vmware fusion and 2010 macbook pro 15"

[Freyqq]

I have a 2010 macbook pro 15" with 8gb of ram and SSD. My needs require the full MS office suite, so I have been using bootcamp. But, i like OSX, and I wanted to try using vmware fusion instead. My needs are pretty simple; I just use windows for MS Office 2010. However, when I tried a 30 day trial, it was a messy experience. I used its "coherence mode," and there were a lot of graphical glitches for the windows. Also, just running MS Office with 3/4 cores dedicated and 3/8 gb of ram dedicated, CPU usage was at least 15-20% at all times, even at idle, and performance in MS Office was jerky and not close to bootcamp performance. Battery life was also cut in half, and the dGPU was always active.

I guess my question is that, is this a settings issue that I can fix, or is this what I can expect from virtualization software? Coming from bootcamp, the experience is pretty disappointing. I can understand things like gaming being much slower, but I figured at least MS Office wouldn't be a problem.

Also, please don't just suggest I use OSX's 2011 MS Office. I use the professional version, which has programs that are not available in that version. Also, the 2011 version is missing some important features I need from the windows version.

 

[ayeying]

You only have a dual core, not quad core. It looks like it with hyper threading but it's still a dual core.

When I had that machine, I only used 1 core with at most 4GB of ram. Most of the times I only allocated 2GB of ram and it ran just fine. However, I did not have an SSD, only a 7200RPM hard drive.

 

[Freyqq]

You only have a dual core, not quad core. It looks like it with hyper threading but it's still a dual core.

When I had that machine, I only used 1 core with at most 4GB of ram. Most of the times I only allocated 2GB of ram and it ran just fine. However, I did not have an SSD, only a 7200RPM hard drive.

I tried it at first with just 1 core. It was even slower, and the CPU usage was actually higher.

 

[ayeying]

I tried it at first with just 1 core. It was even slower, and the CPU usage was actually higher.

Perhaps you have background tasks running in Windows. Your CPU usage isn't higher, its the same except when you have more cores allocated, it appears lower cause your 100% is now 300%. And that 30% turns down to 10% usage.

 

[Freyqq]

Perhaps you have background tasks running in Windows. Your CPU usage isn't higher, its the same except when you have more cores allocated, it appears lower cause your 100% is now 300%. And that 30% turns down to 10% usage.

Let me rephrase. That one core was working at full power basically continuously, and Windows performance was unbearably slow. If I dedicated 3/4 cores (I know 2 of them are virtual cores), performance was better in OSX and Windows.

Either way, about 15-20% of total CPU power was in use by vmware at all times, even when OSX and Windows were at idle and no system processes were hogging resources, etc.

From a user of vmware fusion, is this typical behavior for a VM?

 

[ayeying]

Let me rephrase. That one core was working at full power basically continuously, and Windows performance was unbearably slow. If I dedicated 3/4 cores (I know 2 of them are virtual cores), performance was better in OSX and Windows.

Either way, about 15-20% of total CPU power was in use by vmware at all times, even when OSX and Windows were at idle and no system processes were hogging resources, etc.

From a user of vmware fusion, is this typical behavior for a VM?

No. It's not. My VMs runs around 5% at idle and performance between the two OSes are unnoticeable. Its obvious that it's running a virtual machine but to run it "lag", no.

 

[Freyqq]

No. It's not. My VMs runs around 5% at idle and performance between the two OSes are unnoticeable. Its obvious that it's running a virtual machine but to run it "lag", no.

Ah thanks. What computer are you using? Also, are you running it from a bootcamp partition? Could that account for the performance issues? Trying to figure out how to make this work as well as yours.

 

[ayeying]

Ah thanks. What computer are you using? Also, are you running it from a bootcamp partition? Could that account for the performance issues? Trying to figure out how to make this work as well as yours.

When I had the Mid 2010 MacBook Pro, 15"; I ran it under bootcamp partition and a dedicated virtual machine. Both had the same performance, the only difference is that one I can boot straight into for more performance if i needed it.