Fusion

Newest beta is out now. dx9 support, unity fixes and a whole bunch of new things. check it out

 

Tealrak, is Fusion free? I know they have a download from Apple's website, but my friend said it's about $70 which in that case, I would just buy Parallels for $80.

 

Fusion from the VMware's site about $80 with a $20 mail in rebate.

 

Hrm, even if Fusion was more expensive than Parallels, I'd probably just still buy Fusion. (and in fact, I did - except Fusion only cost like $40 at the time )

Unless Parallels makes massive improvements in performance in their next version of course.

At the moment, Fusion just has so many advantages over Parallels, and with this beta, the one area they were lacking in--DX9 support--has been addressed.

In theory anyway. I haven't tried anything requiring DX9 over it yet.

 

The most recent version of Parallels mad astounding improvements in efficiency.

 

Interesting find, taelrak. I'll check it out later and update the Windows on a Mac Guide.

 

i think i remember seeing some kind of free windows virtualizer thingy somehwere. check the links in my sig, might be on one o-them.

 

VMware Fusion costs $79, the same price as Parallels. They are offering a $20 rebate though, and if you pre-ordered (too late now ), you could get Fusion for $40.

Anyways, if you want my opinion, looking at both Parallels and VMware Fusion, I actually find Fusion to be better. VMware has years and years of experience in virtual machines, and they certainly brought it to Fusion. For example, Fusion has multi-core support, and also supports 64-bit OSes, both things which Parallels has yet to bring out. Previously, Parallels had the advantage of supporting DX9, but with the latest release of Fusion 1.1 Beta, Fusion supports DX9 (without shaders though) as well.

Anyways, since I wrote the guide comparing them, I don't want to "endorse" a particular side, but in my opinion, Fusion has more to offer over Parallels right now. Not that Parallels is bad either, though.

 

I don't know if it's appropriate to "advertise" something like this on the forum, but Macmall has Fusion for 45 bucks right now. I have never bought anything from them, and I have read some bad (and good) experiences from others on the forum, but that looks to be a pretty good price.

Edit: Also apparently requires dealing with a $20 mail in rebate.

 

No problem, Asics. Helping us members find good deals is a very commendable thing . As long as you're not affiliated with them in any way .

Pretty interesting...MacMall somehow manages to sell its products at such low prices compared to its competitors...makes you wonder if they're a reliable company to purchase from (especially since there are quite a large number of complaints about them compared to other retailers).

 

OK, another advertisement. $36.99 on Amazon right now after a $20 rebate. Now that's a good price!

 

If the DX9 support doesn't add actual shader support, I wonder what they really added? I suppose DirectSound, DirectX Media and the other sub APIs have been updated. Probably it's just a flag trick to make it appear to programs that DX9 is present so they won't complain on install. Ignoring games, even applications like CAD that want DX support, they want it for hardware GPU acceleration through shaders, so I'm not sure if it's really beneficial to flag DX9 so that programs can install but not support the shaders so they can actually run. I wonder if the current DX8.1 support actually has full shader support to GPU hardware, or is it done via software emulation on the CPU or just a DX8.1 flag without actually supporting shaders.

 

Parallels did do some nice improvements and fixes in their last update. Hopefully the trend continues.

Has anyone played any games in Fusion? My experience with games in Parallels has been across-the-board bad. (Not integrated-graphics-bad. Lousy-support-bad. I do know the difference. )

 

I have played games that don't require any sort of graphic processing power whatsoever and they work just fine - but I don't think that's what you're asking

No matter how much either advertises its gaming and directx support, gaming isn't something that's feasible for even a casual gamer. Even on my system and just doing normal things, I don't find the performance to be acceptable (and I'm using the more efficient of the two (Fusion), on a 2.4GHz, 2 cores devoted to the virtual image, with 4GB of RAM), not to mention gaming.

 

Zork ftw!