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ehendrix
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Fusion 3.0.1 heavily beaten by Parallels 5 in performance

ok,

So Macworld did a new performance test between the 3 different virtualization solutions and Parallels did not just beat Fusion in almost every aspect of the performance, it overall did it on such a large scale that it's not even funny anymore. One would almost think that Fusion must still have a bunch of debug code turned on compared to Parallels yet we know this is not the case.

See: http://www.macworld.com/article/145878/2010/01/virtulapptesting.html?lsrc=rss_main

What is actually sad is that VirtualBox seems to be sometimes faster, sometimes on par with Fusion, but VirtualBox is the free option (does not have all the options of Fusion though).

So my question to the VMWare developers, what are the plans to bridge this gap in performance? It really seems to me that Parallels is doing something different compared to Fusion resulting in these enormous performance differences. Will this be addressed so that performance will come more to an equal status? Also interested in why VMWare, such a big player in the virtualization, is beaten so heavily in performance by Parallels? Is there something done differently making the Fusion solution better yet slower? Not from what I can see but maybe the developers have some comments on it?

One of my main reasons to continue to use Fusion is on the way snapshots work, but looking at these performance differences one does have to question if it is worth it.

Thanks.

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132 Replies
Kenneth868
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thanks for the information.

It is always good to let them know how their product behave and

more importantly how bad it is.

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noetus
Contributor
Contributor

... Unfortunately Parallels is much more intrusive and doesn't allow tight sandboxing like VMWare does. ...

Is this actually the case? In Parallels there is a configuration option for the VM:

Configuration > Options > Security > Isolate Mac from Windows: Do not share folders, profiles, volumes, and applications.

In what way does Fusion improve on this?

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jonsamson
Contributor
Contributor

And Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal, who is a big Mac user also had a article in today's paper::

http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20100210/parallels-fusion-windows-on-macs/

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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

Perhaps they've improved, but in the last release I tried, they dropped windows stuff all over the Mac - shortcuts, applications, etc, and after shabby treatment by their support folks (much worse than VMWare btw), and a statement from their product manager that "our customers want integration, and that's our strategy" (or thereabouts), I dumped it and haven't looked back.

And I hope that the option is really 'isolate windows from mac', which is what needs to be done.

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fwRoller
Contributor
Contributor

Let's all hope that these reviews and articles motivate VMware to follow through and significantly improve the performance of Fusion while keeping it very stable with support for a wide variety of client operating systems. We've been using VMware Workstation since version 1.0 and the same is true of VMware Fusion. There are many loyal customers like us but that loyalty only goes so far.

Please make performance as high a priority as stability, compatibility, and a robust feature set. If that means adding members to your team then do it and demonstrate full commitment to being the best all around virtualization product for Mac OS X.

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brainee28
Contributor
Contributor

I have also noticed the problems others have mentioned concerning performance with Fusion 3.0.1.

I understand that what I'm about to ask could take a lot of re-engineering work, but I feel that the problem lies with the product being tied to a host OS (using a Type 2 HyperVisor)

One of the great things about ESXi is the ability to run as a Type 1 HyperVisor; not needing to run on top of the host OS.

I think VMWare would score significant market share if they could change Fusion to become a Type 1 product. Obviously issues such as USB, peripherals and other low level stuff would have to be addressed, but I think this makes more sense from an evolutionary standpoint.

Citrix is currently working on XenClient, a Type 1 Client Hypervisor. Early previews of this product show fluid, seamless use of both operating systems on the same machine with no performance issues.

Admittedly, I'm not one of VMWare's developers, but I have seen how good a Type 1 HyperVisor works and I think VMWare would be remiss if they didn't explore doing that with Fusion.

My thoughts...

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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

Two points:

1) You pay a LOT more for ESX than for Fusion. It's probably cost prohibitive to make the change.

2) Apple's license agreement won't allow you to run OSX (client, not server) virtualized.

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rcardona2k
Immortal
Immortal

One of the great things about ESXi is the ability to run as a Type 1 HyperVisor; not needing to run on top of the host OS.

I think VMWare would score significant market share if they could change Fusion to become a Type 1 product. Obviously issues such as USB, peripherals and other low level stuff would have to be addressed, but I think this makes more sense from an evolutionary standpoint.

I don't think you're asking for ESX/ESXi but rather VMware CVP As noted before, the biggest hinderance will be Apple and/or if they support vPro. You would need any client hypervisor to run under Boot Camp and have tacit approval by Apple. Apple has been drifting from Intel tie-in initiatives like embedded graphics and other processor features like vPro. So this seem more unlikely than not.

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bytekeeper
Contributor
Contributor

Bumpy bump. I just feel we need to keep this thread alive to remind fusion team the customers

are still waiting for performance improvements. I mean, those of us who haven't switched to

parallels yet...

Heres yet another fresh benchmark:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/16/mac-virtualization-face-off-vmware-fusion-3-vs-parallels-deskt/

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jonsamson
Contributor
Contributor

I've just put Parrallels on my laptop and it handily beats VMWare. Unbelievable difference. Reminds me of the good old days when Fusion was fast.

Now debating whether to do the same on my iMac desktop.

Jonathan

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Mikero
Community Manager
Community Manager

Are you comparing an existing windows installation under Fusion with a fresh installation under Parallels?

What metrics are you using to measure this performance?

What about a fresly created VM under Fusion? How does that compare?

The test results that I see around, and stuff people mention anecdotaly doesn't match what our in-house testing results show, so I'm not sure where the disconnect is. I've seen the competition beat us in a few internal tests with pre-3.1 builds (I haven't tested 3.1 comparitively against //'s), but nothing would scream 'blown away' by any stretch.

We have heard these issues, mind you, and have made great strides in improving things. With the current Beta, our focus was on OpenGL and Graphics related performance issues, and I think we've made great progress there.

-
Michael Roy - Product Marketing Engineer: VCF
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jonsamson
Contributor
Contributor

It just so happened I wiped my iMac clean and my Macbook. Both are new installations with exact same programs installed on both. While comparision won't be exact, it isn't even close. And I prefer Fusion's interface but its performance is just plain bad.

Jonathan

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dicen
Contributor
Contributor

Not 'blown away'? Have you even looked at this? This is just 3DMark.

On the left Vmware, on the right Parallels. VMware is a black screen! And, it is still slow! I love playing games with a black screen, in blind fold mode.

Time to hire some Parallel's engineers VMware. But, from what I am hearing (in the valley and all over the Net) I don't think you are going to get any. Actually the brain drain is in reverse. Plus the graphics guys have NVidia, ATI (Cananda) and all the rest.

You suck, the first step is admitting you suck, the next step is changing your culture so you don't suck. Unfortunately the MBAs have taken over, time to leave. It isn't worth it (your youth, your life, or the stress on you or your family) to put up with the crap you have to right now. There are far too many other opertunities.

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GlennyG
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

What really sucks is a bunch of selfish gamers driving development of

what is ostensibly a business tool.

Performance can always be increased, but most definitely not at the

expense of reliability. One of the great attractions of VMWare over

Parallels is VMWare's vastly superior reliability (this was one of the

main reasons why I switched from Parallels).

Personally, I need performance improvements to allow me to run four or

more VMs concurrently (used for devloping and testing websites with

different Windows and IEs). Currently three is about the maximum.

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bytekeeper
Contributor
Contributor

oh, come on. selfish gamers. i'm using vm for development only and honestly fusion dropped the ball not just in 3d graphics. A relatively huge project consisting of thousands of files builds ages under fusion whereas its nearly 2x faster under parallels with same guest/config on same mac machine. And not, parallels' 5 reliability isn't worse than fusion's. its no longer a bunch of unstable crap it used to be prior 5.0. It still has its own unpleasant "features" (otherwise I wouldn't be here crying out loud for fusion performance fixes) but certainly its miles ahead of fusion performance wise.

I run both and still prefer fusion for light tasks but doing any serious development on fusion is just a pain. Disk I/O, shared folders and raw cpu performance suck badly vs parallels. The current project I'm working on builds in about 6min under parallels whereas it takes almost 11min under fusion. Thats 5min of saved time on a single build and providing I'm doing tens of those during the day ... well... thats 1-2 extra hours per day...

not even talking about shared folders performance. building same project off the shared folder takes almost half of the day vs 11min when built off internal vm's virtual disk...

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woodmeister
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

First, I am an electrical engineer that develops both embedded hardware and uP code

and also do FPGA design. Also, I am not a gamer!!! I use windows VM's because

most of the tools I use are only available for the windows platform.

Therefor, after hearing so much flap about Parallels, I decided to give it a

shot. Was hesitant as my first experience with them was a nightmare on a PC back

around version 2 which prompted me to move to Vmware Workstation and once

the Intel platform platform matured on the MAC I moved to Fusion. I had been very

happy with Fusion's performance up til Version 3 and Windows 7. For the most

part though I had found no real issues other than slower performance on various

aspects of the product. I also must state at this point that I am a Fusion advocate.

Well, my experience working with Parallels the last months as been a difference of night and

day.

First, I should note the platforms that I used. One is a Macbook4.1 with a 2.4GHz processor

and 4G RAM, the other, an IMAC9.1 with a 2.66GHz processor and 4G of RAM.

The the Windows7 VM used in Parallels was imported from the Fusion VM so both

windows installs were identical.

Some examples:

1. A free schematic capture and PCB layout program called PCB artist:

Fusion - Graphic redraws were so slow and jerky so as to render the schematic

capture portion of the program useless. Never got to layout.

Parallels - All actions in both the schematic capture and layout were very smooth

and fluid and made the package a joy to use.

2. USB performance

1. File copying to and from USB sticks

Again, Parallels was much faster in the respect.

2. Function of programmers

I have used the Cypress Miniprog3, Microchip PICkit2 and ICD3 and the download,

upload and debugging response times are noticeably faster using Parallels.

3. Linksystems DSO-8502 Oscilloscope had much smoother screen draw performance

with no occasional stalls with Parallels as was the case with Fusion.

3. LTspice from Linear Technology

When doing a transient analysis on a fairly complicated circuit with a long duration,

results were returned in nearly in half the time with Parallels. A note here is that

this was based on a setup where the waveform was being drawn as the simulation

progressed. In a case where the simulation was done first then the results plotted,

the calculation time was noticeably faster in Parallels but not by a huge amount

but drawing f the subsequent plot was a lot faster.

I could continue on with other examples but it seems to me Parallels has faster graphics,

performs faster with applications that require a lot of disk i/o, and the USB interface

performance seems much better.

As far as CPU intensive tasks, I coud say that I can notice some speed improvement

in Parallels but not enough to be significant.

Now, I am not advocating that everyone should drop Fusion, as a matter of fact I am a

strong supporter of the Fusion product. But the Fusion product has fallen behind Parallels

by a pretty significant amount and have a lot of catch up to do!

Hopefully, when 3.1 matures and is released as final, it will catch up. At which point,

I will return to using Fusion full time.

P.S. I haven't tried comparing any of my Linux machines as I just haven't had the time and

also, importing them always seems to be an adventure if they import at all.

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dicen
Contributor
Contributor

What really sucks is a bunch of selfish gamers driving development of

what is ostensibly a business tool.

</div>

You think the GPU is only used by games? This is from the 3.1 beta thread (no it doesn't fix these issues either).

Scrolling and selecting text with Aero enabled in VS2008 is really slow (it takes almost a second to select 15 lines of text). It's unusable slow. I have a Core i7 iMac 27" 8GB and ATI Radeon HD 4850. I have reserved 4GB for the VM. With Aero disabled scrolling is a lot better than my XP VM, so you guys made progress for Win7. I am not sure on what kind of Macs you guys test Windows 7, but graphics performance is horrible. If the experience on my Mac is as it should be, then VMWare 3 doesn't support Aero.

Yes, that is Visual Studio 2008 an ostensibly business tool. What really irks me here is that VMware markets this product as one that supports DirectX 9 and Aero. That is obviously an out right lie and now numerious sites on the net have called them on it. If it can't even render the graphics right it doesn't support it. If they were honest about it that would be one thing, but they are not. Very unethical.

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lugesm2
Contributor
Contributor

woodmeister . . .

You stated,

"The the Windows7 VM used in Parallels was imported from the Fusion VM so both

windows installs were identical."

Are you saying that one can simply copy the VM in Fusion and paste it into the proper folder in Parallels?

Or, is the "importing" a more complex process ?

Thanks.

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lugesm2
Contributor
Contributor

Another question:

Is there any conflict with installing Parallels 5 on the same Mac where Fusion 3 is already installed ?

I should note that I have been a LOYAL user of Fusion 1 since I first got my Mac, and I am VERY reluctant to change over.

Perhaps testing both Fusion 3.01 and Parallels 5 on the same machine would provide good comparison data.

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Species8472
Contributor
Contributor

AFAIK you can install Fusion as well as Parallels, but you can't run a Fusion VM side by side with a Parallels VM.

Am 17.03.2010 um 13:52 schrieb lugesm2:

,

A new message was posted in the thread "Fusion 3.0.1 heavily beaten by Parallels 5 in performance":

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1495757#1495757

Author : lugesm2

Profile : http://communities.vmware.com/people/lugesm2

Message:

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