Windows – Is parallels 7 better in performance then Vmware Fusion 4

parallels-desktopvirtualizationvmwarewindows

I got Vmware Fusion 4 when I bought my MAC Book Pro ( core i7 2.0Ghz Quad Core 6MB Cache, 4GB RAM and 500GB HDD). I installed Win7 first on Vmware and then later WinXp. In both case the Virtual Machine was slow, it lagged and even the host OS LION, started to lag.

I assigned 1.5GB to 700++MB RAM and also gave upto 4 cores, but performance was slow.
Did some research online and found that Parallels 7 is alternate to vmware. But is parallels 7 better in performance compared to vmware fusion 4?

Best Answer

Ars Technica recently did a rundown of the performance differences between Parallels 7 and VMware Fusion 4: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/10/virtual-showdown-parallels-desktop-7-and-vmware-fusion-4-reviewed.ars

The general takeaway seemed to me to be that Parallels is delivering better performance outside some very particular uses.