Minimum required CPU speed for VMware Fusion with Win-XP

[MrFusion]

I need to run VMware Fusion with Win-XP for work purposes, with mail, safari, etc running as well. XCode and Adobe illustrator are probably the most resource demanding Mac Apps I run simultaneously with VMWare. VMWare is on all the time.

My macbook (2GHz, 2GB memory) is rather sluggish in these tasks, while my iMac (2.8 GHz, 4 GB memory) is much faster and more responsive. But I am not sure if this is due to the extra memory or the additional CPU speed.

Since a long time I want to replace this macbook which is just falling apart and the new MacBook Air's might push me over the edge. The old 12" powerbook is back it seems.

However the CPU is much slower than what I have on the macbook. Will 4 GB of memory and a SSD disk make up for what I lose in CPU speed? What is the minimum CPU required to run what I described above?

 

[r.j.s]

There isn't really a minimum speed, the RAM is what is really important.

 

[Hellhammer]

Minimum System Requirements for VMware Fusion 3 (through VMware Fusion 3.1 update)

Any Intel® Mac.
Minimum 1GB of RAM (2GB RAM recommended)
700MB free disk space for VMware Fusion and at least 5GB for each virtual machine
Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later; Mac OS X 10.6 or later (Mac OS X 10.6.3 recommended for best graphics experience)
Operating system installation media (disk or disk image) for virtual machines

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/...jy9fUL&usg=AFQjCNGAJwzXCqPl5-cB0xknjXGXkJwtFQ

The RAM is the issue here, running two OSs at the same time eats a lot RAM and when you run out of RAM, the system will start paging out which causes lag (data is transferred from RAM to HD because RAM is full; HD is around zillion times slower than RAM).

What MacBook do you have? It's possible that it can take up to 6GB of RAM

 

[MrFusion]

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/...jy9fUL&usg=AFQjCNGAJwzXCqPl5-cB0xknjXGXkJwtFQ

[\quote]

Yes, I found that webpage. But these CPU's are the slowest intel processors Apple has ever used. That is why I submitted this question.

The RAM is the issue here, running two OSs at the same time eats a lot RAM and when you run out of RAM, the system will start paging out which causes lag (data is transferred from RAM to HD because RAM is full; HD is around zillion times slower than RAM).

More ram and a faster HD as in a SSD will definitely help, then. Good.

What MacBook do you have? It's possible that it can take up to 6GB of RAM

The first one that came out. But the optical drive is no longer functional (not that I used it that much), the casing is cracking and the keyboard does not always behave as it should. The hard disk is also running out of space. So, thanks for the suggestion, but I don't want to spend any more money on this macbook actually.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

My very-first-generation 2.0 GHz Core Duo MacBook with 2 GB RAM runs XP in Parallels just fine.

The hard drive will have the biggest impact. Swap in an SSD, and you'll feel like you have a new machine. (Although my XP VM ran acceptably with the stock hard drive.)