2015 VM Benchmarks: Parallels 11 vs. Fusion 8 vs. VirtualBox 5

Mac Pro: Gaming Benchmarks

As we mentioned earlier, a new part of our tests this year is a quick look at how Parallels and Fusion perform on faster hardware. We’re interested not only in which one is faster, but also how they compare to native Boot Camp performance and if the addition of more cores or more powerful GPUs could reverse the trends we saw in the MacBook Pro tests.

Unlike our earlier tests, we’re only looking at Parallels 11 and Fusion 8 here, as we’re interested in maximum performance and VirtualBox isn’t capable of competing at that level. We configured our VMs on the Mac Pro with 12 virtual CPUs, 32GB of RAM, and 2GB of graphics memory and then set out to run a selection of our benchmark tests that focus on graphics and processing power.

We’ve already described these tests in earlier pages for the MacBook Pro, so we won’t repeat our descriptions again for the Mac Pro. We’ll only make a brief comment or two for each section on the results from the tests. First up is 3DMark:

With DirectX 9, we see similar results to the Ice Storm tests performed on the MacBook Pro, with Fusion 8 enjoying a huge lead when it comes to graphics, and just about equal to Parallels in CPU-heavy physics calculations. Still, neither Parallels nor Fusion can come close to the native performance of two D500 GPUs.

Once again similar to the MacBook Pro results, both Parallels and Fusion struggle when it comes to DirectX 10, indicating that, even though both products now support the API, they have a long way to go to perfect and optimize performance.

Here’s a result that provides one of the interesting angles we were looking for. While Fusion 8 beats Parallels 11 in 3DMark06 on the MacBook Pro, the order is flipped when Parallels is given more power to play with, and it comes in just ahead of Fusion 8 in every category.

We end with a quick look at OpenGL performance in FurMark, and see the same basic trend as that revealed in the MacBook Pro tests. Fusion 8’s superior OpenGL graphics implementation results in a score that’s 66 percent higher than Parallels 11 at 720p, and 92 percent higher at 1080p.

Table of Contents

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1. Introduction
2. Test Setup & Methodology
3. Geekbench
4. 3DMark
5. FurMark OpenGL
6. Cinebench R15
7. PCMark 8
8. Passmark PerformanceTest
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9. Video Encoding
10. File Transfers
11. USB 3.0 Speed
12. Virtual Machine Management
13. Battery Life
14. Mac Pro: Gaming
15. Mac Pro: CPU
16. Conclusions
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