parallels performance

Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
I tried the parallels beta with a trial key and I have to say I was disappointed at the performance. On an Intel Core Duo, Parallels ran quite a bit slower than VMWare did on my Pentium 4 running Windows XP. I didn't even both finishing the Windows install since it said it was going to take an hour and a half. Under VMWare, I was able to install Win98 in about 10 minutes. Apparently VMWare's patented technology is pretty good stuff. I just didn't find the performance of Parallels to be good enough to spend money on. What are your experiences?



I think I'm waiting for the Mac version of VMWare to show up.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by unixguru


    I tried the parallels beta with a trial key and I have to say I was disappointed at the performance. On an Intel Core Duo, Parallels ran quite a bit slower than VMWare did on my Pentium 4 running Windows XP. I didn't even both finishing the Windows install since it said it was going to take an hour and a half.



    I bought Parallels a little while ago and have found it to be very stable and useful. I don't remember the install taking a noticeably long time. I'm running my virtual machine with 904Mb of RAM out of the 2Gb in my iMac. How much memory are you running with?
  • Reply 2 of 5
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,326moderator
    I find it pretty fast but I haven't tried VMWare before. Installation of XP Pro was about 45 minutes but that was on a Mini Solo with just 512MB Ram.



    Launching Windows takes about 10 seconds on a Mini Duo with 1GB Ram and everything seems to run pretty fast but I haven't pushed it yet.



    I'd like to see what VMWare come up with though:



    http://vmware.rsc02.net/servlet/camp..._ID_=vmwi.1756



    They're taking their time to get their product out. Parallels is already in Apple stores and getting it heavily tested by end users. I also think they have a better brand name.
  • Reply 3 of 5
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by unixguru


    I tried the parallels beta with a trial key and I have to say I was disappointed at the performance. On an Intel Core Duo, Parallels ran quite a bit slower than VMWare did on my Pentium 4 running Windows XP. I didn't even both finishing the Windows install since it said it was going to take an hour and a half. Under VMWare, I was able to install Win98 in about 10 minutes. Apparently VMWare's patented technology is pretty good stuff. I just didn't find the performance of Parallels to be good enough to spend money on.



    Let me understand this, you made a determination of performance based on a partial install of the system without having actually run said system. If I remember the back in the days of 98, installers estimated time of completion varies quite a bit as you proceed. You may want to try actually finishing installing and test performance at that point.



    ...and who really wants to run 98 these days anyway...
  • Reply 4 of 5
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Endymion


    Let me understand this, you made a determination of performance based on a partial install of the system without having actually run said system. If I remember the back in the days of 98, installers estimated time of completion varies quite a bit as you proceed. You may want to try actually finishing installing and test performance at that point.



    ...and who really wants to run 98 these days anyway...



    yes, I did, because I didn't have the hour and a half to spare. It seemed that what was holding everything back was I/O performance. The reason I asked is because I didn't actually get the testing finished. The machine was part of a lab and I was just curious. I don't have an Intel powered Apple machine to do this on. For my own use I have a Powerbook G4 and a Power Mac G5 at work. The Power Mac with its 970FX processor actually runs Virtual PC better than I expected. It runs it respectably. I wasn't expecting it to do well at all considering the processor doesn't support virtual little endian mode like the G3 and G4 class processors do.
  • Reply 5 of 5
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by unixguru


    yes, I did, because I didn't have the hour and a half to spare. It seemed that what was holding everything back was I/O performance. The reason I asked is because I didn't actually get the testing finished. The machine was part of a lab and I was just curious. I don't have an Intel powered Apple machine to do this on. For my own use I have a Powerbook G4 and a Power Mac G5 at work. The Power Mac with its 970FX processor actually runs Virtual PC better than I expected. It runs it respectably. I wasn't expecting it to do well at all considering the processor doesn't support virtual little endian mode like the G3 and G4 class processors do.



    after trying bootcamp & parallels i wouldnt wipe a$$ with virtual pc if it was the last toilet paper on earth. and that was with the latest G5 optimized version...
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