VMWare 3 upgrade worthwhile? (I have 2.x now)

[mtbdudex]

I'm running VMWare 2.0.7 on my 4 month old iMac 27" i7 machine, with Windows XP.

I mostly use the software for my Astrophotography stuff, lots of programs are only WinTel.

Is it worthwhile for me to spend $39 to upgrade from 2.0.7 to 3.1?

I can assign 2 of the i7 processors now, per what I read 3.1 will allow me to assign all 4? That could help speed up some of my star trails stuff and image stacking.....
(100's of images being processed take hours)

So, for those that have upgraded 2.0,7 > 3.1 would you do it again?
Have you noticed real world improvements?
Just trying to gather info before I spend $39.

 

[gwerhart0800]

I don't run any CPU intensive things in my WinXP VM. I have an '08 MBP that has VMWare Fusion 2.0.7 and an '07 Mac Mini that I upgraded to Fusion 3.1. Frankly, I don't see any difference in performance between the two versions beyond the host CPU differences. Since I don't have 4 cores available, I can't report how much that changes things. The changes for graphics and video game performance would probably only show up for graphics intensive applications. The Astro software I used to use for image stacking was compute intensive, not graphics intensive.

So, assuming Fusion 3 will let you assign more than 2 cores to a VM, you might see the improvement you are looking for. I expect that that would be the only real benefit for upgrading. The other changes don't seem to change performance much for non-graphics intensive tasks.

 

[jlc1978]

I'm running VMWare 2.0.7 on my 4 month old iMac 27" i7 machine, with Windows XP.

I mostly use the software for my Astrophotography stuff, lots of programs are only WinTel.

Is it worthwhile for me to spend $39 to upgrade from 2.0.7 to 3.1?

Unless you have performance issues I'd wait until Fry's (frys.com) offers it for free or below$20 after rebate. You can mail order from Fry's if there isn't one next to you.

I went that way from 2 to 3 and Win7.

 

[mtbdudex]

Thx jlc1978 and gwerhart0800 for feedback.

Never knew about the good Frys offers, none here in Michigan so I'll check online. I've been to Frys near Phoenix AZ before, nice huge store.

 

[MacDuff2000]

Never had 2.x, but I found 3.0 annoying because by default you had to type an admin password to start a VM.

3.1 let you turn this off.

 

[Zortrium]

I've owned Fusion since version 1. Version 3 was a little flaky, but 3.1 is both rock solid and so much faster than version 2. Can't think of any reason not to upgrade.