I've run it on MacBook - core duo. New ones use core 2 duo, so should render better. I have paralles, but find that I like running bootcamp better. Paralles is up to V3, so maybe it s better now. My issues with parallels were 1) only used 1 of core processors 2) did't recognize Firewire.
If you go with Bootcamp, then MacDrive is useful to get maximum disk availability. If parallels, then don't need MacDrive. DVDA4 didn't like having the burn files on the MAC partion and using MacDrive to access.