Any MS Visual Studio developers happy with rMBP and virtualization?

Just curious if there's anyone here that uses a rMBP for Visual Studio development, and if they have the same problems I've had.

Problem I was trying to solve: I thought it would be great to just have one computer for all of my development, instead of splitting time between my windows systems and macbook air for different software/environments. I do spend a significant amount of time in Windows 8 with visual studio 2012, but also wanted a system for web development and testing iOS devices with xcode emulators etc.

Solution I am testing: I purchased a 15 rMBP with 16gb of ram for better virtualization, although I think I could have got away with 8gb. I installed windows 8 pro on parallels.

Issue 1: Heat/Noise - I know a certain amount of heat is likely coming from the fact that the dedicated GPU kicks in with parallels in use. I can change that behavior and just use integrated I believe, but I was surprised how loud/hot the system got just using a virtual machine (not doing much inside the machine, it was just running idle). I guess I was hoping the fancy new vents on the sides would keep the noise down...I think I was wrong.

Issue 2: Core speed doesn't change with processors on VM. I noticed within the virtual machine my cpu core speed never goes above 2.3ghz. Unfortunately this causes issue when I'm compiling software. On a comparable ivy bridge laptop that has turbo boost to 3.3ghz, the new rMBP builds my software in about 27-30 seconds, whereas the older windows laptop builds it in about 14 seconds. It doesn't seem like a huge difference to some, but it makes a difference throughout the day compiling and testing software....curious if anyone has a fix for this on parallels/vmware too. I'm guessing I just never noticed before, but it sucks to lose 1ghz of speed on a core that is compiling....it makes a difference.

Issue 3: Scaling on the virtual machine is a bit wonky due to the retina display. I know this is likely due to windows 8 not being quite as good as the mac at scaling, but it's a little annoying when the virtual machine looks a lot different than you expect.

I know most people are probably thinking the best solution would be to just give up windows development , but that's not an option right now for me. Any suggestions to improve my experience are appreciated. I'm still evaluating but leaning toward just going back to my two system rodeo with the air + windows laptop.

 

Thanks for all the responses/suggestions.

I'm going to try to shut off the dedicated GPU for parallels, that should help with the heat/battery life. The heat is pretty bad really...I guess it makes sense since the 750m is just a higher clocked 650m. The keyboard gets hot if you push parallels at all with DX10, I switched to 9 and we'll see how that goes.

Another option might be to just get the iris pro version of the 15, then bootcamp can access the intel card and get good battery life while dedicated in the windows environment.

I have a desktop that I can just use to code/RDP to, but if I'm out and about, RDP from a coffee shop isn't always the fastest/most enjoyable solution.

As far as off loading compiles to a build server, that really isn't a solution to my problem, for someone who is writing a lot of code/compiling/testing your software before you push and integrate with a team. I setup a central build server that does some packaging and testing....but before we push software we typically compile/test a lot locally. To me the build server has multiple purposes, but compiling for me (on a blind push?) isn't one of them....and I have to compile to test what I write . I'd assume most people do the same under visual studio/c# style WPF development.

Unfortunately Apple has blocked windows once again from using the integrated GPU in bootcamp, so battery life/heat will be bad again.

I'll keep testing and see if I can find some decent workarounds. Overall the performance is good, but when you spend $2500+ on a laptop, performance needs to be great/outstanding.