Fusion pros and cons, and things to be adressed.

[Stefsun]

To sum up:

Pros:

1. Obviously using less resources, (OSX flies). Parallels can bring OSX to a crawl for seconds at a time.

2. It can suspend (from inside the VM) a Bootcamp VM, using 2% CPU. Parallels Pause function still uses 9-10%.

3. It can hibernate a Bootcamp VM, where as in Parallels every time you want to quit the program you need to shutdown Windows completely. ( I am talking about Bootcamp VMs)

4. Faster CPU, memory and IO, (at least in Bootcamp).

5. Does not corrupt Windows VM. (The last version of Parallels has a lot of problems with crashing Bootcamp for no apparent reason)

6. As a cocoa app, it keeps WindowServer memory to a minimum. (Parallels ups WindowServer memory to 170-300 MBs, cause they say it's a QT app and needs to present 60 open windows to windowserver, even with no VM loaded). I would really like an explanation from the VMware engineers that so kindly help us here, if that is true, that a QT app needs 300 MBs of WindowServer memory and what is the downside for the host system (OSX).

7. It starts and stops much faster than Parallels.

8. Much better USB2 support, with more special devices like WM phones and stuff.

9. Impressed with this forum, where I see Vmware engineers and programmers actively participating and helping, when in Parallels forums plain users try to help or fight each other, with Parallels people absent.

10. Extreme stability, didn't crash once. Parallels crashes at least once a day.

Cons:

1. In my case (Bootcamp-Core2Duo Macbook Pro, 2GB RAM, 10.4.9), 2 CPUs in the VM makes guest XP slower.

2. Slower 2D graphics. (40-50% of Parallels, depending on the action)

3. When in full screen, Command+H is not working. After hiding it through menu and bringing it back, it does not come completely in front unless you click on something on the Mac tray (clock let's say), or right click on it's dock icon. Very annoying. Also annoying is the warning that comes up every time I reopen Fusion and go full screen.

4. At work I use bridged networking. My ethernet is connected to the internal network, and my airport to my own personal ADSL fast line. In OSX I give the gateway to the Airport, and I use Ethernet to mount my servers on the desktop. My Windows VM is configured to use Ethernet so it can join and use the Domain and active directory. With Fusion that can not be the case. The moment I activate Airport with a gateway IP, Fusion decides that that is the primary interface and ignored ethernet. In Parallels I can choose in bridged mode if I want it connected to Airport or Ethernet.

5. At work and connected to the Domain, it never opens it the first time. (??). I double click, it produces an error message, and the second time it connects.

6. Drag and drop between guest and host is not working all the time, sometimes it produces an error message.

7. It doesn't use a seperate hardware profile in Bootcamp VM. Result is that in Device Manager is still a "Multiprocessor ACPI PC".

That's all for now guys, to sum up the goods and bads. I am sticking with you, especially after the rumours of the latest version of Parallels ruining Macbook's batteries, but please do something at least with the 2D speed.

Thanks

Message was edited by:

Stefsun

[Stefsun]

The vmx for Bootcamp is located in Users/Yourname/Home/Library/Application Support/Vmware/Virtual Machines/Bootcamp/%2Fdev%2Fdisk0/Bootcamp Partition/

You right click and "Show Package Contents" and it's right there

[slicedbread]

meh. found it, but it doesnt help.

with the guestos as winxppro, when I boot up fusion tells me the VM is config'ed for a 32bit OS, and I need to change it to 64.

But when I change the VMX file to winxppro-64, the VM wont boot because the scsi driver doesnt work with 64bit hosts.

[Stefsun]

Remove the line SCSI=True or something like that in the VMX

You don't need it anyway

[Stefsun]

Sorry, don't remove, just make it SCSI=false

[slicedbread]

thanks. got it booting, gonna install the drivers etc and then post back.

[slicedbread]

everything works except the network driver.

can't find the ethernet driver for the VM anyway, even installed VMware tools (full installation) twice. cant find it manually anywhere either...

[Stefsun]

Different drivers my friend

Open the VMX again, and add the line

ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"

and remove any line which starts like that if any, and let me know

I got that from my own 64-bit VM

It seems Fusion uses different emulated drivers for 64 and 32 bit

Message was edited by:

Stefsun

[slicedbread]

edit: managed to get it to work. what I did was remove the ethernet device in settings, and add it again. the line was added to the the vmx file automatically.

Message was edited by:

slicedbread

[aliasme]

The two tests I ran previously were both single CPU. I just had a chance to test Windows 64 with Dual CPUs. This is the same Quad Core Mac with 2GB. The Win64 disk is 18GB pre-allocated, 512MB ram, 1280 screen (same setup as the earlier tests).

\----

---

Windows XP 64, Dual CPU

\----

---

Test Name: This Computer

CPU - Integer Math: 618.0

CPU - Floating Point Math: 832.7

CPU - Find Prime Numbers: 541.6

CPU - SSE: 5068.1

CPU - Compression: 7212.6

CPU - Encryption: 37.8

CPU - Image Rotation: 2533.4

CPU - String Sorting: 3940.7

Graphics 2D - Lines: 29.5

Graphics 2D - Rectangles: 163.7

Graphics 2D - Shapes: 24.7

Graphics 2D - Fonts and Text: 181.4

Graphics 2D - GUI: 236.5

Memory - Allocate Small Block: 2593.9

Memory - Read Cached: 2311.1

Memory - Read Uncached: 2125.9

Memory - Write: 1697.1

Memory - Large RAM: 88.6

Disk - Sequential Read: 37.5

Disk - Sequential Write: 15.8

Disk - Random Seek + RW: 2.1

CD - Read: 16.6

CPU Mark: 1797.7

2D Graphics Mark: 424.6

Memory Mark: 651.8

Disk Mark: 200.5

CD Mark: 2030.7

PassMark Rating: 885.0

System information: This Computer

CPU Manufacturer: GenuineIntel

Number of CPU: 2

CPU Type: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU 5150 @ 2.66GHz

CPU1 Speed: 2661.1 MHz

CPU2 Speed: 2661.0 MHz

Cache size: Unknown

O/S: Windows XP Professional (WIN64)

Total RAM: 511.4 MB.

Available RAM: 305.2 MB.

Video settings: 1280x1024x32

Video driver:

DESCRIPTION: VMware SVGA II

MANUFACTURER: VMware SVGA II

BIOS: VMware SVGA II

DATE:

Drive Letter: C

Total Disk Space: 18.0 GBytes

Cluster Size: 4.0 KBytes

File system: NTFS

[slicedbread]

Got the XP x64 BC to load in Fusion, all drivers installed and working. One small niggle is that the ATI catalyst control center software that loads up in BC still tries to load in the fusion VM, coming up with an error everytime due to the fact the ATI drivers aren't loaded.

Also, the BC VM is slower than the pure x64 VM image I have - this one is still fastest at the mo.

[Bob_Zimmerman]

I would be extremely[/i] surprised if the disk performance were really that much better. A more likely cause of the higher benchmark results would be that the timing functions that this benchmark uses in that test may be virtualized such that they don't return accurate results. This is the big problem with taking benchmarks of systems running under hypervisors. Inaccuracy and drift of virtualized timing functions was even discussed as a method of detecting Blue Pill.

[aliasme]

Pat-

This morning I had to setup Visual Studio, XP, and Office on a new virtual machine in Parallels and the total time from start to finish for installing everything was substantially less in Parallels. The entire process of installing XP, Office, and Visual Studio into Parallels was fast, fluid, and I didn't encounter any freezes or glitches. When doing a scratch install in VMWare I often notice the installer freezes for up to 20 seconds before the payload is decompressed, and the overall process of installing XP, VS, Office, etc. took significantly more time. Small differences in disk speed become very apparent when installing 2GB MSDN libraries. There's probably not new information here, but another example of a non-benchmark (real world) outcome from small differences in system performance. I didn't have a stopwatch, but would guess the time difference in start to finish for installing XP, Office, and Visual Studio was an hour or so in favor of Parallels.

[Stefsun]

Let's hope the next beta will be faster, cause as is it's no competition to Parallels I am afraid, good support or not.