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MacTech benchmarks Parallels and VMware Fusion

by Mike Schramm Nov 2nd 2011 at 1:15PM

The 2011 MacTech Conference starts up here in Los Angeles today, and TUAW will have reports and interviews live from the conference all week. Before things begin, however, MacTech has been busy benchmarking (as usual). Its latest benchmarking showdown features virtualization software options Parallels and VMWare Fusion. Both apps were tested under Windows 7 and, as with previous tests, Parallels stacked up quite well. Of the top tests, says MacTech, Parallels won 60% by a factor of 10% or more, and Parallels Desktop 7 beat VMWare Fusion in nearly 75% of the tests run.

VMWare was faster in a few different places, as you can see on the full worksheet on MacTech's site. The software ran quicker during some of the virtual machine functions, like starting up or shutting down the virtual Windows machine running inside OS X. But on nearly all other points, Parallels topped the speed charts, including the 3D tests and tests of most commonly used apps on the system.

The report concludes by saying that virtualization software is better than ever -- if you've ever needed to run Windows 7 (or even a virtual OS X installation) inside of your Mac operating system, Parallels will help you do it well. As usual, MacTech's report is extensive and conclusive. Stay tuned all week long for more from the conference.



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The 2011 MacTech Conference starts up here in Los Angeles today, and TUAW will have reports and interviews live from the conference...
 

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numpty

What about VirtualBox? Free and open source gets my vote.

November 03 2011 at 4:19 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
hkoster1

The Parallels virtual Xorg driver (PRLVIDEO) is limited to a PixClock of 255 MHz. This doesn't allow a suitable ModeLine for a screen with 2560x1440 resolution at 60 Hz. So, people wishing to run Linux or one of the BSDs in a Parallels VM on their 27-inch iMac are scr*wed. The similar driver in VMware Fusion has the PixClock maxing out at 450 MHz, so no problem there...

November 02 2011 at 4:15 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
bd__sd

What about versus Bootcamp?

November 02 2011 at 3:09 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
alderud

Having run both products in business, I have to recommend people to stay away from Parallels for business use. VMware has always worked seamlessly. Parallels on the other hand has been unstable, leading to crashes, corrupts files and sometimes simply refuses to interact with Mac OS X. Parallels also has a tendency to require paid upgrades far to often, a case of features over fixes. Not what I like, nor recommend you to spend money on...

November 02 2011 at 2:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to alderud's comment
tclnj

This is FAR different from my experiences having used both since their 1.0 versions. Parallels has proven itself faster, more stable, and more interoperable. In fact, I recently got rid of the last two Fusion installations in the office because the performance difference was more than significant enough to trash Fusion and buy new copies of Parallels. Guess my experience isn't universal?

November 02 2011 at 8:19 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to tclnj's comment
alderud

Well, I should add that my, and my coworkers, experience is limited to four companies, totaling 10 workstations and is limited to versions 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 of Parallels Desktop and versions 2, 3 and 4 of VMware Fusion.
So far though the experience is unanimous. When it works, Parallels if generally faster, but unfortunately it it does not work well enough and people end up angry because of lost work and the fact that Parallels never fixes bugs but instead releases new versions with new features.
Actually, I looked around the Internet, and it seems I am not alone in this regard.

However, I am glad that someone finds Parallels Desktop a good enough product to pay for it. That will keep VMware on their toes so that Fusion will keep improving. :-)

November 03 2011 at 2:50 AM Report abuse rate up rate down
Bob Maccione

I have used Parallels, VMware and VirtualBox since they came out for the Intel Mac. Here is my take: (and confirmed with others using the apps)

Updates/Upgrades - Parallels and VMware tend to have the same version update path, interestingly within a couple months of each other (it seems).
Performance - Parallels seems a bit faster and seems to work much better in the Coherence/Unity mode. I see more free memory when running Parallels.
Stability - Interestingly VirtualBox is the only app that has crashed my Mac (both iMac and Mac Pro), I chalk this up to buggy video drivers (it crashes in Linux with 3d enabled). I think that all 3 products are mature and usable, which is a far cry from the early days where it seemed either VMware or Parallels would be pretty much crap on every other version. Virtualbox is still a step below the other products (in my opinion) but it's free and that counts for something.
Cost - While Virtualbox is free I don't mind paying for either Parallels or VMware, both are used in my work daily and I don't want either to go away. They aren't that expensive and I believe that paying for software helps fund the next version.

The future: I'm just starting to play with Xen and XenServer on my Mac Pro to see if running on bare metal will make for a better experience. I don't think I'll go that route with my notebooks but it should be interesting to see how that market matures on Mac hardware.

November 06 2011 at 1:06 AM Report abuse rate up rate down
JonniKuest

Interesting. Sorry you had that experience. I can agree with you on the upgrades versus updates thing. But I've never really run into any sort of bugs or instability. If anything it was the complete opposite. VMware was unstable and used an excessive amount of RAM. When we switched to Parallels i saw a huge increase in stability. no crashes, and memory allocation was more user friendly to allow switching between Windows and Mac apps. With Fusion we usually had to choose one or the other. Very annoying. This is at my job. about 24 MacBook Airs, 8 iMacs.

November 03 2011 at 1:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Joseph Hoetzl

Performance is one thing, but the cross platform nature of VMware stuff is hard to beat. If you are only wanting to play Windows games on your Mac, and not bootcamp, fine. But if I want to take a test SQL server off of ESXi and test things or any other P2V convert, VMware wins for me...

November 02 2011 at 2:14 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Marie

I think that the MAC TECH 2011 is something we can all benefit from. It's lets us know what's the latest software available. It's nice to know we can learn about MAC products before it's released on the market. I will be sure an watch this conference.

November 02 2011 at 2:02 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Dear Apple...

Too bad they didn't do the "Restore saved Virtual Machine state" test. I remember trying Parallels, and had to wait for like 10 minutes for it to restore my VM from saved stated. Switched to VirtualBox since then.

November 02 2011 at 1:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Dear Apple...'s comment
acetracer

The latest version, on my MacBook air, restores from suspend within 1-2 seconds.

November 03 2011 at 12:34 PM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to acetracer's comment
Bob Maccione

I have found that both VMware and Parallels have long save/restore times when using the encryption option. And I'm using a SSD for the OS and App. I now find it's faster (in both vmware and parallels) to just shutdown and startup, that part is sad.

November 06 2011 at 1:08 AM Report abuse rate up rate down
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