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Best VMware setting for MBP

yusukeaoki

yusukeaoki

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Mar 22, 2011
2,550
6
Tokyo, Japan
Hi guys.
I own a 2011 MBP 2.2GHz i7 with 4GB of RAM.
Recently I got VMware Fusion and Windows 7 Ultimate.

The question is, what is the best setting for the VMware to run heavy applications?
Currently I set it to 2 Cores and 2.5GB of RAM.
(VM warns not to set over 3.5GB of RAM)

The setting for the RAM is anything what you want in the range of memory you have.
However, my question is the CPU.
Because its a quadcore and has hyperthreading technology, the computer sees it as 8 cores.

The setting for VMware is:
1 Core
2 Cores
4 Cores
8 Cores

Do you think using 4 physical cores and 2.5GB RAM is necessary?
I haven't ran much heavy app yet on 2 cores, 2.5GB.
I'm worried that using 4 cores can actually make my OSX much more heavier. (Using 2 cores sometimes lags between OSX and 7)
What do you guys think?
 
Someone correct me if I am wrong here but since your MBP has 8 cores (being a quad) run it at 4cores and 2gb / 2.5gb of ram. You'll be fine. I would however recommend upgrading your ram to 8gb to split 4gb on VM and 4 to OS X. From what I've read it 4gb makes a tremendous difference between 2gb - 2.5gb.
 
AFPoster said:
Someone correct me if I am wrong here but since your MBP has 8 cores (being a quad) run it at 4cores and 2gb / 2.5gb of ram. You'll be fine. I would however recommend upgrading your ram to 8gb to split 4gb on VM and 4 to OS X. From what I've read it 4gb makes a tremendous difference between 2gb - 2.5gb.
Click to expand...

I see, Thank you!
I will be purchasing the 8GB from newegg ASAP :)
 
Sincerely it doesnt matter, the quad can handle that load quite easily, the improvement will come from the HDD speed and the amount of memory I would just set all the cores to the vms, it isnt going to use them all at its fullest nor OSX, thus it wont lag due to the processor.
 
Has anyone notices that the mouse movement is jerky and erratic in Fusion 7? I don't think its an improvement on Fusion 6 thats for sure. Not impressed so far.
 
Sym0 said:
Has anyone notices that the mouse movement is jerky and erratic in Fusion 7? I don't think its an improvement on Fusion 6 thats for sure. Not impressed so far.
Click to expand...

Have you installed VMware Tools?

Quite a number of newbies run a VM without installing the tools needed for emulated graphics and other drivers.

----------
yusukeaoki said:
Hi guys.
I own a 2011 MBP 2.2GHz i7 with 4GB of RAM.
Recently I got VMware Fusion and Windows 7 Ultimate.

The question is, what is the best setting for the VMware to run heavy applications?
Currently I set it to 2 Cores and 2.5GB of RAM.
(VM warns not to set over 3.5GB of RAM)

The setting for the RAM is anything what you want in the range of memory you have.
However, my question is the CPU.
Because its a quadcore and has hyperthreading technology, the computer sees it as 8 cores.

The setting for VMware is:
1 Core
2 Cores
4 Cores
8 Cores

Do you think using 4 physical cores and 2.5GB RAM is necessary?
I haven't ran much heavy app yet on 2 cores, 2.5GB.
I'm worried that using 4 cores can actually make my OSX much more heavier. (Using 2 cores sometimes lags between OSX and 7)
What do you guys think?
Click to expand...

Myself, I assign 4 VM cores and 4GB of RAM to a 64-bit Windows VM, out of a total of 16GB of RAM (early-2011 15" MBP, 2.3GHz i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB 840 Pro, 1GB 6750M and antiglare display)

On a processor with hyper threading, one physical core is identified as two cores by VMware.

All Macs have hyper threading, except iMacs with i5 processors.

So 4 VM cores would be equal to 2 physical cores.
 
yjchua95 said:
Have you installed VMware Tools?

Quite a number of newbies run a VM without installing the tools needed for emulated graphics and other drivers.

----------



Myself, I assign 4 VM cores and 4GB of RAM to a 64-bit Windows VM, out of a total of 16GB of RAM (early-2011 15" MBP, 2.3GHz i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB 840 Pro, 1GB 6750M and antiglare display)

On a processor with hyper threading, one physical core is identified as two cores by VMware.

All Macs have hyper threading, except iMacs with i5 processors.

So 4 VM cores would be equal to 2 physical cores.
Click to expand...

How do you do this? Can't work it out... pretty sure this was automatic with version 6

OK worked it out, but it just installed the same version 9.8.3 so...
 
Last edited:
yjchua95 said:
So 4 VM cores would be equal to 2 physical cores.
Click to expand...
No 4 VM cores is equal to 4 physical cores without hyperthreading if the host has no other load.
Like MM said one can just set the max cores or as many physical as there are. The host decides how much load each real core has to handle. If you assign 8 cores it just means the VM can use all the available power but OSX can still use all of it if the VM currently is sitting idle.

4 physical cores without hyperthreading is about 80% of max performance.
8 logical cores is 100%.
To the VM it just means how many parallel threads it can schedule but the host decides on how many real cores they run. If you load OSX a lot all 4 VM threads might end up running on only one real core because the rest is used by the host.

Set never less than 2 cores in the VM because with only 1 performance will be worse.
Set 4 for higher performance needs. It is 80% effectively.
Set 6 or 8 if you don't run any long running background tasks in the VM.

Only long running jobs in the VM like encoding a file will be a problem for OSX responsivness with 4 or 8 cores. This is why you can limit the vm resources. Stuff that needs user interaction to create load will not be a problem for OSX even with 8 cores assigned, because context switching is very fast and one system will be idle as you are just one person.
 
yjchua95 said:
Myself, I assign 4 VM cores and 4GB of RAM to a 64-bit Windows VM
Click to expand...
I run with 8GB of ram, just because I want to give windows that extra. I'm working though the process if I need to give it 2 or 4 cores. I'm rocking with 2 right now, and performance is decent. I'll be trying 4 later an comparing.
 
maflynn said:
I run with 8GB of ram, just because I want to give windows that extra. I'm working though the process if I need to give it 2 or 4 cores. I'm rocking with 2 right now, and performance is decent. I'll be trying 4 later an comparing.
Click to expand...

I find that if I assign two virtual cores to it (one physical core), it's slow as a dog when processing updates and running antivirus scans.

Having 4 virtual cores (2 physical cores) greatly speeds things up.
 
Sym0 said:
How do you do this? Can't work it out... pretty sure this was automatic with version 6

OK worked it out, but it just installed the same version 9.8.3 so...
Click to expand...

Graphics performance is greatly improved in Fusion 7 (I'm running the Pro variant).

Stuttering has almost completely disappeared (running a Windows Embedded 8.1 Industry Pro VM with 4 virtual cores and 4GB RAM, plus 1024MB out of 2048MB of graphics assigned).

VMware now also detects what apps are you running in the VM and trigger the dGPU if necessary.
 

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yjchua95 said:
I find that if I assign two virtual cores to it (one physical core), it's slow as a dog when processing updates and running antivirus scans.

Having 4 virtual cores (2 physical cores) greatly speeds things up.
Click to expand...

Office seemed decent with 2 cores but interaction with the OS seemed very laggy, so I'll be moving to 4, next.
 
yjchua95 said:
Graphics performance is greatly improved in Fusion 7 (I'm running the Pro variant).

Stuttering has almost completely disappeared (running a Windows Embedded 8.1 Industry Pro VM with 4 virtual cores and 4GB RAM, plus 1024MB out of 2048MB of graphics assigned).

VMware now also detects what apps are you running in the VM and trigger the dGPU if necessary.
Click to expand...

Using the same setting, still laggy start screen, and Google Chrome is horrendous. Never had this trouble on 6, it was butter. Something is wrong with 7.

The pro version dual graphics feature only affects apps like photoshop and AutoCAD, not general usage.
 
Sym0 said:
Using the same setting, still laggy start screen, and Google Chrome is horrendous. Never had this trouble on 6, it was butter. Something is wrong with 7.

The pro version dual graphics feature only affects apps like photoshop and AutoCAD, not general usage.
Click to expand...

I have no lag at all, but before starting the VM, I forced the GPU into NVIDIA-only.
 
VMWare Fusion 6 and 7 for me run like garbage compared to Parallels 10...same settings in both. Choppy..laggy.
 
Sym0 said:
Using the same setting, still laggy start screen, and Google Chrome is horrendous. Never had this trouble on 6, it was butter. Something is wrong with 7.

The pro version dual graphics feature only affects apps like photoshop and AutoCAD, not general usage.
Click to expand...

You are right.

Parallels 10 seems to run much smoother for GPU related tasks and even Google Chrome (lags in VM 7). This is all with max settings in the VM and forcing the 750m.

I ran madVR and it did not drop a single frame with Parallels 10 while with VMWare 7 it was having trouble and dropping frames all over the place.
 
I've sent them feedback through MyVmare on the website. I suggest you guys do to to hurry them along a bit.

----------

I also notices that even though I set the graphics to autoswitch it always uses the 750m in Windows 8.1
 
Sym0 said:
I've sent them feedback through MyVmare on the website. I suggest you guys do to to hurry them along a bit.

----------

I also notices that even though I set the graphics to autoswitch it always uses the 750m in Windows 8.1
Click to expand...

Yup, in Windows 8.1, the dGPU is always forced.

In Windows 7, the dGPU isn't always forced however.
 
yjchua95 said:
Yup, in Windows 8.1, the dGPU is always forced.

In Windows 7, the dGPU isn't always forced however.
Click to expand...

Are you talking vmware 7 or all versions?

I'm usually on an external monitor so I don't notice the lack of choice with my setup
 
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