TO-Tech Blog Todd Ogasawara’s Tech Blog

CNet’s Unrealistic Parallels/VMware Fusion Benchmarks

I was very interested to find CNet's comparison of Parallels Desktop for Mac and VMware Fusion...

Inside CNET Labs: Windows virtual machine performance on the Mac

Then, I read what they used for testing: An 8-core MacPro. Ok, everyone out there using an 8-core MacPro, raise your hand. Ok, now everyone else raise your hand. I'm guessing the "everyone else" outnumbered the 8-core users by about 10-to-1 (if not much much more). It would be more interesting and much more useful if CNet had used a more typical user setup like an iMac or MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo with 2GB RAM.
The results are interesting if unsurprising. VMware's ability to use multiple processors should outperform Parallels by what we see in CNet's tests. It was interesting to read that CNet could not run the Quake 4 test using Fusion while it did run under Parallels.

I'll try to provide a more realistic test scenario when I am able to unbury myself from writing projects (due at the end of August). I also have VMware Workstation 6 with ACE 2 for Windows. So, I may be able to test that and provide some comments (although not direct performance comparions) there too.