Poor 2D graphics performance in Parallels

I've been impressed with the raw CPU performance of the latest Parallels build in Windows XP, however, I've been completely unsatisfied with the 2D graphics performance, especially in Coherence. This is when compared with VMWare Fusion.

My relatively simple benchmarks in both VMWare and Parallels, as well as general observations show Parallels to be faster when using the CPU, but its 2D graphics performance is much slower. What do I mean by 2D graphics performance? Windows GUI redraws, scrolling in big documents, dragging Windows in Coherence.

Why am I complaining? Because I prefer Coherence to Unity due to it's better integration features, but the GUI performance is just so much better in VMWare. Secondly, 2D performance is such an important part of day to day use of an OS. Raw CPU power is great, but only when performing CPU intensive tasks like rendering. Because I do things like that on the Mac OS side, I really just need Parallels to be fast when I am switching views and windows in applications like Outlook. Right now, VMWare kills Parallels at this.

My question is, is there any way to improve the 2D graphics performance of Parallels? Will feature builds address this? The Parallels team seems to have tackled CPU performance, so I'd love for them to focus on this.

My benchmarks are below. Tests and observations were run on a 3.2Ghz Octo core Mac Pro with 2gb of RAM. Both VMs were configured with the same specs and run after a complete reboot. Latest builds (as of this writing) were used.

Parallels Benchmark
VMWare Fusion Benchmark

 

Hello Sirris101,

Our internal tests show that Parallels 2D graphics is competitive. However we keep on investigating as it is possible that some issues occur in Coherence mode.

Please note that benchmarking results depend on measurement settings. If you set the time for 60 seconds in PassMark you are supposed to get a different output.

Did you check Parallels graphics performance in Single / Full Window mode?

Best regards,
Xenos

 

Hi Xenos,

Thanks for your reply. I only tested in single window mode at 1600x1200 (in both VMWare and Parallels) using the latest versions of everything. My new computer, an Early 2008 Mac Pro, may be causing some problems due to potential incompatibilities. I'd be happy to help test or troubleshoot. One final note, the Mac Pro only has 2gb of RAM now (additional RAM is in the mail), so both VMs are constrained to 512mb of RAM and 16mb of video RAM.

Does your team see similar 2d graphics benchmarks to the ones I posed above?

Update:

I've re-done the 2d graphics in both VMs with a 60 second per test benchmark time. I had similar results to the shorter test:

Parallels: 155.1
VMWare: 449.5

Besides 2d, Parallels beats VMWare in just about every other test. Final note: This test was now performed with VMWare 1.1.1.

Thanks,
sirris101

 

Hello Sirris101,

Thank you for the information. As far as I know, VMware provides against official benchmarks. So we can not comment the data you have given here. I've already mentioned that benchmarking results depend on testing methods and PassMark is not the only indicator. Here you can see other tests results.

Best regards,
Xenos