VMWare Fusion + Windows 7 + MBP Retina?

All the drivers will be fine as they are vmware's own within the guest machine

I'm not to worried about drivers. I'm more worried as to how it will scale and look on the retina screen.

Windows 7 Display Drivers

I've installed VMWare Fusion on my MBPRD and my issue seems to be display driver related. The only thing that seems to work is the VMWare SVGA 3D driver which is ancient and Aero doesn't work. Does anyone know what display drivers should be used to achieve any of the virtual 3D card effects? Thanks.

BrianB803 said:

I've installed VMWare Fusion on my MBPRD and my issue seems to be display driver related. The only thing that seems to work is the VMWare SVGA 3D driver which is ancient and Aero doesn't work. Does anyone know what display drivers should be used to achieve any of the virtual 3D card effects? Thanks.

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I would hope that's a short term problem. I have used VMware Fusion for going on 5 years and the company has been very good about providing Windows drivers that work with current Mac technology. Thus, I can't believe they won't roll out drivers to accommodate the Retina display before long.

I moved my Windows 7 VM over from my Air to my RMBP and had some really weird behavior. I'm running the RMBP in 1920x1200 mode, and this caused the VM when in full screen to set its resolution to 3840x2400. Basically everything ended up being SUPER tiny, and ultra blurry.

If I run the VM in windowed mode, or unity mode, everything works perfectly. If I run full screen mode and manually set the resolution to 1920x1200, it also works perfectly except sometimes it'll flip back to tiny-blurry vision...

I think there are some kinks to be worked out, but it's still very usable.

The VM thinks its native resolution is the non-retina equivalent. Running in 1440x900 HiDPI mode, VMware and Parallels both show fuzzy 1440x900 images. I hope they update it soon!

Ozy said:

The VM thinks its native resolution is the non-retina equivalent. Running in 1440x900 HiDPI mode, VMware and Parallels both show fuzzy 1440x900 images. I hope they update it soon!

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I thought parallels got updated already to support retina?

daleski75 said:

I thought parallels got updated already to support retina?

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Changelog shows Retina display support, but there are other bugs. It crashes on Ubuntu on startup, and is a complaint on the Parallels forum.

I'm also not exactly sure what to expect from VMware or Parallels when it comes to Retina. Are we hoping to be able to run the VMs at a much higher resolution independent from OSX's native resolution?

Ozy said:

Changelog shows Retina display support, but there are other bugs. It crashes on Ubuntu on startup, and is a complaint on the Parallels forum.

I'm also not exactly sure what to expect from VMware or Parallels when it comes to Retina. Are we hoping to be able to run the VMs at a much higher resolution independent from OSX's native resolution?

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Not sure it's difficult to tell really but hopefully they will fix all the bugs given time.

The current VM Fusion version wasn't made with retina display in mind, so there will more than llikely be driver updates for it or they will bring out version 5.

You could try a util called SwitchResX or have a look at this....

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/15049251/

HTH

MadTester said:

The current VM Fusion version wasn't made with retina display in mind, so there will more than llikely be driver updates for it or they will bring out version 5.

You could try a util called SwitchResX or have a look at this....

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/15049251/

HTH

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I have used SwitchResX and its quite awesome. But honestly, in my aging years (36), I'm not finding the native 1440x900 that bad. My prior MBP was a 1680x1050 and I found myself zooming in a bit using ^(scroll up/down). I am hoping that Retina support in VMware and Parallels simply lets us set higher resolutions inside the VM than the OS X host resolution. I'd like a 1680x1050 w7 VM running on my OSX 1440x900 HiDPI desktop windowed.

It seems, as far as I can see, that the only thing Retina support added to Parallels is increased resolution on the application's images, text, and background assets.

If you look on this thread on Page 5 there are a couple of screenshots with native resolution using Parallels so I'm sure VMWare will catch up soon.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1387363/

Ozy said:

I have used SwitchResX and its quite awesome. But honestly, in my aging years (36), I'm not finding the native 1440x900 that bad. My prior MBP was a 1680x1050 and I found myself zooming in a bit using ^(scroll up/down). I am hoping that Retina support in VMware and Parallels simply lets us set higher resolutions inside the VM than the OS X host resolution. I'd like a 1680x1050 w7 VM running on my OSX 1440x900 HiDPI desktop windowed.

It seems, as far as I can see, that the only thing Retina support added to Parallels is increased resolution on the application's images, text, and background assets.

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Agreed... maybe i'm fortunate/unfortunate not to have the rMBP (even though it's rather tempting) as I have a 15" hi-res matt uMBP (October2011). It will serve me for the next however long it will last.....

BTW @covertsurfer.... did/do you read posts before you reply?

How is your CPU-Usage of vmware while the vm is idle? On my RMBP vmware-vmx takes about 30% while the VM is at 0%

Latest VMWare Fusion + Windows 8 + MBPR

I moved my Windows 8 Release Preview from my Air to my new MBPR and, like others on the site, was greeted with the new ultra resolution and everything seemed way too small and the login screen did not render correctly.

I accidentally discovered a quirky work around with out having to moving out of full screen mode:

While the VM is running at or past the login screen, not the bios boot up do the following:

- Open the Virtual Machine > Settings menu.
- Select the Display option.
- Double click the disabled "Accelerated 3D Graphics" rocker switch
- Presto Fusion turns off the dialog and switches to scaled mode and everything sizes accordingly, slightly pixelated but much more usable IMO.

*Incidentally "Accelerated 3D Graphics" is selected ON in my Virtual Machine. I do not know if it works if it were OFF.

Hope this helps

amorph said:

How is your CPU-Usage of vmware while the vm is idle? On my RMBP vmware-vmx takes about 30% while the VM is at 0%

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in Parallels my win 7 guest is only using around 3-7% on idle with some short bursts to 15-20%

amorph said:

How is your CPU-Usage of vmware while the vm is idle? On my RMBP vmware-vmx takes about 30% while the VM is at 0%

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same thing for me

I installed WMWare Fusion and Windows 7 on rMBP yesterday and it ran fine.
You just have to toggle the fullscreen control for the resolution to auto adjust to whatever your current mac setting. It's not a big deal. I'm perfectly happy with the setup. Highly recommended!
I'll be installing Visual Studio and SQL server next.

Overall, I'm very satisfied with my purchase.

I can use retina, because is not possible downgrade the resolution... with retina is too small!

how can use retina with a decent resolution?