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VMWare Releases 3.1 Fusion Update - 35% Faster App Performance, 5X Faster 3D Graphics


New in 3.1: Support up to 8-cores (Up from 4)

VMWare has just launched the latest update to their popular virtualization program for the Mac. VMWare Fusion allows users to run Windows applications alongside Mac OS X applications on their Intel Macs. Version 3.1 represents a major update with a focus on performance. According to VMWare, the new version is 35% faster overall than the previous 3.0 release with 3D graphics seeing up to 5X speed boosts.

Take advantage of faster than ever end-to-end performance and improved 3D graphics. Greatly improved Windows Aero performance and OpenGL 2.1 support for Windows Vista and Windows 7 delivers up to 5X better 3D graphics performance. Experience faster application launching, more seamless scrolling, quicker resume from suspend, and better overall disk performance. Additional improvements to make your experience more simple and Mac-like include support for overlapping Unity windows in Expos and Dock Expos, as well as the new USB EasyConnect feature to easily assign USB devices to your PC or Mac.

A full list of new features can be found VMWare's site. The 3.1 update is free for existing 3.0 customers. Customers with an earlier version of VMWare Fusion can upgrade for $39.99 while the price for brand new customers is $79.99. A free demo is also available.

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23 months ago
Based on the picture I would assume that assigning more virtual cores is something new in VMWare fusion. Just like to point out that Parallels has had this for a while. In fact I have two Win7 parallels machines running right now with 3D graphics and its amazingly fast for virtualization.
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23 months ago

Based on the picture I would assume that assigning more virtual cores is something new in VMWare fusion. Just like to point out that Parallels has had this for a while. In fact I have two Win7 parallels machines running right now with 3D graphics and its amazingly fast for virtualization.


It's 8, up from 4 in Fusion 3.0. Looks like Parallels can do 8 as of their 4.0.

arn
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23 months ago

Customers with an earlier version of VMWare Fusion can upgrade for $39.99 while the price for brand new customers is $79.99.


Yikes, that's a bit of a price hike! It only cost $40 to buy Fusion 1 (with a free upgrade to 2) in the first place.
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23 months ago
Really hope this helps me successfully import my parallels VM. Have been trying (with the help of VMWare tech support) for over a week now. Sigh!
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23 months ago
It's BS. They always throw out crazy numbers.
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23 months ago
I really hope it's faster… I was just complaining today that it was just hogging every resource my machine had, 2.66 MBP 4GB/Ram. I have very menial tasks for VM Ware and my experience with the older version of parallels was MUCH better than VM Ware.
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23 months ago
Looks like VMWare has improve it such much, but im using right now parallels 5.0.93 and it's blazing fast and user friendly. Which one is better? :confused:
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23 months ago
I'll be downloading it right away. I was already though very pleased running Win 7 and MS Office 2007/2010 through VMware 3. Even in unity mode (given enough RAM) it is pretty much like running a dedicated Win box.
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23 months ago
Running much much faster for me, but I suspect that's because my previous installation was screwed up.
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23 months ago
Interested to see how it compares to Parallels 5.
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