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tkrajacic
Contributor
Contributor

Since Upgrade 3D Performance took a dive and has bugs

I have an a MacBook Pro from 2006 with a Radeon X1600.

In vmware 3 I could run X-Plane in XP and Windows 7 quite ok, but since upgrading to

version 4 all the textures in X-Plane are displaying plain white (= they are missing) and the

Windows performance index is also way worse than before.

Can anyone explain why the upgrade made it so much worse when quite the contrary is advertised?

I have not changed a thing in Windows except installing the new tools and upgrading the file format of the virtual machine.

(I am not using the virtual machines for playing but rather developing and testing in X-Plane, so please

don't comment on why the heck I would want to run X-Plane in a virtual machine Smiley Wink )

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hello,

I think you outlined your issue in the first line of your question. Your laptop is from 2006 and using an X1600 embedded graphics adapter.

Fusion 4 has been optimised to take advantage of the latest technologies and that sometimes leaves the users of slightly older notebooks in a less favorable position. You can try reinstalling vmware tools (eg. completely remove and install again) and reinstall VMware fusion if the former doesn't help, but I'm afraid that it isn't going to help much.

What surprises me though is that your configuration isn't mentioned specifically in the "Release notes" document where for example the intel X3100 _is_ mentioined as not a favorable graphics card. Oh right I do see now that there is some mention about expected graphics capabilities in the system requirements  document.

You can also consider filing an SR

Hope this helps,

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
tkrajacic
Contributor
Contributor

I still can't find any mention of a degrading performance if one has not a certain kind of hardware when following the link above.

I know that the hardware is subpar and that I cannot expect miracles, but the fact that performance improvements are advertised means for me that at least it wont get worse than with a previous version (Where performance was really good actually), no matter what kind of supported hardware you have. That's the point I really find annoying.

In hindsight I was really stupid to go and buy VMware Fusion 4 the first day it came out, because I was really not expecting for things to get worse!

I was quite happy with what I had, and just wanted to support their efforts because I liked the previous product.

And if they now tell me that I have to buy new hardware to experience the advertised speed improvements, well... damn my good faith.

I don't blame fusion for the performance of my machine, only for having way worse performance, and graphic glitches that were not there before.

Is there any way to downgrade a virtual machine again?

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

tkrajacic wrote:


I was quite happy with what I had, and just wanted to support their efforts because I liked the previous product.

And if they now tell me that I have to buy new hardware to experience the advertised speed improvements, well... damn my good faith.

I don't blame fusion for the performance of my machine, only for having way worse performance, and graphic glitches that were not there before.

Is there any way to downgrade a virtual machine again?

I understand your frustration. I think that you can actually get your money back within the first week or so. Not 100% sure, but my memory seems to have a recollection of that... check the upgrade/buy page for that.

Of course you can downgrade your virtual machines. Be aware however that this means changing the virtual hardware and that thus windows activation logic might kick in requiring you to re-activate your windows OS (you might already have seen it during the upgrade)

So I would certainly advice to make a copy of all your VM's before downgrading them.

The downgrade process is as follows, while still in Fusion 4,  go to the VM, make sure it is shutdown (not suspended), select Settings, compatibility, change it to "compatible with Fusion 2 and Fusion 3". Close the settings screen.

Now your VM's virtual hardware is ready to be used by Fusion 3 again, however at initial bootup in Fusion 3, you would also want to uninstall vmware tools and reinstall vmware tools from within Fusion 3.

After all of that you should be back to a normal Fusion 3 virtual machine again.

Hope this helps,

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
tkrajacic
Contributor
Contributor

Thx for the very helpful answer!

I am not so much concerned about getting my money back (although I will try of course) but rather just getting the really good performance again I had with Fusion 3 and my ancient hardware!

On a sidenote I think that vmware is sold quite cheap for what it provides Smiley Wink. I don't understand people nagging about the price...

I'll try the downgrade and see how it goes.

Can I donload fusion 3 somewhere or do I have to dig through my timemachine backups? (is it enough to copy the app?)

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

A time machine copy will not work, you'll have to uninstall VMware Fusion 4 (just drag from applications to the trash can) and then reinstall a full copy from Fusion 3. You can download it from here: VMware Fusion 3.x

Good luck!

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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