What's better? Parallels 8 vs Fusion 5 Virtual Machines

Running windows on my Mac has been a godsend for me. Ok so it means I pay for 2 operating systems but that is a small price to pay to have Office running without lag and use some windows apps that aren’t available for mac. But the question I keep asking myself is what one is better, Parallels 8 vs Fusion 5?

If you’re looking to run Windows on your Mac without having to resort to Bootcamp then going virtual will be good enough for the majority of users out there.

Granted you won’t be gaming the latest AAA titles but more sedate games such as WoW work fine (speaking from experience) and you’ll get away with Photoshop as well.

Parallels and Fusion are the main giants out there of the virtual machine world. There are a few free offerings out there which are capable but don’t have the development cycle but the main question is… What’s Better Parallels 8 vs Fusion 5.

MacTech Magazine has taken a look at the two most popular virtualization products for the Mac. They did an in-depth benchmarking analysis of the most recent versions of Parallels Desktop 8, and VMWare Fusion 5.

In the vast majority of our overall tests, Parallels Desktop 8 won. Again, if you count up the general tests (including the top 3D graphics scores), Parallels won 56% of the tests by 10% or more. If you include all the tests where Parallels was at least 5% faster, as well as the balance of the 3DMark06 graphics tests, Parallels increased the lead further.

Every percentage count’s when it comes to benchmarking and Parallels 8 get’s those all important percent units but…