Workstation 7.1.4 poor performeance

[vFreak]

Try to mind a computer with a quadcore processor, 16GB of DDR3 RAM ánd a Graphics Card with 1024MB RAM. (GF9600GT)

On it, it runs a stripped-down-to-the-bone Linux distro. The driver for the graphics card is up and running. On top of that, VMware Workstation is installed. The VM's running inside are used for desktop tasks.

With that information, you could pretty much mind my setup. A VM with Windows 7 on it, 2 cores and 4GB RAM assigned, should be speedy. Really? Think again.

The Windows 7 is a legal version, with the newest updates, SP1 and VMware tools installed. For performeance boost - useless services are disabled. The VM is kind of speedy - well - untill it comes to sound or multimedia.

I know that playing 1080p video may be something too much to ask for a virtualized enviroment, but audio shouldn't be. And there is the problem. Playing sound, no matter what quality, it is crap. It stutters, falls out, comes back. Like my grandmothers grammophone player. When I move out of the VM the sound stabilize somewhat. The most impact comes from the webbrowser. No matter I am using IE9, Firefox, Chrome or Opera, moving with my cursor over the blank search page totally tilts my sound.

Since 4GB is a lot for a office desktop, I am blaiming the video memory. I added it manual to the vmx, and now it is on 288MB. But the problem ain't gone, for my feeling the VM is just something more sensitive.

You must believe me, listening to sound with the quality from back 90's is not really a pleasure. Unless your'e a nostalgique. But unfornately, I aint one.

I have tried assigning a USB sound card (7.1) to the VM, but it doesn't change anything about the perforamce.

Any ideas what is going on here?

The memory is checked and OK.

Almost forgot, the Host OS is Ubuntu 11.04 with crap removed.

[continuum]

I would not even expect that a Linux host with a 2 vcpus VM with 4 GB RAM can produce hearable sound

You would probably get better results by assigning a single CPU and less RAM.

ANyway - post a vmware.log so we can check if you tweaked the settings well

[vFreak]

Please tell me why you are thinking so bad about Linux?

Explain me why 2 vCPU's should be the problem? It is right, the problem is gone. So multi-threading is not for Windows? I nearly think that, it acts even better with 1... Or is it an other problem?

[continuum]

Audio is very timing critical.
If a screen comes a millisecond too late you will not notice it.
If an audio signal comes one millisecond too late it already sounds terrible.
Thats why you want to do everything that ensures that latency inside the guest is as low as possible.

A guest with 2 virtual CPUs can only operate when the host has 2 cores running idle at the same time.
If the host is doing something else at the moment the guiest has to wait.
You will not notice that on visual stuff.
But you will hear it.

A VM that only uses a single virtual CPU has a much higher chance to run uninterrupted.
Thats why audio stutter and sizzles are much less frequent on a single CPU-VM

So quite unexpected to most users VMs with a single CPU are more responsive than VMs with 2 or mores CPUs.

Something similar applies to the virtual RAM.
Virtual RAM is only fast if the host does not need to swap it out.
Thats why a VM with 1 Gb RAM can feel much more responsive than a VM with 2 GB RAM.

In VMs assign as liitle RAM as possible ...