Fusion 3.0.1 heavily beaten by Parallels 5 in performance

[ehendrix]

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.

[matthewls]

After reading this thread I installed an eval version of Parallels 5. Though I'm a VMware fan (Fusion since 1.0) and don't have the problems others report here (3.01 runs fine and reliably, better than 2.x), it's obvious that parallels 5 is significantly faster and more refined than Fusion 3.0x. For example, horizontal mouse scrolling works in the VM, the default view mode is "coherence," which is unobtrusive, intuitive, and both faster and of higher quality than Fusion's Unity mode. I haven't given P5 the key tests (dictation using DNS 10.1), but for speed and "out of the box experience" it is quite good. I'm still rooting for Fusion, and don't intend on removing it, but I will keep exploring P5.

[Jay_Levitt]

I don't think the Fusion team did this on purpose. I think higher level management seriously miscacluated the resources that Fusion needed for 3.

They also lost a key developer, but have been too classy to mention it.

I'm seriously annoyed at Fusion 3's performance issues, especially compared to Parallels 5. But every time I've used Parallels, it's destabilized my system. IIRC, Parallels uses a different virtualization scheme that's faster but riskier, and it's a fundamental trade-off. I remember some VMWare developer posting an explanation of how Parallels hacks its way into the instruction set; that post got me to switch to Fusion in the first place.

I hope VMWare's new focus on performance will result in a faster Fusion.

[WoodyZ]

Never mind.

[GlennyG]

Given that hundreds of thousands of people have been gouged for an upgrade fee -- no doubt learned off of Parallels who are past masters at this practice -- there should be plenty of money available for VMWare to put the resources into fixing things.

Speed wise, VMWare 3 is OK as far as I'm concerned. Not brilliant, but then again I only need it for web development and testing websites against different OS/browser combinations.

What I really dislike is the unreliability of the display driver; maximising the screen often doesn't return control to the VM, so I have to flick to another window and go back or restore & maximise. Then there's the lack of roller-mouse support; erm, hasn't Apple been flogging the Mighty Mouse for 5 years now? And that damn useless VM browser toy thingie which touches all the VMs so you don't know when they were last used -- I'd expect that from Microsoft but not a tool manufacturer. Why does a VM have to start when it's opened? -- that's just so annoying.

But worst of all, I resent being forced to upgrade to have a VM that worked with Snow Leopard. There was no other reason to upgrade. So, Apple scored $30 for Snow Leopard and VMWare got $40.

[Kenneth868]

Good to know VMware is fixing Fusion 3 issues but as a loyal costumer I cannot

content with product quality. I think it is reasonable users to expect same product

quality (if not better) for newer upgrade.

Anyway, hope VMware can fix the product before costumers loose all faith.

[HPReg]

They also lost a key developer, but have been too classy to mention it.

Vinay Venkatesh, rest in peace.

[solgae]

Upon reading the macworld article and this thread, I decided to try out Parallels 5. After a little bit of tweaking (e.g. reintsall Processor device, switch hard disk to SCSI since Parallel importer puts it as IDE) and disabling all the extraneous stuff (e.g. application syncing) that I don't use in Fusion anyways, I was immediately able to notice that Parallels has a more smoother experience than what I experienced on Fusion 3.0.1. For one thing, the difference in windows 7 aero performance on my ancient Core Duo Macbook Pro (Core Duo 2.16GHz, 2GB RAM, ATI x1600) was night and day between Fusion and Parallels - Parallels was just much more smoother, to the point I could just enable aero and forget about it. Also, Fusion display driver (latest VMware tools) seems to have a bug where some applications that plays back video comes out as black and white - Parallels does not have such problems. Last but not least, gaming on Parallels just worked much better than on Fusion.

I liked Fusion better for its reliability since 1.0, but this revelation concerns me. On the other hand, I was quite pleased to see how Parallels has improved a lot since version 2. Hopefully Fusion team would address these problems. Otherwise, I've thrown down $40 for a sub-standard product.

[tomkeator]

To all, I can appreciate all the issues with VMware 3.0.1 and that we've been able to voice our concerns, problems and in some cases anger. This being said, I have never considered that I have wasted the money spent to upgrade to 3.0 and even purchase Parallels 5 as I believe most folks on this trail are not just average users but adventurers also. Money is money, not to be wasted, but I see the money spent, on both programs, as an entertainment cost that is fully justified. The purpose of these discussions should not be anger but should be proactive to VMware even if we're using Parallels which, today, is far superior, especially for Windows 7 that I use for business purposes.

In closing let's assume VMware, as they've stated, is fully aware of the issues, not happy with them and will come out with a better release. My question to VMware, so all of us can focus on something positive being done to correct the issues, is when approximately can we expect to see a better release?

[AbortRetryFail]

I appreciate your candor. I hope that you get the organizational support to turn those hopes into reality.

I find it interesting that several technically-skilled and loyal Fusion users on this thread have found Parallels 5 to be faster than Fusion 3.0.1.

I switched from Parallels to Fusion 1 for the latter's performance and stability. I really don't want to go back to Parallels, with its dodgy support and upgrade practices. I was one of those satisfied Fusion 1.1.3 users who was forced to upgrade to 2.0.6 after Snow Leopard was released. I was very disappointed by the reduced performance of 2.0.6 running WinXP, as well as the forced requirement to completely rebuild my WinXP image from scratch. Once burned, twice shy, so I decided to wait to see the general community's reaction to the next few "upgrades."

I'm saddened by all of the complaints about 3.0 and 3.0.1 on this forum. I like shiny new releases as much as the next guy, but I'm glad that I stayed on 2.0.6 (and would have stayed on 1.1.3 if it were Snow Leopard-compatible). I really hope that the Fusion team recognizes that emulating Microsoft's business model -- replacing performance with glossy and superfluous features -- is a sure way to lose the confidence of your early adopters, core users, and advocates.

Fusion 2 and 3 were both disappointments. I really hope that you and the Fusion team get your mojo back with Fusion 4.

[matthewls]

Though I still have more testing to do, I can now report that DNS 10.1 works well in parallels 5. So far, VMs in P5 are much faster than F3 in every way. Startup, shutdown, running, sleeping, resuming, all of it, and so much faster that no benchmarking is needed--it's blatantly obvious.

P5 also has a convenient feature WRT transient disks--it provides a setting so that during VM shutdown an option appears to save or discard VD changes. Quite nice.

I like VMware and have followed their work since it was a private company back in the late 90s. The performance lag with parallels is newat least in magnitudeand before was outweighed by the more reliable VM function. P5 seems to have made up ground there too, though I haven't fully tested that.

Like the others writing in this thread, I'm still rooting for Fusion 3.1 to close the gap, but may well switch to a P5 workhouse for now.

MS

[BHWilson]

I must agree. I am a novice user, and this is my first mac (Macbook Pro, early 2009). I tried the free VMBox by Sun and bought VMWare and upgraded to version 3 after Snow Leapord came out, assuming, foolishly, that "you get what you pay for." I was wrong.

Vista was impossibly slow on VMWare fusion (uselessly slow). I had to roll back to XP. I have 4 Gigs of memory and the dual graphics cards, so I don't think memory is an issue.

When Win 7.0 came out, I had hoped that since it in general is faster on boot camp than Vista was, that I would see a corresponding improvement on 3.0. Wrong again.

While I am not a bench mark tester and can't prove it, it seems that Win 7 boots faster on the free VBox than on the relatively expenseive VMFusion. I teach an online college course and find that VMWare is nearly useless for preparing a video podcasts. That has to be done in bootcamp.

Can anyone in this forum recommend a REAL virtualization solution? Is parallels the only other option other than VBox? I don't mind paying a little extra for something that works.

I do like the feature of being able to import bootcamp; I assume the others have that option; but not sure that alone is worth sticking with a sluggish product. .

[solgae]

Unfortunately, not all is well and good with Parallels 5 - for one thing, I still find Parallels to be more intrusive than VMware is, and has its own share of problems. For starters, Parallels 5 changes your UAC settings on Windows 7 to be one lower than the default without my knowledge. Also, the control key becomes extremely unresponsive unless I disable virtual machine shortcut keys feature. And I don't need to mention how Parallels enable all these extraneous features that messes up my OS X, as well as all those "***_auto_file" associations in Windows that gets created and completely mess up my file association settings.

Having said that, I am willing to deal with those issues for the performance advantage.

[BHWilson]

Thanks. I downloaded a trial version of Parallels 5 and it is noticeably faster and seems to tax the processor less, although it took a LONG TIME, to install.

I notice previously (as did others) that both vista and Win 7.0 cause the MacBook Pro to run hot using Fusion 3.0. I think there is about a 10 degree temp difference on my machine than with Parallels 5.0.

Parallels gives an upgrade price to existing Fusion users. I am not knocking fusion here, just looking for the best product. Windows is slow to begin with -- dont need it any slower.

Neither product (Fusion or Parallels), particularly at an upgrade price is burdensomely expensive. And I am willing to come back to fusion if and when they get it together. I am willing to pay a little to upgrade to whichever is noticeably better than the other. Or even to pay full price is the quality justifies.

In this case, it appears so. I will decide when the trial is up. I'll keep Fusion and see what happens at the next upgrade but probably will cease using it.

[gilroykilroy]

I use VW 2.0.6 mostly for Ubuntu 8.10 (developing embedded linux SW) and some minor Windows XP (to install SW via USB to hardware.) I stayed away from the 3.x upgrade after reading all these "issues" people were having. I did look at the P5 support forums a while back and saw they had some issues with Ubuntu so I didn't give them a try.

Does anyone know for sure if P5's Ubuntu 8.10 support is better/faster than 2.0.6? I would like to stay with VMWare but if I can speed up my compiles in P5 then I am willing to give it a try since, as they say, time is money.

[diehardboss]

Please VMware Fusion team, we need it now listed below:

1. Better quality and performance (in operating systems and in OpenGL/DirectX, e.g. Modern Warfare 2).

2. Better quality and performance (in operating systems and in OpenGL/DirectX, e.g. Modern Warfare 2), again!

3. Fix port forwarding for NAT network using "nat.conf" file, I can't edit the "nat.conf" file without hacking the "boot.sh" file to stop restoring it.

4. Allow horizontal scrolling with MacBook touchpad.

For your information, we don't need new features right now.

Thank you!

[lugesm2]

Another reference worth noting:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/02/09/parallels_takes_virtualization_speed_crown_in_head_to_...

The above article provides a performance matrix for Win7 and WinXP under Parallels 5.

[rcardona2k]

We all have RSS, there's no need to do any bidding for Parallel's politburo.

[lugesm2]

No need to get testy.

1. I am not associated with the Parallels operation and have no financial interests in the company.

2. Just thought this might be a useful datapoint.

3. No, I would not know what RSS you might have running.

Best Regards,

[ColoradoMarmot]

That's a pretty damming article. Unfortunately Parallels is much more intrusive and doesn't allow tight sandboxing like VMWare does. But yep, VMWare needs to make V4 a focused performance (not feature) upgrade. And soon.

[GlennyG]

And, most importantly, a free upgrade.