I’m evaluating VMWare Fusion and Parallels 5 on my Mac OS X. Unfortunately for my job I need to have a system compatible with Windows XP and Windows 7.
The laptop I used as host for the test has the following characteristics:
I tested the new version of VMWare Fusion 3.0.1 (first update after the release of Parallels 5) with a default configuration (1 processor, 1GB RAM) on a fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit.
No tuning has been done.
The result of the PassMark benchmark for VMWare is 498.1:
I did the same test using Parallels 5 (default configuration, 1 Processor, 1GB RAM, 256 MB Video Card), the result is 577.7:

Parallels seems still leading the performance for 3D Graphics, in the complex test of 3D graphics VMWare shows between 2 and 3 fps (frames per second)
Paralles is faster with more than 10 fps
In this small test Parallels is clearly the fastest for 3D graphics.
The 2 products are very good, easy to use and with many options.
In conclusion, if you want to play 3D Windows games … buy a PC!
