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turtle777 · Oct 28, 2009, 08:41 PM

Any takers yet ?

VMware Fusion: Run Windows on Mac, for Mac Desktop Virtualization

How's the performance ?
Is the upgrade price justified ?

-t

Cold Warrior · Oct 28, 2009, 08:53 PM

I bought it for the upgrade price b/c I've owned version 2 for a while.

I'm on a MBP C2D 2.16, 3 GB RAM, but things don't seem any faster for me. Win2k, XP and Win7 seem the same or nearly so.

Also the Fusion GUI and VMs beachball a lot for minutes at a time, will respond to a click or two, then beachball for several more minutes. It will become responsive after maybe 10 minutes of being left alone after Windows VM bootup & login.

turtle777 · Oct 28, 2009, 08:59 PM

That doesn't sound good.

I have had a lot of issues recently with Fusion 2. After Suspending the VM, it would wake up and then freeze (mainly with Vista). Sometimes it would unfreeze after 10-15 min, sometimes I had to restart.

It got really annoying.

I guess I'm going to try the 30 day Trial.

-t

Mrjinglesusa · Oct 28, 2009, 09:22 PM

I purchased Fusion 2 from Amazon a couple days ago for $25. Only did it because it came with a free download upgrade to Fusion 3. I've used Parallels for awhile but for $25 I am going to give Fusion 3 a try.

besson3c · Oct 28, 2009, 10:26 PM

How many of you have tried Virtualbox?

turtle777 · Oct 28, 2009, 10:52 PM

Awesome. I can't install the updated VMWare Tools.

Setup quits complaining about invalid characters in the "My Documents" path.
All I want is my functioning Fusion 2 VM to be ported over and working. But no dice.

Stupid sh!t. Don't those companies have any QA anymore ?

-t

Cold Warrior · Oct 28, 2009, 10:58 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

How many of you have tried Virtualbox?

I'll give it a shot now. Basic criteria is install, setup and usability of Win 7 x86 compared to Fusion 3.

Cold Warrior · Oct 28, 2009, 11:55 PM

VirtualBox seems good. The VM seems more responsive than with Fusion 3, no beachballs, and I could also still use my Mac -- Fusion 3 has been the opposite. VBox isn't a 64-bit app, but neither was Fusion until yesterday.

besson3c · Oct 29, 2009, 12:43 AM

I was having screen redraw issues with Virtualbox in XP, but I was using an older version. I'll convert my VMDK back into a VDI and give Virtualbox another go soon.

(It is possible to migrate VM disk images to different VM hosts even if they don't use the same native file format)

lpkmckenna · Oct 29, 2009, 08:13 PM

I've used VirtualBox. It's very nice. Just dedicate a space just for Windows for avoid graphics ugliness. There's a command line hack that allows you to use your Bootcamp install, but I haven't tried it yet.

I plan to buy Fusion 3. Looks good, sorry to hear people are having problems.

turtle777 · Oct 29, 2009, 08:30 PM

Well, after fiddling around with Fusion 3, it doesn't seem to be more responsive than Fusion 2.

Still get the freezes when waking up a suspended VM. Sucks.

I was able to update the VMWare tools, after having to repair some Regedit entries. Windows just sucks.

-t

Atheist · Oct 29, 2009, 09:34 PM

I've been using it for months... since the technology previews (or whatever they called them). It's been rock solid for me with Win XP and Win 7. I use Fusion everyday and sometimes have 2 VM's running at the same time.

turtle777 · Nov 7, 2009, 06:56 PM

Ok, so here is my experiences with Fusion 3

1) Forget running Vista. It was a nightmare under Fusion 2, and hasn't changed much (maybe got a little better). Windows 7 is the better choice.

2) Don't carry over old XP VM from Fusion 2 to 3. They will be sluggish and use up a lot of space.
New XP installs under Fusion 3 are amazingly small in HD footprint, and very speedy.

-t

Andy8 · Nov 7, 2009, 07:14 PM

Will Fusion 2 still run XP ok on Snow Leopard?

turtle777 · Nov 7, 2009, 07:35 PM

Originally Posted by Andy8

Will Fusion 2 still run XP ok on Snow Leopard?

Yes. I seemed to me that it became more sluggish though.

The speed difference of a newly installed XP made the switch to Fusion 3 a no brainer.

-t

Andy8 · Nov 7, 2009, 07:45 PM

I shall try and fresh install of XP under Fusion 2 and see how that performs before I spring for the upgrade to Fusion 3.

turtle777 · Nov 7, 2009, 10:24 PM

Originally Posted by Andy8

I shall try and fresh install of XP under Fusion 2 and see how that performs before I spring for the upgrade to Fusion 3.

Plus, Fusion 3 supports DirectX 9.0EX with OpenGL 1.4, makes games run that previously required bootcamp.

Try the 30day trial version and see.

-t

Cold Warrior · Nov 8, 2009, 12:29 AM

Originally Posted by turtle777

The speed difference of a newly installed XP made the switch to Fusion 3 a no brainer.

-t

Excellent tip. Thanks. I just redid a win7 vm that was set up in fusion 2. A fresh setup in fusion 3 shows none of the previous hangs or beachballs, and the vm seems lighter and quicker too.

Eug · 12:29 AM

Re: Processors & RAM. I have a Core i7. If I choose 2 processor cores in VMware, it is using 2 of 8 logical cores, right? That means if the other cores are idle, it may use 2 physical cores, but if they're busy, it may be using the same core with HT maybe?

FWIW, I ran Cinebench. I get 1 CPU = 3505 and 2 CPU = 6567, which is a 1.87X speedup, which looks like the use of two physical cores.

Also, in Cinebench, the OpenGL rendering is painfully slow, with the GFX-Board being seen as "GDI Generic". If I reinstall XP, will I get faster GPU emulation? Right now the settings state my 3D is already accelerated, with "DirectX 9.0c with Shader model 3 and OpenGL 2.1".

Is there any benefit to manually selecting "VT-x with EPT", or is "Automatic" better? FWIW, I ran Cinebench on "Automatic" and get the same ballpark 2-CPU scores as with it set to "VT-x with EPT".

P.S. I migrated a WinXP install from VMware 2. It seemed a little slow at first, but I changed the CPU setting to 2 processor cores, and then it was fine - noticeably better. Actually, I just changed it back to 1 CPU just now, and it still seems fine. Hmmm... I wonder why it was initially slow. (BTW, I'm just running Quicken, Firefox and occasional Office apps.) Maybe I forgot to enable hard disk buffering or something.

How much smaller was your XP footprint with the reinstall? It seems like a hassle to go through a reinstall if my current install runs fine. How much of that smaller footprint is from not having had installed all the bazillion updates and 3rd party software, etc.?

EDIT:

It does seem to run a bit faster with hard disk buffering enabled, at least immediately after a reboot. I just shut off buffering and then rebooted, and immediately after reloading XP, it seems to hit the disk harder during the initial 20 seconds after I log into my account after that reboot. Launching apps during this period seems a bit slower. However, after that, everything is fast again (even with a single CPU) since it longer needs to access the disk as much. OTOH, if I enable disk buffering, it doesn't seem to access the disk as much immediately after a reboot.

I do seem to see an increase in memory usage with disk buffering enabled. Maybe 30-50 MB? (Does that amount make sense?) Hard to say though, since the memory usage varies so much. I'm not hugely concerned though, as I have 8 GB.

Andy8 · Nov 28, 2009, 03:07 AM

Eug - how much ram did you allocate XP to use?

Eug · Nov 28, 2009, 08:35 AM

Originally Posted by andy8

eug - how much ram did you allocate xp to use?

512 mb

mduell · Nov 28, 2009, 06:36 PM

Originally Posted by Eug

Re: Processors & RAM. I have a Core i7. If I choose 2 processor cores in VMware, it is using 2 of 8 logical cores, right? That means if the other cores are idle, it may use 2 physical cores, but if they're busy, it may be using the same core with HT maybe?

Yes, when the machine is busy the VMware threads may be scheduled onto the same physical core.

Originally Posted by Eug

Is there any benefit to manually selecting "VT-x with EPT", or is "Automatic" better? FWIW, I ran Cinebench on "Automatic" and get the same ballpark 2-CPU scores as with it set to "VT-x with EPT".

Since your CPU supports VT-x (Intel Virtualization Technology for x86) with EPT (Extended Page Tables), they should be the same. I'd leave it on Automatic (so you can boot the same VM on older machines) unless you're having trouble with it correctly detecting your processor.

Andy8 · Dec 3, 2009, 03:01 AM

Originally Posted by turtle777

Yes. I seemed to me that it became more sluggish though.

The speed difference of a newly installed XP made the switch to Fusion 3 a no brainer.

-t

I took your advice, upgraded to 3 and did a fresh install of XP via VMware, very smooth and snappy™ indeed.