Hello,
I've a simple question:
I've an AMD 64 AtlonX2 without the virtualization support.
How Parrallels or VMWare run on it ?
Are the performance with these processors are more like a basic emulator in software emulation ?

I found the performance of both pretty bad on my Pentium D 820 w/GeForce 6800. My goal was to use Netflix' new 'watch it now' feature and since it requires XP/IE I installed them under VMWare & Parallels. With the Parallels install, the performance was completely unwatchable and VMWare crashed. Unless you have a pretty new machine I doubt your performance will feel native.

They are faster than emulators.

I ran PearPC with Mac OS X, very poor performace, only to see or play with some things.

Also I used to have VirtualPC on my PowerBook but again only for desperate needs.

Now I have this Opty PC, VMware and Parallels both have descent speed performance.

As far as I read from other testers (I'm still looking for a GOOD STAR for VMWare beta registration...) Parallels is faster than VMWare but this one is still a beta...

Parallels performes better in general performance..
VMware Fusion in graphical performance.

I recently tested out the beta3 of Fusion on my Opteron system and I find it much more fluid than Parallels on the same machine.
(Fusion versions prior to this all had debugging support turned on with no way to turn it off)

I haven't tried the newest Parallels, but I just tested the new VMWare Fusion compared to the previous version of Parallels, and Parallels is quite a bit faster. In benchmarks it got about 50% faster than VMWare, probably because VMWare is using so much of the CPU just to run, and had less available to give Windows.

Are you on Intel or AMD CPU?

On my Opteron without virtualization support, Fusion seems to run better. Parallels has minor hiccups at times.
And my CPU utilization is minimal for both.

Did you use SCSI disk mode for Fusion? Its suppose to be faster. Did you pick virtual single or dual processors? Same for both programs?

Hi, I haven't tried the newest Parallels but the previous one works fine on my AMD X2 3800+
Parallels is really faster than VirtualPC on my G4 and G5

I'm on an Intel Pentium 4 630 (no VT). I can't set the disk mode since it's using the actual hard drive Windows is installed on (80GB SATA II). I tested Parallels with only single CPU because there doesn't seem to be a setting to use multiple. VMWare was set to use both cores, and was faster for multithreaded applications because of this (slightly), but slower for single threaded.