VMware versus Parallels, which is the fastest Windows virtualization for Mac OS X, using graphics software?

Speed testing Parallels Vs VMware Fusion running design software

Macintosh-based graphic designers often have to delve into Microsoft Windows for many reasons. And with Intel-based Macs there are many easy ways to do this.

Rather than buying a separate PC, designers now have the option of installing Windows XP or Vista directly onto their Macs, utilizing a tool from Apple called Boot Camp.

Although this is the fastest way to run Windows on a Mac (it runs it at the same speed as an equivalent PC), it requires booting up the computer separately. This is where virtual software such as Parallels and VMware Fusion come in handy.

Running Windows software on a Mac using virtualization tools is not as fast as Boot Camp, but it allows designers to keep working in OS X, whilst running different versions of Windows at the same time. It even allows users to share documents and to drag and drop files between the Mac and the virtual PC environment.

But how useful are these emulation tools for designers using graphics applications like Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Acrobat or QuarkXpress? What is the performance of software like Photoshop under virtual Windows? Are there any speed test benchmarks?

How fast is Adobe Photoshop under Parallels or VMware for OS X?

Well the quick answer is that one wouldn't advise running Photoshop under Parallels or VMware by preference. Or most resource intensive applications for that matter. But perhaps you only have a Windows version of one of these tools? Or maybe a client has supplied a document in a PC version of InDesign or Quark, with PC fonts, and you want to open it within the same environment without having to keep rebooting, or wandering into another office to use their PC? Or maybe you just want to quickly check that an Acrobat PDF looks the same under Windows, as it does on the Mac version?

Which is faster, VMware or Parallels?

Not as easy a question to answer as you might think. When comparing Parallels versus VMware Fusion, there are many parameters to look into. Of course, we are not concerned with a complete product evaluation. To keep in mind the graphic arts nature of this site, we we devised a few performance tests that were predominantly aimed at graphic arts software applications. The aim was to find out is Parallels faster than VMware, or visa versa, when using design software?

Windows Vista and Windows XP on Parallels and VMware Fusion

An important factor to take into account is the choice of Windows installation. We chose to run Photoshop and InDesign on Windows Vista Business Edition under both VMWare and Parallels. Whilst it might be true that

the test results may have been somewhat faster overall under Windows XP, we wanted to test the performance under Microsoft's latest operating system. It is also possible that either VMWare Fusion or Parallels may have excelled had we used Windows XP as the testing platform. And of course as updates are released, performance issues can often change. For the record we used VMware Fusion Version 1.0 (51348) and Parallels Desktop 3.0 Build 5160.0.

Testing conditions

The tests were carried out on a MacBook Pro 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, with 3GB of RAM, running Mac OS X 10.4.10. Both VMWare Fusion and Parallels were given 1024 MB of RAM. We know that this is low for Windows Vista (and indeed Photoshop), but we wanted to recreate to some degree the conditions that designers might be under when running these applications in a virtual environment. Clearly any use of Photoshop or InDesign in a virtual environment would be a stop-gap, alongside other applications, rather than a permanent solution. Otherwise the installations remained as default. VMWare Fusion does have the ability to run in dual processor mode, but the results for our tests produced so negligible a difference, to the point that it was not even worth publishing the results. The Macintosh and each virtual machine were rebooted between tests and only one software application was run at any one time. The Adobe applications we used were from the Creative Suite 3 (CS3) bundles.

Finally

Virtualization is a complex technology and software tasks may function differently under different test scenarios, other Macintosh computers, versions of OS X and memory configurations. As such, we wouldn't advise basing a buying decision on these test results alone. Your mileage may vary and these speed tests should be taken as no more than an experimental guideline. Demo versions of both Parallels and VMware are currently available and it may be advisable to try each product out on your own system before committing to one or the other.

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