Home » Questions » Computers [ Ask a new question ]

How is OpenGL and DirectX performance in VMWare Fusion 3?

How is OpenGL and DirectX performance in VMWare Fusion 3?

I'm already a VMWare Fusion 2 user and Fusion 3 (just released here) has numerous features in conjunction with Snow Leopard.

Asked by: Guest | Views: 241
Total answers/comments: 2
bert [Entry]

"been running VMWare Fusion 3 for about 2 days now - was really looking forward to it just for the 64-bit OS X kernel support.

Anyway, good news is Fusion 3 is slightly faster, and I'm loving the new Application Start button located in Apple's menu bar.

Bad news - OpenGL 2.1/DirectX 9.0c compatibility still sucks. More games run now - but they still run like molasses on my MBP, and often with graphical glitches. wasn't expecting much though.

Personally, I'd recommend shelling USD$40 for the update, just for the speed increase and better integration alone. However, do it after the serial number debacle is over and VMWare gets it right.

Also - make a backup of your VMs, and give Fusion 3 trial a whirl - decide if it's worth the $40."
bert [Entry]

"I have a mixed set of results. I brought the upgrade and used it since the day it was released. I use Vista 32 and XP for VS2008 (vista) + SQL2008 (on XP) .NET C# Winforms development.

I was happy (despite the awful bug with Exposé + Unity where VMware won’t correctly show the content of Windows windows (lol) when in Exposé), and I think is an improvement over VMware 2.06. It’s faster and has a few more options (The menu is nice as already mentioned).

However after following Parallels on twitter and the mixed results, I decided to give Parallels 5 a try. I had a Parallels 1, 2 an 3 license, skipped 4 in favor of VMware.

Parallels 5 compiles and works noticeably faster within VS2008. The compilation clearly takes less time (didn’t benchmark but after almost two weeks working with a product, I instantly saw the speed increase). My application uses a lot of GDI+ code. I was shocked to see that it was that fast (I was always complaining about slowness in GDI+!). Parallels runs circles around VMware in that aspect.

I have a powerful box (Mac Pro 8 cores 10Gb RAM) but I had that before, so no change between both products. I have them both and I occasionally switch between them (svn update and good to go). The VMs have been converted from VMware to Parallels, so I assume that any reinstall will be even better for Parallels (waiting on Win 7 to try both on a fresh install).

Despite all this, Parallels 5 has bugs too. Some details. I’d say you give it a try. Some people think that CPU usage is all that matters, but I don’t agree. VM responsiveness and day-to-day work is what matters. So far, I prefer Parallels. Stil 13 trial days :)"