Parallels vs Fusion - some Benchmarking

[Jon]

{edit:

as suggested the benchmark posting is not allowed - so I have removed it .. however I cannot see the issue with posting an informed opinion .. sooo:}

I found a nifty way to transfer a Parallels XP (SP2) Image to VMware's Fusion (Beta 3). use VMW's freeware Converter product (use the "live" image generation from within your running Parallels image).

In order to do the test I suggest you proceed to install SI Sandra Soft's benchmarking tool in each virtual machine and run the basic benchmarking. You should disable the debug code in Fusion. Seeing I can't post benchmarks I suggest you go and do your own tests. My opinion is below:

Parallels seemed the faster of the two, especially on the file intensive work, Fusion downloaded files a bit faster.

The whole benchmark thing might be a bit moot however if you're after a specific product for a specific reason (perhaps you love coherence or Fusions Direct X support). For the purposes of this test I had both virtual machine configured to be a close to each other as possible (so no 2nd cpu truend on is fusion for example, and obviously no Direct X tests).

 

[CountZero]

Thanks Jon. Your instruction is pretty much the same as the ones I found on VMware forum. I just have to make the time to do it

As for performance, my general impression (i.e. no hard benchmark figures) is that Fusion is just slightly slower but much more 'usable' than Parallels. Parallels is fast while working inside the VM but tends to beachball a second or two if I switch from the VM window to another OS X app. Whereas with Fusion there is no delay at all, ever. Of course, YMMV!

Would I switch to Fusion when it is released? Yes, because I can see the active participation of VMware engineers on their forum verses the almost non-existant one here at Parallels.

 

[hoju]

As I said before, I really don't want to hear about VMWare, etc. If I did, I would go to their site and forum(s).

Then why do you keep reading and responding to this thread?

Best way to not "hear" about VMware: don't click on the thread with "Fusion" in the title.

 

[dkp]

As I said before, I really don't want to hear about VMWare, etc. If I did, I would go to their site and forum(s).

Then why do you keep reading and responding to this thread?

Best way to not "hear" about VMware: don't click on the thread with "Fusion" in the title.

He's always been more interested in controlling what others say than controlling what he reads. Ignore him. However - remember we are all guests here and that it is good manners to respect the host's generosity.

 

[unused_user_name]

I want to chime in here on the no-benchmarking clause: I know why it is there.

Researchers (like where I work) like to compare their free, open sourced, and usually **VERY** buggy research implementations to commercial products to show that they are faster/better/smaller.

Companies dont like to look bad, so they force every to not benchmark because of course some research can come up with something faster... its just engineering.

As for hearing about it... I like to hear about alternatives. Let's hear about all the new features that Fusion has here so that Perallels does not need to look very hard in order to copy them

 

[websyndicate]

Im currently using Fusion and I like it loads faster and handles better when I'm in vb2005 express and it alot faster or should I snappier. I'm not looking for coherence or nothing like that or 3d support I just want something snappy and doesn't have a huge .mem file. Fusion so far is meeting my need. Parallels use to boot quickly but now 3188 so slow to boot when while it created that 1.5 gb .mem file at least.
Whatever meets your needs I would go with not what other people think.