If you want to try a new operating system, but don’t want to put your computer and data to the risk of being corrupted, virtual machines can come in handy. They are small programs simulating to be a completely independent system with CPU, GPU, memory, HDD, DVD drive and so on and can run another operating system parallel to the one you’re actually using.

There are three major virtual machines out there: VMware Player, Sun VirtualBox and Microsoft VirtualPC. I took a look at all of them and compared their strengths and weaknesses. If you want to read the full review, have a look at the posts below:

Assessing Virtual Machine Performance: #1 Microsoft Virtual PC

Assessing Virtual Machine Performance: #2 Sun Virtual Box

Assessing Virtual Machine Performance: #3 VMware Player

I will also write a short summary of each VM in this post, but for now the detailed reviews should be enough.

In this series, I’m going to focus on comparing different Virtual Machines running Windows and their performance regarding different tasks such as single-threaded CPU-only applications, multi-threaded programs or even games requiring hardware 3D acceleration.

This article will show you when and for what to use VMware Player.

VMware Player is quite similar to Sun Virtual Box. You can also configure almost everything, from CPU count over memory to graphics acceleration. VMware Player can’t assign more cores than the computer actually has to the VM, but features better hardware graphics acceleration and up to 256MB of video memory. This also enables Windows 7 to run Aero and the glass effects smoothly.

I installed Windows 7 64-bit in the VM and compared the performance to my native Windows 7 64-bit. Like in VirtualBox, hardware acceleration is supported, but not required. The installation is even easier than in VirtualBox: Tell VMware Player which OS you plan to install, and it automatically suggests hardware configuration and manages the installation process by clicking the right buttons. After installation, it will install the VMware tools that include 3D driver support and other programs that make using the VM more comfortable.

A nice function that both VirtualBox and VMware Player support is the option to assign devices either to the host OS or the virtual one. This enables the user to connect two mice and keyboards and assign them to host and virtual OS. Now the virtual OS can be moved to a second screen and both users can use the computer simultaneously.

Performance:

Settings:

CPU count: 2

RAM: 1500MB

GPU acceleration: yes, 256MB, DirectX 9

First of all, the Windows 7 System Rating shows that both CPU and GPU performance in the VM are quite good, only the memory is a bit too slow:

To test how strong the VM really is, I ran SuperPI and got these results: It took the VM 0.773 seconds longer to complete the calculation, which equals a performance loss of 3.3%. This is a quite good result, similar to Microsoft Virtual PC, but not as good as VirtualBox.

Since the graphics acceleration really seems to work here, I tried some games to prove it. Older games such asCall of Duty, Couter-Strike 1.6 and Civilization were running nicely, Warcraft 3 had some texturing problems, and quite new games like Call of Duty 5 – World at War didn’t really run (I got around 4 FPS).

All in all, VMware Player is quite good in all fields: CPU performance, GPU performance and ease of use (installation and VMware tools). Moreover, working with it felt smoother than in VirtualBox or Virtual PC, but that may be due to Aero. This means one can work with VMware Player and even play older games. Regarding the possibility to connect keyboard and mouse to the VM and moving it to a second screen basically enables you to create a second, virtual computer that allows another user to work, play or watch movies on the same hardware at the same time.

In this series, I’m going to focus on comparing different Virtual Machines running Windows and their performance regarding different tasks such as single-threaded CPU-only applications, multi-threaded programs or even games requiring hardware 3D acceleration.

This article will show you when and for what to use Sun VirtualBox.

For these tests, I used a quite uncommon configuration: I ran a virtual Windows 7 on my native Windows 7. Most users probably won’t do this, but there is a reason why I chose this OS configuration: Sun VirtualBox allows you to use more CPU cores than you actually have.

The OS installation with Virtual Box is quite easy, just insert your install DVD into the real drive, create a new VM with the hardware configuration you like and tell VirtualBox which OS you’re planning to install. Then allocate your DVD to the VM and start the installation. Worked greatly with Linux, Windows XP and Windows 7 and VirtualBox automatically installed its tools to enable automatic mouse grabbing and this kind of stuff.

In contrast to Microsoft Virtual PC, VirtualBox comes with GPU acceleration, but only allows you to use up to 128MB of video memory. Moreover, the drivers are still beta, so the performance is not as good as you would like it to be.

Performance:

For this test, I didn’t choose settings that any serious user would try, but decided to test the option of using 8 cores.

Settings:

CPU count: 8

RAM: 2048MB

GPU acceleration: yes, 128MB video memory

I searched for a benchmarking program that can use any number of threads and found wPrime. Since it can be scaled to 4 or 8 cores, it was capable of running on both my real quad-core and on the virtual octo-core and still using all the cores.

The virtual octo-core was 0.303 seconds slower, which equals 1.9% performance loss. This is quite surprising when you consider that four of the cores are just simulated and the real OS and processor have to split up the work somehow. These results are even better than the ones I got from Microsoft Virtual PC where the performance loss was about 3.9%.

Hardware graphics acceleration should be there, but don’t expect too much. The drivers are still beta, the video memory is just 128MB and the graphics performance of VMs has never been close to the CPU performance. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the DirectX acceleration to work, neither on Windows 7 64-bit nor on Windows XP 32-bit. That’s a pity because the only VM supporting graphics acceleration is VMware Player then.

All in all, VirtualBox is a really nice tool due to its possiblities of configuration such as using 8 cores, its easy installation and the CPU performance. There is no such feature as direct integration into the host OS as with Virtual PC, but nobody would expect such a feature, and the graphics power isn’t that awesome either, but still better than other VMs supplying just a standard VGA adapter without hardware acceleration or DirectX support.

In this series, I’m going to focus on comparing different Virtual Machines running Windows and their performance regarding different tasks such as single-threaded CPU-only applications, multi-threaded programs or even games requiring hardware 3D acceleration.

This article will show you when and for what to use Microsoft Virtual PC and the XP mode that comes with Windows 7.

The first thing to mention is the fact that Virtual PC requires hardware-assisted virtualization which must be supported by both CPU and mainboard. Many older and mainstream mainboards do not include this function and thus render the user unable to use Virtual PC. Most other Virtual Machines can profit from virtualization, but do not require it.

A nice feature Virtual PC has is that it can be directly embedded into the host OS (Windows 7). Like in other VMs, you can launch XP Mode normally in its own window with its own desktop and stuff, but all the programs you installed in XP Mode will be directly available from the Windows 7 start menu. Just click the shortcut, wait a few seconds for the VM to boot, and you will see your application running in an Windows XP environment, but the window is on your normal Windows 7 desktop.

Performance:

Settings:

CPU count: 1 (not adjustable)

RAM: 512MB (not adjustable)

GPU acceleration: no

Basically, Virtual PC doesn’t leave you the option to change any settings for your Virtual Machine, but if you really want to do so, you can edit the configuration file manually. Just open it with notepad and change the settings: C:\Users\Lennart\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Machines\Windows XP Mode.vmc

Since there is just one CPU and no graphics acceleration, I decided to test the only thing I can, CPU performance. I ran SuperPI first on the VM and then on my native Windows 7 and here is what you get:

The virtual Windows XP took just 0,848 longer than the native Windows 7, meaning a performance loss of 3.9%. This are really good values that basically enable you to work with applications running in the virtual machine as if they were running natively and you shouldn’t feel any slowdown (except for multi-threaded work such as video encoding).

All in all, Microsoft Virtual PC enables you to run old programs that can’t run on Windows 7 for some reason without any major loss in performance. Since there is no GPU support, you can’t use it for gaming, not even some very old games I tried were running. But if you just want to work, XP Mode will be a  good choice.