complete at that point: you’ll need to either log in or create an account, then accept the agreements and then you’ll be completely finished.

At this point i went ahead and i downloaded steam and battle.net from the web to get ready to download some games. Now. I’Ve got to say that the main benefit of parallels is that you can easily swap between mac, os and windows by pressing command plus tab on your keyboard or swiping, with three fingers on your trackpad. You can also pause your virtual machine by switching to mac os. Then clicking on the parallels icon in the menu bar clicking on actions and then pause virtual machine. Now, when you swipe back to windows, you can see that it’s, paused and it’s not taking up any additional resources and then to unpause simply click on it and you’re ready to go. And then, if you ever want to shut it down completely just shut it down. Using the windows button in the bottom left corner, like you usually would on your pc and there you guys go. That was the full guide on how to install windows 10 on an m1 mac using parallels and now let’s get into the fun part. The benchmarks and the gaming tests, as you guys, can see, i have geekbench 5 open right here and you’ll notice that it says 6 processors, 6 cores that’s, because i actually went into the settings and i adjusted it and set it to six cores and six gigs Of ram and testing it out, it actually works pretty fine. So i went with that. So we’ve got all this right here.

It does not let you do the graphics test for some reason, because i guess it can’t detect it, because it’s integrated and unified, but let’s run the cpu benchmark. Now, while this is running, i do want to strongly recommend getting 16 gigs of ram. If you’re going to be running, parallels or playing games, you really want 16. all right. We have our score and this is absolutely insane. I cannot believe that the new version is running this well when they say native, they really mean native we’re, getting a single core score of 1541 and 56.82 for multicore. That is incredible, because this is an eight gig machine running through a virtual machine. Now look at this score and compare it to what you would get on mac os and the difference actually isn’t that big but here’s. The incredible part check out the score of the latest dell xps 13, with literally the best intel laptop chip that they have right. Now this virtual machine is beating the best intel laptop chip. I cannot believe that this is happening, but wait. It gets even better because that dell was running while plugged in check out what happens when you unplug it and run it on battery power. Yes, the performance goes way way down. It is just kind of hilarious and a little bit sad at this point that the m1 is running through a virtual machine and it’s killing the dell that’s natively running x86, so yeah, who knew that we would be getting performance like this only a few months after The m1 mac came out with a brand new cpu architecture, that’s just crazy and now let’s finally get into the gaming, and while we did have some success, we had a couple of failures.

I downloaded battle.net the launcher and i tried to play overwatch. I tried to play cold war, i tried to play warcraft 3 and none of them would even launch. So that is a massive bummer, because i really like those games, but it seems like that’s an issue with the battle.net launcher and there’s some kind of bug that just won’t let the games run so that really sucks. Now someone did suggest to download a couple of extra windows files, specifically the directx end user runtime. By going to this page and also the x64 version of visual c plus plus, but unfortunately, that didn’t help for those games either. In fact, most games that use an anti cheat system for online multiplayer will not work either so that really really sucks, but we do expect those systems to get updated to allow armbase chips sometime in the future, since cs go currently works perfectly fine on m1 max And that also has an anti cheat system, but thankfully a couple of games on steam did work, and here you go. You guys can see that we have final fantasy vii final fantasy 10 and grand theft, auto 5 all installed and they all work. So let’s start out with final fantasy because that’s very nostalgic and, as you know, it does not work on mac it’s not supported on mac os. So the only way to play it is to run it through windows 10 and it works so let’s play it.

Alright guys look at it it’s working nostalgic, so no glitches, no issues limit braver, let’s go over here in the corner. It looks like we’re locked to a nice, 15 fps, perfect, now, i’m. Pretty sure this game actually runs probably like something like i don’t know something like that. There you go he’s dead, look at that guys that was fun Music and now let’s get into final fantasy 10 right here. Watch this even more nostalgic music right here, nice all right, we’re here in the settings we got 1440 by 900 that’s the highest. I can go because it’s, probably like basic native, but everything else. I turn up as high as possible. So there you guys go 30. Fps, no glitching, no, nothing it’s, very interesting, because the last time that i did this, i tried to play this game and i was getting a lot of glitching for some reason, but now no issues great yeah. I got it there you go boom anyway. It seems like i haven’t played this in a while i’m about to lose, but yeah everything’s working perfectly fine. So now let’s go ahead and move on to grand theft. Auto 5.. Now i did initially have some issues running grand theft, auto 5, but i went online and i downloaded the rockstar social games club launcher separately and then, after that i was able to log in and get it to run properly. Everything’S working it’s, definitely not perfect.

It’S not the best fps. Unfortunately, the counter is not working but we’re getting playable performance. Now this is impressive, because, let me remind you, this is running through a virtual machine and then on top of that windows within that virtual machine is emulating x86, and on top of that, this is a base model with eight gigs of ram and it’s. Only giving six to the virtual machine – this is just insane and look at this it’s, not perfect, but graphics actually do look pretty good, but let me show you the settings. If i go over to the graphics, you can see that i’m playing at 1920×1200 resolution that’s higher than 1080p 60 hertz, and let me remind you, set your vsync to half that’s the best performance that i’m able to get by using that. Otherwise, you get a lot of glitchiness so make sure that is on. If you were to play this on a 13 inch intel macbook pro base model, it would probably do worse than this, because the intel, integrated graphics is horrible and the best part swipe you’re back on mac os thanks to parallels, it’s amazing dude. What are you doing? I’M sorry dude, i don’t mean to like sorry bro. What are you doing? Oh what but yeah there you guys go. That is how to get windows 10 running, probably with the best performance out of any other method, with the new parallel 16.5 update and looking at that geekbench performance that we got being better than the best intel laptop chip.

That is just incredible and i am so impressed and excited for more software to start supporting arm and m1 and apple silicon chips. The future is going to look amazing, especially when we get those m1x, macbook pros or potentially the imac next week, which i really really think is gon na happen. So yeah.