Recently, a batch of updated virtualization programs came out: VMWare’s Mac Virtualization solution Fusion was updated to version 3.0 and today, Parallels updated their Parallels Desktop software to version 5.0. Both add support for Windows 7, 64 bit processing under Snow Leopard and DirectX 9 to enable the Aero effects under Windows 7. However, Parallels claims 300% improvement over its “closest competitor”. That’s a very bold statement that I wanted to check out by myself.
For this small experiment, I installed a vanilla Windows 7 Professional 64-bit operating system in both Fusion 3 and Parallels 5 and ran the Windows Experience Index. Here are the results for my late 2008 Unibody Aluminium MacBook with 4GB RAM.
Parallels 5.0:
VMWare Fusion 3.0:
You can see that for the overall score, neither software seems to have any advantage. However, Parallels shows slightly better scores for all other point, except hard disk performance where Fusion seems better off. So, where does that leave us for now? Well, during the first field test, my machine became absolutely laggy while running Parallels 5 and also after shutting down Win 7 and exiting the program. The only solution to get back to acceptable performance levels was to reboot the Mac … so when going this way I could have just used Bootcamp with a native installation in the first place :-/
No such problems occur when using VMWare Fusion 3.0, I can still used my Mac while running Windows and after shutting down the program everything is back to normal.
Conclusion:
I’d pick VMWare Fusion 3.0 over the Parallels 5.0 software for now. Even though having slightly smaller scores, being able to work with my Mac, as well as the Windows 7 at the same time and going back to top performance after the program is closed, has a much higher priority for me.
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