I have conducted two CINEBENCH benchmarks: 1) Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2 ( 2.5GB RAM - other 1.5GB were taken by virtual machine ) 2) Parallels Desktop 7 + Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit ( Hard drive: 128GB; RAM: 1.5GB, CPUs: 8 ) The testing machine is Macbook Pro 2011 with i7-2720QM quad core Sandy Bridge CPU and AMD Radeon HD 6750M GPU. All the programs were shutdown before the benchmarks, and AMD Radeon GPU was selected using gfxCardStatus. Summary: 1) CPU, CPU (Single Core), CPU MP ratio: The difference between CPU benchmark results was very small: from 5% to 2%. That means Parallels Desktop 7 has excellent CPU optimization. 2) OpenGL, OpenGL Reference Match: The OpenGL Reference Match results were the same - 99.30%, which is a good news. However, the difference between OpenGL benchmarks was really disappointing: while Mac OS X result was equal to 39.02, the Parallels Desktop 7 achieved only 20.01 - nearly 2 times worse! Maybe it is a good result for Virtual Machine, but for those people (like me) who uses VM as a replacement to Boot Camp, it does not seems so. Please, put more efforts in Parallels Graphics Drivers development and optimization!
The great improvement of graphic drivers I have conducted new CINEBENCH benchmarks today with a new version of Parallels Desktop 7 - 7.0.15055.740667 All the other parts of testing environment are the same as in previous time, just one exception: Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 version. All the programs were shutdown before the benchmarks, and AMD Radeon GPU was selected using gfxCardStatus. Summary: 1) OpenGL Benchmark: Mac OS X results: 38.87 (0.5% worse, don't know why) Parallels Desktop 7 + Windows 7 Ultimate results: 28.79 (vs previous 20.01) The benchmarks results are 1.5 times better than in previous time (1.44x, if to be specific), and only 1.35 times worse than Mac OS X results - while earlier they were 2 times worse! That graphic drivers improvement is really outstanding! Congratulations, Parallels Team! If it will continue in such a way, no one will need Bootcamp for gaming anymore! ;-) 2) CPU Benchmarks and OpenGL Reference Match: The results are the same as in previous time.
Hi MacGamer404, I too agree with you they should put more effort in optimization and graphics driver development __________________ Macbook Pro 17 2.8Ghz; Host OS: Snow Leopard 10.6.2, 32-bit;Guest OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64... Proud