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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
Husky86
Contributor
Contributor

We have fixed #2 internally. All future product versions will have the fix. I cannot give you an ETA.

We also contacted Nuance and they acknowledged #1.

Thanks for this updated info! I look forward to the actual software update. Hope it's around the corner soon.

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matthewls
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Has anyone compared 3.1 and parallels 5 latest release?

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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

All benchmarks show that they're about the same. Hard to compare apples to apples, but it's close enough that it's not an issue.

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matthewls
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thanks. Could you forward a link or were these internal tests?

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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

They were reports from users in the beta forum.

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matthewls
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thanks.

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wfsommer
Contributor
Contributor

Read this thread while trying to see how to contact VM with a simple question. If I had known they charged you to tell you why their program doesn't work with a product I would have chosen Parallels. This is my first attempt to ask anything of them.

I was unable to see how to post a message on this group, or I would have commented in a new thread.

I have a USB AVer Media AVer TV Hybrid Volar Max connected to my VMware Fusion. 3.1. AVer TV Hybrid is a TV tuner the size of a Thumb Drive that converts the Cable Analog TV signal to USB input to allow me to see the TV channels on the computer.

I'm using XP on the VMware Fusion. 3.1, running it on my Mac with OS 10.6.3.

I know the AVer TV Hybrid is working OK - it works on a discrete XP PC. VMware Fusion shows that it is connected, but when I try to access it I get the message. "Can't find TV tuner cards."

I feel like I'm outside the door beating on it and VM just says, "Keep on upgrading". I am very unhappy about their service. Any suggestions?

Bill

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Entegy
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

When viewing the topic list, there's an "Actions" box on the right sidebar. You start a discussion (question) from there.

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wfsommer
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks, I didn't see a direct way, but I used the 'e-mail' and worked it that way.

Bill

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slehman805
Contributor
Contributor

Back on Topic,

I just upgraded to Fusion 3.1 from 2.7 running Windows 98. I have read a lot of negative comments on here but I am having a positive experience. This is not to say that others are not having problems with other operating systems or other programs, this is just my experience.

Before I upgraded I checked out the re-aligning the drive stuff and was a little worried about that. I was also worried at first when I restarted my VM so it could install the VMWare tools. It was suddenly very slow, went through the installation dialogs, but even after the dialogs disapeared it was still slow and I wasn't sure if it was still doing anything or if I could expect the new version to be unresponsive. I restarted and it performed just fine. Still, I held off on writing this till I used my VM (running Windows 98) for work. This is the only real reason I need to run windows (specifically Internet Explorer). I prefer to do everything else on my Mac.

The first thing I noticed is that I no longer have about three fatal errors before Windows will actually boot. For the rest of my work day Everything was faster and snappier. Clearly BETTER performance than what I was experiencing with 2.7. Granted I'm only using Internet Explorer and a few basic online tools such as Adobe Reader plus MS Office but these are the same things I used before and it is all better than before.

I was tempted, after reading this article and seeing Parallels Cross-Grade price to buy it as well. But after using VMWare 3.1 I feel no need to now. Besides, I originally switched from Parallels to Fusion because all Parallels ever gave me was problems and it always felt unfinished and not well thought out. And the test numbers referred to here are not all that different using Windows 98.

The bottom line: If you have something that requires lots of memory and taxes your system I would suggest not getting Fusion OR Parallels. Emulation is never going to be as fast as using the real hardware. Is it possible Parallels is running faster now then Fusion? Sure. In my case though Fusion 3.1 is doing what I need it to do and doing it well.

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Husky86
Contributor
Contributor

We have fixed #2 internally. All future product versions will have the fix. I cannot give you an ETA.

We also contacted Nuance and they acknowledged #1.

Any idea when this situation is going to be resolved through the release of an update…?

Any updated info on the update itself…?

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HPReg
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Any idea when this situation is going to be resolved through the release of an update…?

Sorry, as a company policy, engineers are not allowed to comment on release dates.

The bug has been fixed internally, and any future version (minor or major) of any VMware product will have the fix. In the meantime, your only 2 options are:

1) Run a 1-vCPU VM

or

2) Get an update from Nuance

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slehman805
Contributor
Contributor

I have been using VMWare Fusion since version 2.x.  Prior to that I was using Parallels.  This is an old thread now so my comments may not be interesting to some but I just thought I would share my latest experience between Parallels and Fusion.

A friend of mine recently purchased a new 13 inch MacBook Pro.  Although it is a personal computer, she is also planning on using it for work too.  Since we both work for the same company I knew exactly what she needed which includes the use of Internet Explorer under Windows thus she needed to be able to run Windows and run it quickly.  While you can do this with Boot Camp (and she still can) I have always preferred running Windows virtually so I still have access to the Mac side of things without having to re-boot.  Since she is unfamiliar with Macs, she turned to me to help her with the purchase and then setup of the computer.  Since I was starting from a blank slate I thought I would give Parallels another look.

One of the things I made sure she purchased with her new Mac was a SSD (Solid State Drive).  The performance of this drive far outweighs the cost when trying to run windows virtually.  I loaded up the Parallels trial version and i have to say it worked great for the limited time I used it.  I still find that the Parallels integration with the Mac OS is sloppy though and could be confusing to new user.

Once I tried out parallels, I tried a fresh install of VMWare Fusion and Windows 7.  I had already set up a Boot Camp partition which I had installed windows 7 under.  It didn't take long to set up Fusion using the Boot Camp volume and booting either virtually or directly from the partition gave me no problems.  The performance with Fusion, especially with the SSD was great. Streaming online videos was amazing.  I've always avoided streaming on the virtual side but with the fresh install of Fusion on the SSD it felt more like I was running things natively.  And not just streaming, any app I tried under Windows was working great.  Plus Fusion, as i mentioned before, I feel has much better integration with OSX than Parallels does.  It was hard to tell that any of the apps on the Windows side were running virtually except for the obvious interface differences.  Otherwise, they just felt like native OSX apps.

To make a long story short, I found no advantage to running Parallels rather than VMWare Fusion.  Both performed well but Fusion still wins me over with it's OSX integration.  I would also recommended for anyone, Fusion or not, to invest in a solid state drive.  Especially with virtualization, it is worth the extra expense.

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