VMware announces Fusion 3 with more than 50 new features

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Comments

  • Reply 41 of 57
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DJRumpy View Post


    That statement doesn't make much sense. Aero just turns on some GUI features in the window manager to make some functions easier, or to turn on functions that aren't available in the basic window manager. Any modern graphics card will run Aero these days, including integrated graphics chipsets like those in the Mini. I don't understand how you equate that to wanting viruses in OS X. It's no different than Compiz under Linux in essence, if not presentation.



    In any case, what I took from this is that VMWare 3 will have sufficient performance to actually enable those features under 3.0, where if memory serves, VMWare Fusion 2.x always ended up with a lowly '1' in graphics scores under Vista and Windows 7.





    Sorry Aero is a drain on a system. Its pure eye candy. On every real Windows box I have used, especially Vista, if you go into advanced settings and change it to maximize for performance, Windows will drop Aero, and all of the GUI features like dragging a box on the screen while drawing it, instead you get a square frame, also things like menu shadows, or menu animation all gets turned off. What you get in return is a very fast UI. This is on real Windows machines with video cards. On a VM you get a stripped down virtual video card, that is less powerful. I am assuming that Fusion 3.0 ups the power of the virtual video card but still Aero will tax it. Its does not GIVE you anything to have aero on except for a fancy looking neon GUI.
  • Reply 42 of 57
    zoolookzoolook Posts: 657member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by bettieblue View Post


    Sorry Aero is a drain on a system. Its pure eye candy. On every real Windows box I have used, especially Vista, if you go into advanced settings and change it to maximize for performance, Windows will drop Aero, and all of the GUI features like dragging a box on the screen while drawing it, instead you get a square frame, also things like menu shadows, or menu animation all gets turned off. What you get in return is a very fast UI. This is on real Windows machines with video cards. On a VM you get a stripped down virtual video card, that is less powerful. I am assuming that Fusion 3.0 ups the power of the virtual video card but still Aero will tax it. Its does not GIVE you anything to have aero on except for a fancy looking neon GUI.



    ...and you don't think the dock reflections in Leopard and SL tax the system more than happened in Tiger, or Expose doesn't come at a cost? Of course Aero is eye candy, so is most of Aqua... but the virus analogy is a poor one.



    All GUIs slow down with additional animations to an extent, but there becomes a point where the processing power you have makes this impossible to perceive. I have Windows7 installed on BootCamp on my MacBook 1.0 (Core Duo and GMA950) with Aero, the same machine can run it on Parallels with no Aero and I also have it installed on a Phenom II x4 @ 3.6ghz with 2x Radeon 4890 1GB cards. There is virtually no performance difference in the GUI between the MacBook in BootCamp and the Phenom. I can post a video sometime to prove this if you wish.



    You're Windows bashing for the sheer hell of it. Vista's performance issues are nothing to do with Aero (your GPU can either do it or not), they're to do with I/O issues deep in the Kernal (resolved in Win7 by the look of things).
  • Reply 43 of 57
    djrumpydjrumpy Posts: 1,116member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by bettieblue View Post


    Sorry Aero is a drain on a system. Its pure eye candy. On every real Windows box I have used, especially Vista, if you go into advanced settings and change it to maximize for performance, Windows will drop Aero, and all of the GUI features like dragging a box on the screen while drawing it, instead you get a square frame, also things like menu shadows, or menu animation all gets turned off. What you get in return is a very fast UI. This is on real Windows machines with video cards. On a VM you get a stripped down virtual video card, that is less powerful. I am assuming that Fusion 3.0 ups the power of the virtual video card but still Aero will tax it. Its does not GIVE you anything to have aero on except for a fancy looking neon GUI.



    Actually that's not quite true anymore. It adds additional functionality that isn't there in the non-Aero gui.



    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Aero



    The GUI is plenty snappy even on my low end Mini with integrated graphics using Aero. General CPU Utilization is between 1 and 2 percent. Perfectly acceptable.
  • Reply 44 of 57
    djrumpydjrumpy Posts: 1,116member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Zoolook View Post


    ...and you don't think the dock reflections in Leopard and SL tax the system more than happened in Tiger, or Expose doesn't come at a cost? Of course Aero is eye candy, so is most of Aqua... but the virus analogy is a poor one.



    All GUIs slow down with additional animations to an extent, but there becomes a point where the processing power you have makes this impossible to perceive. I have Windows7 installed on BootCamp on my MacBook 1.0 (Core Duo and GMA950) with Aero, the same machine can run it on Parallels with no Aero and I also have it installed on a Phenom II x4 @ 3.6ghz with 2x Radeon 4890 1GB cards. There is virtually no performance difference in the GUI between the MacBook in BootCamp and the Phenom. I can post a video sometime to prove this if you wish.



    You're Windows bashing for the sheer hell of it. Vista's performance issues are nothing to do with Aero (your GPU can either do it or not), they're to do with I/O issues deep in the Kernal (resolved in Win7 by the look of things).



    Agreed. His post reeks of trolling.
  • Reply 45 of 57
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by bettieblue View Post


    Sorry Aero is a drain on a system. Its pure eye candy. On every real Windows box I have used, especially Vista, if you go into advanced settings and change it to maximize for performance, Windows will drop Aero, and all of the GUI features like dragging a box on the screen while drawing it, instead you get a square frame, also things like menu shadows, or menu animation all gets turned off. What you get in return is a very fast UI. This is on real Windows machines with video cards. On a VM you get a stripped down virtual video card, that is less powerful. I am assuming that Fusion 3.0 ups the power of the virtual video card but still Aero will tax it. Its does not GIVE you anything to have aero on except for a fancy looking neon GUI.



    Here's a hint. On my PC with Windows 7 64bit RTM I turned off the service:

    Desktop Window Manager Session Manager Service



    All fancy window graphics went away, and my gaming frame rates (at least initial testing in Need For Speed: Shift) had a nice boost. Less "laggy" feeling. Made a huge difference in playing Need For Speed: Shift at 1920x1080p 2xAA 0xAF Shadows:Medium, Car Detail: Low, Track Detail: Medium. Using ATI Radeon 4830 512MB.



    Will be trying with Call of Duty 5 this evening after work.



    Edit: To clarify, this is on a bonafide PC install not in Boot Camp or virtual machine. Just suggesting turning off the eye candy as well.
  • Reply 46 of 57
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Zoolook View Post


    ...and you don't think the dock reflections in Leopard and SL tax the system more than happened in Tiger, or Expose doesn't come at a cost? Of course Aero is eye candy, so is most of Aqua... but the virus analogy is a poor one.



    All GUIs slow down with additional animations to an extent, but there becomes a point where the processing power you have makes this impossible to perceive. I have Windows7 installed on BootCamp on my MacBook 1.0 (Core Duo and GMA950) with Aero, the same machine can run it on Parallels with no Aero and I also have it installed on a Phenom II x4 @ 3.6ghz with 2x Radeon 4890 1GB cards. There is virtually no performance difference in the GUI between the MacBook in BootCamp and the Phenom. I can post a video sometime to prove this if you wish.



    You're Windows bashing for the sheer hell of it. Vista's performance issues are nothing to do with Aero (your GPU can either do it or not), they're to do with I/O issues deep in the Kernal (resolved in Win7 by the look of things).



    I think the "eye candy" in Leopard and Snow Leopard is more intelligently coded than Vista. Vista is a pile of garbage anyway, compared to Windows 7 64bit. I don't think Aero in Windows 7 slows things down much in normal usage, but in certain gaming situations (I haven't fully tested a wider range of games yet) turning off the service "Desktop Window Manager Session Manager Service" seems to boost frame rates.
  • Reply 47 of 57
    justflybobjustflybob Posts: 1,337member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Vulcan1 View Post


    Cool! Thanks Justflybob and razorpit for your inputs, much appreciated!! I think i will go ahead and give VMware a try. Thanks one more time guys!



    PM me if you have any troubles and I will attempt to help you. Most times it is something simple, but often confusing for the first-time user.
  • Reply 48 of 57
    djrumpydjrumpy Posts: 1,116member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nvidia2008 View Post


    Here's a hint. On my PC with Windows 7 64bit RTM I turned off the service:

    Desktop Window Manager Session Manager Service



    All fancy window graphics went away, and my gaming frame rates (at least initial testing in Need For Speed: Shift) had a nice boost. Less "laggy" feeling. Made a huge difference in playing Need For Speed: Shift at 1920x1080p 2xAA 0xAF Shadows:Medium, Car Detail: Low, Track Detail: Medium. Using ATI Radeon 4830 512MB.



    Will be trying with Call of Duty 5 this evening after work.



    Edit: To clarify, this is on a bonafide PC install not in Boot Camp or virtual machine. Just suggesting turning off the eye candy as well.



    The Aero window manager isn't even doing anything during a full screen 3D game. The Window Manager was changed in Vista to suspend Aero in the background once you enter 3D Exclusive Mode. There is no impact and your just repeating old performance issues from the XP days.



    http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/...ce/default.asp



    In case you don't feel like reading, I'll summarize:

    Quite frankly, we were shocked by these results.



    We decided to ping AMD to get their take on things. We weren’t certain if the performance results we were seeing with Aero Glass were due to changes in the new driver model, or if the GPU we tested was just so powerful that Aero Glass didn’t affect it. Here is the question Brandon asked AMD and this is the response we got back from AMD’s Andrew Dodd:



    FiringSquad: We ran some benchmarks with Aero Glass on and off and noted no performance difference when using Catalyst 7.1! Normally under an OS you see a slight 3-5% performance hit when you turn on the eye candy, but that wasn’t there under Aero Glass which was definitely surprising. Do you think the new driver model helps Aero Glass performance or is it something else?



    Andrew Dodd: Basically (pretty much because of the new Vista driver model) the Vista OS just suspends Aero in the background, (once you enter 3D exclusive mode it would be a waste of GPU resources to keep running Aero). So that’s why there’s no performance impact




    I would suspect that OS X probably does something similar.
  • Reply 49 of 57
    duecesdueces Posts: 89member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DJRumpy View Post


    Agreed. His post reeks of trolling.



    LOL his post reeks of trolling because he bashed a windows feature? Quite ironic, actually.
  • Reply 50 of 57
    djrumpydjrumpy Posts: 1,116member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dueces View Post


    LOL his post reeks of trolling because he bashed a windows feature? Quite ironic, actually.



    You think it's appropriate just because he's bashing Windows? Why would you want to encourage that sort thing? What if he was bashing OS X, 'just because it was OS X'? Neither is appropriate.
  • Reply 51 of 57
    zoolookzoolook Posts: 657member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nvidia2008 View Post


    I think the "eye candy" in Leopard and Snow Leopard is more intelligently coded than Vista. Vista is a pile of garbage anyway, compared to Windows 7 64bit. I don't think Aero in Windows 7 slows things down much in normal usage, but in certain gaming situations (I haven't fully tested a wider range of games yet) turning off the service "Desktop Window Manager Session Manager Service" seems to boost frame rates.



    That may very well be true; Core Animation etc are embedded deep into the gut of OS X. Aero is effectively a DX9 application, just like any game. BUT... the requirements are actually pretty low (if a GMA950 can do Vista Aero on 1650*1050, then it can't be that taxing). Not only that, but my MacBook now chokes in Expose with anything more than 7 or 8 windows open, thanks to the way SL now tries to cache each window in VRAM. I have to say, and I am no Windows apologist, that Win7 performs better graphically than SL on my aging MacBook... indexing, I/O and video playback though is better under OS X.



    Besides, all that is a different conversation... he originally compared Aero with a Virus, which is just the ranting of the worst of our fair community.
  • Reply 52 of 57
    After reading the thread so far, and looking at so many great reports for Fusion3, I'm still wondering something: Windows requires activation and one major issue to me with Fusion2 using Bootcamp partition so far, is that every time you switch back and forth between BC and FUSION, it requires to re-activate. This doesn't seem to be an issue reported in the thread.



    How goes Fusion 3 about this? Is there a known workaround otherwise?



    Jean-Luc
  • Reply 53 of 57
    djrumpydjrumpy Posts: 1,116member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JeanLuc View Post


    After reading the thread so far, and looking at so many great reports for Fusion3, I'm still wondering something: Windows requires activation and one major issue to me with Fusion2 using Bootcamp partition so far, is that every time you switch back and forth between BC and FUSION, it requires to re-activate. This doesn't seem to be an issue reported in the thread.



    How goes Fusion 3 about this? Is there a known workaround otherwise?



    Jean-Luc



    I'm wondering that myself. Did this used to happen with Vista? I have to wonder if this is because Microsoft is bundling their VirtualPC solution with the higher end Windows 7 builds. They may not want to make this easy for other Virtual solutions.
  • Reply 54 of 57
    justflybobjustflybob Posts: 1,337member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JeanLuc View Post


    After reading the thread so far, and looking at so many great reports for Fusion3, I'm still wondering something: Windows requires activation and one major issue to me with Fusion2 using Bootcamp partition so far, is that every time you switch back and forth between BC and FUSION, it requires to re-activate. This doesn't seem to be an issue reported in the thread.



    How goes Fusion 3 about this? Is there a known workaround otherwise?



    Jean-Luc



    Sorry, but I'm confused by your comments above. You don't need BootCamp if you are using Fusion. You just fire up your Mac, then fire up Fusion. Both run together, so you are not really switching between the two. So, once you have activated Windows in Fusion, you should be done with the activation process.



    I know there are folks out there that still insist on using Fusion in a BootCamp partition, but I have never understood why. Seems like it defeats the whole intent of virtualization.
  • Reply 55 of 57
    The question is not if this is usefull or not (re: using or not Fusion on BC). The question is for those of us that do, for our own reasons (and each has its own reasons), then does it still require activation any time you launch from one side or the other (virtualized in Mac or native boot with BC)?!?!



    On such use I personally have, is I develop "gaming" related application in Windows, and I need to run these on native hardware.
  • Reply 56 of 57
    djrumpydjrumpy Posts: 1,116member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by justflybob View Post


    Sorry, but I'm confused by your comments above. You don't need BootCamp if you are using Fusion. You just fire up your Mac, then fire up Fusion. Both run together, so you are not really switching between the two. So, once you have activated Windows in Fusion, you should be done with the activation process.



    I know there are folks out there that still insist on using Fusion in a BootCamp partition, but I have never understood why. Seems like it defeats the whole intent of virtualization.



    There is a current issue that when you boot into Boot Camp and register you're copy of Windows, if you then launch your Bootcamp partition in Fusion, you will be asked to register it again. If you then turn around and boot into Bootcamp, it will ask you to register again.



    You get the idea. Any time you switch between the two, you are forced to validate Windows.
  • Reply 57 of 57
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by justflybob View Post


    My own personal experience? I use my MPB 17 C2D at home to write iPhone apps, and at my "day job" under XP2 Professional to access proprietary "windows only" apps. While I credit Parallels for the initial ability to use my Mac to run windows and OS X simultaneously, my Parallels experience was less than pleasant. Angry and frustrated, a friend suggested I try the VMware Fusion beta.



    To my amazement, the VMware Fusion beta ran circles around the released version of Parallels, and without any of the annoying issues that Parallels had at the time. I even paid for Parallels "support" that was worthless. Although listening to a heavily accented support person grunt and groan through his scripted support script was somewhat amusing, nothing was fixed.



    The final straw? When Parallels bombarded their users with offers for a "new and improved" version that was buggier than most betas. Then they had the nerve to fight me tooth and nail when I demanded a refund, which was never granted until I got my bank involved.



    So my take?



    VMware Fusion =

    Parallels =



    You choose.



    I read the post here and on other sites a few years back when i wanted to take the dive and try to use this software for my PC clients and for testing apps and websites and I have had a better experience with Fusion and I actually never even used BOOT CAMP mode just installed as a virtual machine and it works GREAT!!! i can't wait for the new version to launch...



    [email protected]



    (if you need an IT guy in the nyc area contact me there...
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