In the sections below, we'll walk you through what we tested, and the results for each. See MacTech articles evaluating each against their prior versions: In addition, the disk footprint (e.g., disk space used) was significantly lower for both. Both of these products are faster than their prior versions.
(Note: Not all tests were run on all configurations, hence the empty cells.)įigure 3: Test Results Matrix with Coloring
Those tests that could not be run due to lack of support from the virtualization software are shaded gray.
Darkest coloring means faster by 10% or more, medium coloring indicates 1-10% difference, and lightest coloring means less than 1% difference. Blue cell coloring indicates VMware Fusion was faster than Parallels Desktop. Green cell coloring means Parallels Desktop was faster than VMware Fusion.
The measurements that best represent the overall gaming experience show Parallels performing 81% faster under Windows XP, and 127% faster under Windows 7.Īnother way to look at this is with the color-coding on the results matrix. (See the graphics section below for more details.) That said, even with these specific individual tests running a bit faster, the graphics experience from a user point of view was noticeably faster (and therefore more visually appealing) under Parallels Desktop 5. However, Parallels was faster on the balance (the vast majority) of the graphics tests (including the 3DMark overall scores), and more importantly, didn't have many of the issues that VMware Fusion did. Of the 25 different graphics tests and scores, we saw definite patterns where VMware Fusion was faster in some tests related to High Dynamic Range rendering (HDR), Perlin Noise, and Pixel Shader (see the detailed 3DMark results to see these). There are places that VMware Fusion is faster than Parallels Desktop 5. Or see the graph if you are more visual (take note that on this graph, shorter is faster).įigure 1: Overall Virtual Machine Performance Overall, Parallels Desktop 5 runs 30% faster with Windows XP, and 43% faster with Windows 7, than VMware Fusion 3.0.1. When we look at the major subgroups of our comprehensive test suite, Parallels is the clear winner running each group of tests 5-127% faster than VMware's solution.
VMware Fusion How do VMware Fusion 3 and Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac compare?īy Neil Ticktin, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher
VMware FusionĬolumn Tag: Virtualization Head-to-Head: Parallels Desktop for Mac vs. Head-to-Head: Parallels Desktop for Mac vs.
Ultimately, nothing beats first-hand experience and we encourage you to go ahead and try VMware Fusion 4 today for yourself. Click the image below to see our reviews on Amazon: Reliability, stability, user interface, features, technical support and value are all important when choosing a virtualization solution that meets your needs.Ĭustomer reviews are another great way to find out what other users are saying about VMware Fusion 4. We believe there are a lot of criteria to consider when choosing the best virtualization solution to run Windows on a Mac. What we feel is important to keep in mind, as other journalists and reviewers have noted, is that virtualization benchmarks do not accurately represent real-world performance. We are aware of the recent benchmark analysis published by MacTech and you can rest assured that our engineers are looking closely at any test results where VMware Fusion is not as great as we would like it to be. We are also very excited by the recent Infoworld review:įusion significantly outperforms Parallels Desktop in all the other categories: 2D graphics (by 32.5 percent), 3D graphics (by 53.3 percent), memory (by 17.9 percent), and disk (by 7.7 percent). It’s great to see that all the work our developers have put in this release is being recognized.
We are extremely excited and proud to have received the Editors Choice awards by both MacWorld UK and PC Magazine for VMware Fusion 4.