Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

You are here: MacNN Forums > Software - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Alternative Operating Systems > Parallels vs Fusion (tried both today for first time) Fusion SLOW

Parallels vs Fusion (tried both today for first time) Fusion SLOW
Thread Tools
Bruck
Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Sep 2003
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Aug 13, 2007, 08:56 PM
 
A few days ago i slapped boot-camp 1.4 and xp sp2 onto my mom's new silver imac. It ran great. Today I decided to get virtual machines running so that I can teach her how to use quickbooks inside of windows like she used to on her pc. I originally planned to upgrade to the mac version of quickbooks but after reading some reviews, it seems the Win version she already owns is better software. (if that changes i'll buy the mac version next time the do a release).

I installed fusion and launched it. First impression: WAY too slow. Feels like virtual pc used to on my G4. Installed Parallels - and Wow its great. I'd like to compare the 2 but with the huge speed difference I really can't see any point in attempting to compare them. I even enabled dual processor support in fusion. Fusion also crashed the xp partition a few times, while parallels has not.

I have also not yet installed parallels tools in XP, i've read its even faster after you do that.

Perhaps I'm the only one experiencing this issue. I have compared the settings in each program (and fusion actually gives more resources to the xp installation)

with only 1gb of ram standard in the imac, i am going to upgrade her to 2gb this week - but it seems to me parallels is a huge winner here.
| MBA Student | MacAddict | CarAddict | PhotoNut | Dork | PhishHead |
     
cgc
Professional Poster
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Down by the river
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Aug 13, 2007, 09:34 PM
 
I've done benchmarks and found Fusion and Parallels to be about 21% slower on GeekBench. I tried Cinebench but Parallels wouldn't even run it. In day to day use I think they're very close with Fusion being slightly faster with CPU (probably due to 2 CPUs assigned to Fusion) and Parallels slightly faster at graphics. I think the clincher (for me) is Fusion has better tech support (e.g. they answer issues quickly while Parallels ignores users) and Fusion supports Ubuntu 7 while Parallels supports Ubuntu 5 which is several years old.
     
cgc
Professional Poster
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Down by the river
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Aug 16, 2007, 07:01 PM
 
Check out this review and see how badly Fusion puts the smack down on Parallels.
     
drorbn2000
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Aug 2007
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Aug 17, 2007, 06:15 AM
 
I think Fusion is much better.
Freddie Mercury
1946 - 1991
     
chefpastry
Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: New York City
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Aug 19, 2007, 04:42 AM
 
I saw the benchmark results but, for some reason, Parallels feels faster to me. Maybe it's because I run Fusion with only one CPU core. Also, when I mount my Bootcamp partition in OS X after launching Parallels or Fusion, and I try to watch videos in OS X from that partition, the video will stutter when I'm running Fusion and plays smooth when I'm running Parallels.

I've reverted back to using Parallels for the time being.
Mac Pro 3.2x8 - 48GB - EVGA GTX 680 - Apple Remote - Dell 3007WFP-HC
MacBook 2GHz - C2D - 8GB - GF 9400M
Mac mini 2.33GHz C2D - 4GB - GMA950 - 2 Drobos - SS4200 (unRAID)
iPhone 5 + iPhone 4 S⃣
     
MacosNerd
Professional Poster
Join Date: Jun 2007
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Aug 19, 2007, 07:23 AM
 
Another vote on Fusion's overall performance here. Much faster (and a ton more stable)

I don't run Fusion on one cpu - seems kind of silly to do that. I don't use a boot camp partition, but a true VM. I'm not sure if there's any speed enhancements/slow downs for using a VM over a bootcamp partition but I can only report that Fusion is faster then parallels on a vm disk image.
     
butterfly0fdoom
Senior User
Join Date: Nov 2006
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Aug 19, 2007, 07:32 AM
 
Just on the grounds of Unity vs Cohesion, I much prefer Fusion. And this is after using Parallels since the original beta was released.
MacBook Core 2 Duo 2.16 (Black)
iPod classic 160GB
iPhone 8GB
     
mpancha
Grizzled Veteran
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Toronto, ON
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Aug 19, 2007, 08:44 AM
 
I"m not sure about the benchmarks, but I'm the type who goes by personal experience over what the benchmark says. After all, it all depends on how products hold up to my use, not someone else's. This is one of those times where it held true.

What I've noticed after trying Fusion and Parallels, when I leave Fusion on all the time, I don't notice a slow down on OS X or on my Windows/Linux installs. When I do the same with Parallels, I find myself having to restart b/c its quicker than waiting for either side (OS X or Windows) to wake up and let me get back to work.

When it comes to Coherence vs Unity.... they both do the same thing, I honestly don't care as long as the feautre is there.

What I would love to see though, is a good stable Wine release for OS X. I've tried Crossover, but I didn't like how it ran, and how slow it was at times.
MacBook Pro | 2.16 ghz core2duo | 2gb ram | superdrive | airport extreme
iBook G4 | 1.2ghz | 768mb ram | combodrive | airport extreme
iPhone 3GS | 32 GB | Jailbreak, or no Jailbreak
     
seanc
Moderator Emeritus
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Cambridge, UK
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Aug 19, 2007, 09:04 AM
 
Has anyone tried Virtual Box?
I run it on Ubuntu on my PC and it runs quite well. It's useful for when I need to do something quick in Windows but don't want to reboot.

VirtualBox
( Last edited by seanc; Aug 19, 2007 at 09:28 AM. )
     
mpancha
Grizzled Veteran
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Toronto, ON
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Aug 19, 2007, 09:14 AM
 
Never heard of Virtual Box, I think I'll give it a try over the course of this week though.
MacBook Pro | 2.16 ghz core2duo | 2gb ram | superdrive | airport extreme
iBook G4 | 1.2ghz | 768mb ram | combodrive | airport extreme
iPhone 3GS | 32 GB | Jailbreak, or no Jailbreak
     
chefpastry
Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: New York City
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Aug 19, 2007, 11:31 AM
 
Originally Posted by seanc View Post
Has anyone tried Virtual Box?
I run it on Ubuntu on my PC and it runs quite well. It's useful for when I need to do something quick in Windows but don't want to reboot.

VirtualBox
Would you happen to know if Virtual Box works with Bootcamp partitions? I would hate to have to re-install all my apps again... Thanks.
Mac Pro 3.2x8 - 48GB - EVGA GTX 680 - Apple Remote - Dell 3007WFP-HC
MacBook 2GHz - C2D - 8GB - GF 9400M
Mac mini 2.33GHz C2D - 4GB - GMA950 - 2 Drobos - SS4200 (unRAID)
iPhone 5 + iPhone 4 S⃣
     
seanc
Moderator Emeritus
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Cambridge, UK
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Aug 19, 2007, 01:50 PM
 
I'm afraid I don't know, I don't have an Intel Mac.
     
ghporter
Administrator
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: San Antonio TX USA
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Aug 19, 2007, 07:29 PM
 
A little searching on the VirtualBox site shows that working with a Boot Camp image is currently suggested, but it shows no status on that. I'd have to say that right now it almost certainly does not work with a Boot Camp image.

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
JZ
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: USA
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Sep 6, 2007, 10:29 AM
 
I've been evaluating both Parallels and VMWare Fusion on my MBP. Here's what I've found:

The biggest difference I noticed was when installing software. Installing most any software either from CD or a downloaded EXE seemed to take approximately 3 times as long on Parallels as it did with Fusion. This was a pretty unscientific but very real world test. I presume this is because of the way Parallels uses virtual memory since it was both installers and not just the CD, which might be an indicator of I/O performance.

Which leads me to my next note: memory usage. Running an XP install on each vm with 512MB RAM dedicated to each (I ran them separately, not at the same time), I noticed they they used RAM completely differently. Parallels seemed to only load into physcial RAM what was being actively used by the machine, ~ 130MB. But it reserved at huge disk cache of 1.3GB of virutal RAM.

Fusion used about half the virtual RAM at ~760MB, but reserved the full 512MB of physical RAM that was assigned, even though Windows most likely did not need it at the time.

For that reason I do noticed a performance difference when keeping either vm running in the background while I use other apps. Because Parallels has a lower physical memory footprint it is less taxing on my system and switching to it is very snappy. VMWare is using 1/4 of my 2GB of RAM in all cases and so limits some of the things I can do concurrently. However, this seems to be a trade off in VM performance. As I've already stated the Fusion vm is performs better.

CPU usage was also different. Parallels taxes both processors equally on most operations. VMWare, when set to only a single CPU core will only tax once. This offsets the RAM performance issue and seems to offer better performance on the desktop in cases where you haven't maxed the RAM such that you're digging into virtual memory.

Right now I leaning towards sticking with VMWare. For me the performance is better and though the Fusion product is new, VMWare has been in the virtualization business for a long time. I expect updates to the software will only increase the performance and feature gap with Parallels.

It is also worth mentioning that both products have the integrated mode that runs the windows apps as if they were part of OS X. I'm not using this much but I did notice that Fusion handled it much better when it came to Windows Vista. On Parallels the Windows task bar was awkwardly placed on the desktop right above the dock. Fusion opted for a custom menu app that replaces that functionality in a more Mac-like manner.

But I'm curious. Has anyone else's experience been different?
     
chefpastry
Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: New York City
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Sep 6, 2007, 10:58 AM
 
Here's something that I did about a week and a half ago... I used WinRAR to unRAR a file. Fusion (with 1 core and 3GB RAM) did it in 7:50. Parallels (1 core and 1.5GB RAM) did it in 7:40. This is on a Mac Pro 3GHz (2xdual cores) with 14GB RAM and using the same Bootcamp partition. I've never timed software installs and don't have anything else I want to install...

Also, as I've stated before, with the Virtual Machines' drives mounted in OS X, when trying to play videos, Fusion drives will cause stuttering and Parallels drives don't.

Another thing I've found is that I can't keep Fusion running for more than 5 or 6 days. Usually, at some point during the fifth day of running continuously it will lose it's connection with the Bootcamp partition and shut down the virtual machine. Quitting Fusion and re-launching it does not allow it to regain access to the Bootcamp partition because another app has exclusive rights to it. Parallels just keeps on running and running.

As things stand now, my choice is Parallels.
Mac Pro 3.2x8 - 48GB - EVGA GTX 680 - Apple Remote - Dell 3007WFP-HC
MacBook 2GHz - C2D - 8GB - GF 9400M
Mac mini 2.33GHz C2D - 4GB - GMA950 - 2 Drobos - SS4200 (unRAID)
iPhone 5 + iPhone 4 S⃣
     
cgc
Professional Poster
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Down by the river
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Sep 6, 2007, 08:42 PM
 
I have had quite the opposite results from Parallels and VMWare Fusion. I find VMWare Fusion to be much faster (using two cores), more reliable, less crashes (none actually), and great USB device support (even supports my DOD CAC Card reader). Parallels' only strength, IMO, is a better video driver performance.
     
chefpastry
Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: New York City
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Sep 6, 2007, 09:10 PM
 
Just out of curiosity... How long was the longest up time you've had Fusion running? My personal experience is that it can run fine for several days but will eventually run in to problems.

As for Fusion being faster than Parallels when using 2 cores, I would expect it to.
Mac Pro 3.2x8 - 48GB - EVGA GTX 680 - Apple Remote - Dell 3007WFP-HC
MacBook 2GHz - C2D - 8GB - GF 9400M
Mac mini 2.33GHz C2D - 4GB - GMA950 - 2 Drobos - SS4200 (unRAID)
iPhone 5 + iPhone 4 S⃣
     
cgc
Professional Poster
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Down by the river
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Sep 7, 2007, 07:03 PM
 
Originally Posted by chefpastry View Post
Just out of curiosity... How long was the longest up time you've had Fusion running? My personal experience is that it can run fine for several days but will eventually run in to problems.

As for Fusion being faster than Parallels when using 2 cores, I would expect it to.
I never keep Fusion or Parallels up for longer than I need (typically a few hours) but have had no crashes with Fusion. Parallels has crashed and is terribly slow to start.

Of course Fusion is faster with two cores, but a few benchmarks "makes things even" and test Fusion with one core. They cripple Fusion because Parallels cannot utilize more than one core which I think is unfair.
     
   
Thread Tools
 
Forum Links
Forum Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Top
Privacy Policy
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 01:01 AM.
All contents of these forums © 1995-2017 MacNN. All rights reserved.
Branding + Design: www.gesamtbild.com
vBulletin v.3.8.8 © 2000-2017, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.,