Vmware/Virtualbox: what is the very fastest one ?

[frenchn00b]

If you never tried Vmware, please do not vote
(and if you like Virtualbox without testing Vmware, please do not vote !)

Wanna emulate windows 98SE or 2000 or XP ,
(Vista ok, let's forget that word for the moment ;) )

Vmware/Virtualbox: What is the very fastest one ?

[Lord Xeb]

VirtualBox is rather fast, VMware is great. Either one is a good choice.

[frenchn00b]

VirtualBox is rather fast, VMware is great. Either one is a good choice.

We installed the last VMware and it looks like it is much faster than Virtualbox. That's our experience. Some installed Vmware, the last too ?

[mustang]

VirtualBox is faster than the free edition of VMWare. I've heard (and perhaps someone can confirm this) that the non-free version of VMWare is quite a bit faster.

[phrostbyte]

This is a flawed comparison because in terms of virtualization speed, the performance between them should be roughly equal. Virtualization is very much par to native performance with some caveats like video.

[bufsabre666]

when i finally got vm ware working, it was significantly faster than virtual box, although i like virtual box more

[jrusso2]

Yes you really need the vmware workstation which you pay for to get the fast one.

That being said I have heard Parallels is even faster.

[popch]

Restarting a suspended VM is very much faster in VirtualBox than in VMWare Workstation. Otherwise, I did not notice a marked difference in speed. However, I do not use applications in VMs where sheer speed is of the essence.

[frenchn00b]

After further trying ... it is very confirmed Virtualbox is slower than Vmware !! Virtualbox can also be sluggish time to time :)
pity

[zachtib]

I'm using VMware 6.5 beta, and it's great, even with the DEBUG mode turned on.

Plus, the new beta adds support for Unity Mode and DirectX 9

[frenchn00b]

from : http://www.linux-gamers.net/smartsection.item.56/virtualbox-vs-qemu.html
(bit old)


Benchmark
I used the Windows tool "FreshDiagnose" from FreshDevices to benchmark the two systems. To ensure that nothing falsifies the results, I killed all running applications on the hostsystem and rebooted the virtual machine.
VirtualBox Qemu VMware-player
CPU:
DhryStone ALU (MDIPS) 5,716 5,988 5,711
WhetStone FPU (MWIPS) 4,189 4,649 4,401
Multimedia Benchmark 2,152 268 2,071
Memory:
Integer Assignment 13,074 13,640 12,502
Real Assignment 13,782 14,270 14,176
Integer Split 18,027 19,554 18,885
Real Split 17,555 18,682 18,407
GFX:
Circles (Circles/s) 2,415 1,997 n/a
Rectangles (Rectangles) 3,123 6,548 n/a
Texts (Chars/s) 62,551 35,010 n/a
Harddisk:
Write Speed (MB/s) 8.65 12.44 6.07
Read Speed (MB/s) 14.65 23.22 4.68
Network:
Down Speed (MB/s) 4.9 2 5.3
Up Speed (MB/s) 5.2 2.3 4.1


Conclusions
VMware-Player does not seem to be that good and no real competitor to Virtualbox or Qemu after this benchmark and the Windows system running in the VMware-player didn't feel very smooth at all. That might be different, when the guest drivers are installed, but seems like they are only available with the commercial product.
Qemu and Virtualbox work great, Virtualbox feels much more smooth, but this might be mainly related to the "Guest Addition" drivers what makes the virtual machine feel like it would run on the physical hardware, e.g. the mouse doesn't lag like it does for Qemu.
Qemu is little bit faster in writing and reading files from/to the virtual harddisk, but the speed of the simulated network communication is very slow. Thus the communication between host and guest is very slow. A big advantage of Qemu is the support of multiple target architectures like powerpc, arm, mipsel and many more which are not supported by VirtualBox.

In summary:
VMware-Player did not meet the expectations I have to a professional product and I hope the commercial editions have a working installation process and make the guest operating system run more smooth.
I used Qemu wiht kqemu to run Windows as a virtual machine for a very long time period, but VirtualBox seems to be little bit better for this use case and the kernelmodule is also GPL, so I think it is time to switch.

But nevertheless the Qemu team and Innotek made really good work with those two projects. Thanks!

[popch]

from : http://www.linux-gamers.net/smartsection.item.56/virtualbox-vs-qemu.html


That might be different, when the guest drivers are installed, but seems like they are only available with the commercial product.

(bit old)

Testing VMWare Player without the VMWare Tools ruins the whole benchmark. The tools are available in the player, and running the player without the tools is a bit futile.

True, installing the Tools in a Linux guest might be a little more complicated than for other VM products. Installing them in Windows is straightforward.

[frenchn00b]

Testing VMWare Player without the VMWare Tools ruins the whole benchmark. Indeed ! :) VMware is a hit! Nothing to say.

[henryfranz2005]

hi I would try virtualbox on HP DV-1000 1GB ram centrino core-solo. I hope it would run. :)

[henryfranz2005]

Yeah, it's now working. Well and it's fast. Nice Virtual Box. Though I'll try vmware next time

[frenchn00b]

actually guys, the reply is QEMU

QEMU is faster than vmware and virtualbox ;) Kqemu does not make it far faster. QEMU is the best, and is in linux repositories.

http://www.linux-gamers.net/smartsection.item.56/virtualbox-vs-qemu.html