Archive for Parallels tag
Windows Experience Index on MacBook Pro 2GHz compared
I just got the opportunity to try out the latest version of VMware and thought I’d do a quick Windows Experience Index on Boot Camp, Parallels and VMware to see what the performance is like before my new MacBook Pro 17″ arrives (hopefully on Friday!)
When I installed Leopard on my machine I took the opportunity to carve out a dedicated 20GB partition again to put a fresh install of Vista on. As well as being able to boot natively this also now means I can run my single Windows partition switching between native, Parallels or VMware at will which admittedly drives Windows Activation crazy.
Host machine
| Hardware | MacBook Pro 2GHz “MacBookPro1,1″ |
|---|---|
| Memory | 2048MB DDR2 667MHz |
| Processor | 2.0GHz Core Duo |
| Graphics | ATI Radeon X1600 256MB |
| Disk | 100GB 5400RPM |
| Operating system | Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.1 |
Configuration
| Memory | 848MB (Virtual machines only) |
|---|---|
| Disk | 20GB Boot Camp partition |
| Operating system | Microsoft Vista Ultimate Edition 32-bit |
Testing notes
- No other applications running in OS X or Vista
- Full-screen mode
- Vendors guest OS tools & drivers installed
Scores
| VMware 1.1 62573 |
Parallels 3.0 5570 beta |
Boot Camp 2.0 drivers |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Processor | 4.7 | 4.7 | 4.7 |
| Memory (RAM) | 3.9 | 3.9 | 4.9 |
| Graphics | 1.9 | 1.9 | 4.1 |
| Gaming graphics | 1.0 | 1.0 | 4.4 |
| Primary hard disk | 5.9 | 5.9 | 5.9 |
| Overall | 1.0 | 1.0 | 4.1 |
Thoughts
Processor: A little surprising given that VMware supports multiple cores but that Parallels doesn’t.
Memory: To be expected given that the VM was only running with less RAM.
Graphics: Disappointing and likely caused by the VM vendors graphics drivers not being WDM which based.
Gaming graphics: Very disappointing and caused by lack of DirectX 9 graphics support.
Hard disk: Like processor this is a pleasant surprise.
After my new 17″ MacBook Pro arrives (hopefully this Friday) I will produce another set of scores which should show how much faster the 2.6GHz is with all the options and let me compare like-for-like on the memory front.
I also want to run some Visual Studio 2008 build time comparisons (probably of SubSonic) because compilations are what really counts ;-) If you have any further suggestions for benchmarks, leave a comment!
[)amien
Parallels Desktop 3036 beta build out
Parallels have released a beta build of their excellent virtual machine for the Mac and it’s loaded with cool new features. Once out of beta it will be a free upgrade to existing owners.
The feature list runs something like this:
- Drag & drop files between Finder & Explorer for copying
- Boot from the Boot Camp partition (will require another activation and you loose suspend VM)
- Read/Write to the Boot Camp partition (NTFS or FAT)
- Use Mac clipboard cut/copy/paste short cuts in Windows (opt XCV)
- Graphics performance increases of up to 50%
- Windows auto resizes to Mac window size (about time)
- Coherence mode puts Windows application on the Mac desktop & DockBar instead of in the VM window
- Transporter lets you convert VMware and VirtualPC images to Parallels Desktop
- UI has been revised & polished throughout to be more Mac-like
It’s not all perfect though – some people have been reporting problems with Mac Pro systems and video driver support so waiting for a few days might be a good idea but it’s great progress.
Microsoft have a number of VirtualPC images available including the Visual Studio Orcas preview and the Internet Explorer 6 test platform. With Transporter you should just be able to convert them and get going although I would imagine the copy of XP will baulk and require re-activation :(
Now we just need virtualised multi-processors, 64-bit support and hardware accelerated 3D ;-)
Parallels has gained support for hardware accelerated 3D and VMware support for multiple cores/processors since this post was published.
[)amien
Parallels update and creating VM images from direct disk images
Parallels build 1966
This is now a very old build, check out the Parallels Desktop product page for the latest official release.
Parallels have put ‘internal build 1966′ of their excellent Mac virtual machine (VM) software Parallel Desktop up in their forums.
New enhancements and bug fixes include shared networking, OS installation assistant and various minor other fixes.
Seems solid so far (24 hours).
Creating a virtual disk from a real one
Parallels doesn’t support direct access to disk partitions but instead relies on it’s own virtual hard-disk-in-a-file system much like other VM solutions.
VMware have made available a Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) tool, currently free and in beta, that works only on Windows but can ‘hot clone’ systems in use. It supports a number of virtual formats including Virtual PC and Ghost but not Parallels.
Until either Parallels or VMware fill in the missing pieces check out colddiver’s solution on the forums.
[)amien
Switching from Boot Camp to Parallels
A few weeks ago I managed to screw up my Windows XP installation on my MacBook using some low-level tools and driver related stuff.
I’d already run out of space on the 30GB partition I’d allocated, I was missing the OS X side and not running any 3D applications so I took the plunge to remove the partition entirely and switch over to using the Parallels VM product I’d purchase instead.
Installation was a breeze and I soon had a clean XP install with Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, .NET Reflector, IE7 and a bunch of other useful tools for work operational again.
Whilst the speed isn’t as nippy as the raw Boot Camp option was it’s fast enough – certainly faster than the Pentium 4 box my client provided for development although having 2GB of RAM certainly helps.
With XP just running the dev tools this meant I could access my iTunes library on OS X whilst I work and get back to using Colloquay and Adium.
Safari crashes every time I try to blog post even though it doesn’t even try to support HTML editing abilities so Firefox and Camino are my staple on the Mac side.
I use a dual-monitor configuration during the day and Parallels works like a breeze with OS X on one display and Windows on the other. The mouse just glides between the two seamlessly – no clicking in/out or awkward keys to press to jump between the two although Parallels did need to be manually told what the resolution was.
It seems I’m not alone in choosing this set-up.
All Parallels need to do now is to enable the virtual machine to utilise multiple cores and 3D acceleration and it would be perfect.
Well, switching over to a Core 2 powered MacBook Pro with 4-8GB of RAM might be perfection… and a bigger hard-disk…
[)amien