VMWare from Boot Camp or Virtual?

[millerrh]

A friend of mine told me that Parallels and VMWare run Windows faster if it is through a virtual machine rather than if it grabs it from your Boot Camp partition.

Is there any truth to this?

After upgrading to Leopard, I need to install Windows again and found it to be rather sluggish off my boot camp partition in Tiger. If that will be improved by just doing a virtual machine I'll likely go that route.

 

[Neil321]

Bootcamp runs xp at native speeds and will always be faster than though
a VM

 

[72930]

Bootcamp runs xp at native speeds and will always be faster than though
a VM

You are missing the OPs point.

RAM, not machine type is the big factor in speed, but with a VM you get better goodies like quick suspension of the installation etc

 

[millerrh]

Bootcamp runs xp at native speeds and will always be faster than though
a VM

Yeah, I realize that. Boot Camp natively is always going to be faster. But that wasn't what I was after.

My question is that when running virtually, is it faster to run through VMWare's own virtual pc or is it faster for it to reference your boot camp partition? Or does it not really matter?

I figured it didn't matter and was a function of the amount of RAM you have allocated. But my friend insists that it is faster if it doesn't use your Boot Camp partition.

 

[Neil321]

yep sorry about that.just tried running fusion both ways you mention and have noticed no notable
differences

 

[millerrh]

yep sorry about that. Ive tried fusion both with & without a xp partition
and cant notice any difference

So therefore it's probably always better to have a Boot Camp and then have VMWare recognize it. That way if you ever need native speeds, you can always boot into it. Thanks!

 

[SaSaSushi]

So therefore it's probably always better to have a Boot Camp and then have VMWare recognize it. That way if you ever need native speeds, you can always boot into it. Thanks!

I've run VMs in the past and noticed no major speed differences between them and accessing my Boot Camp install from VMware.

My reasons for using Boot Camp with Fusion are different: I save HD space and I only have one install of Windows to worry about. One is more than enough for me. I only boot into Windows when I want to play games.

Since upgrading to 4GB of RAM on my iMac, Windows runs no noticeably slower under Fusion than it does if I use Boot Camp (games being the exception of course). RAM is the biggest concern in running virtual machines out of OS X. 2GB wasn't enough for me personally. It would lock up the machine entirely at times depending on what I was running. Now both OSes run as if the other isn't there.