Which one is better, VMWare Fusion or Parallels?
Archives Forums/MacOS X Discussion/Which one is better, VMWare Fusion or Parallels?
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| Is VMWare Fusion 3.1 or Parallels 5 better suited for running Windows 7 on a Intel Mac with Snow Leopard? I would be interested in that it runs without any problems and that i also can access the 3d hardware under Windows 7. Thanks |
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| Hardware 3D is poor in both, Definately not cut out for 3D games or serious apps but ok for a quick nose around. |
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| So which one would you recommend or are they more or less both the same? |
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| I own both, but these are the reasons why I moved from Parallels to VMWare Fusion: 1. Parallels support sucks. 2. VMWare Fusion is MUCH better for non-Microsoft guest platforms like Ubuntu or FreeBSD. 3. VMWare is more customizable. 4. Let's face it: VMWare is the professional standard for virtualization. Fusion basically uses the same technology as VMWare ESXi, and its data center heritage is felt throughout the product. The thing works and it's as robust and reliable as it gets. However, Sun/Oracle Virtualbox is quite a good alternative if you don't want to spend any money. But Fusion and VMWare have MUCH better driver support. |
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| I own both and I use neither and here are my thoughts on them (both are updated to latest versions btw): 1. parallels is often messy, and the integration likes to do things without asking such as combining your desktop files between windows and osx. This wasn't asked for and I ended up deleting files which I rather wish I didn't. Opengl support (of all things) was buggy and I saw missing textures when running simple apps from the web. Parallels installs and sets up an os faster than vmware does though. 2. vmware was much more "reliable" and the latest version actually slightly out-performs parallels with windows 7. This is the latest version from their site though, an upgrade. The previous version was slower than parallels. Full screen movie playback was faster on vmware. 3. darwine. this is wine for linux running on macosx. I prefer this ultimately, as it just works and does not take over the system and does not need you to install an entire operating system. Using darwine, I was able to compile and run pc blitzmax executables directly on the mac os desktop with no real performance hits I was worried about for my latest project. It meant quick deployement to other team members for our games (particularly artists on pcs). If you are interested in compiling blitzmax for pc without using a pc, check out brucey's forum - full instructions for darwine and cross compilation using only a mac are there. So I just use darwine for the odd exe these days instead of parallels or vmware. Darwine ultimately was faster because I only have 2 gig memory on this macbook. It does not require you to hold an entire operating system in memory, so it may well end up being the superior solution for you. It is slightly less compatible and not really suited for gaming, but runs really well for random exes and of course cross compiled development in Blitzmax from a mac. Really do recommend darwine to you to try first. |
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| Thanks for the suggestions! Another question which comes to my mind is, how reliable is the current version of Paragon's NTFS V8 suppport for OSX? |
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| i use vmware . after the last update ogl is faster now . its really cool but u need 4 Gb Ram if u use a mac mini |
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| Can you play a commercial Windows 7 game within VMWare if it needs proper HW acceleration? |
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| show me a game name and i will test |
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| I had no specific game in mind, i more wanted to know if you then can develop reasonable on the Mac for Win if the gfx hardware is beeing involved or if it's more a pain then where you can't identify if some stuttering is coming from oyur app or more from the virtualisation. |
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| Btw just in case someone comes into the same situation, Paragon's NTFS V8 works like a charm. |
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