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ellegi
Contributor
Contributor

Very slow graphics performance on HiDPI laptop display

I'm a VMWare Workstation 12 user and I'm trying to run Linux and Windows based VMs on my Windows 10 host on a Dell XPS 15 9550 laptop, equipped with an i7 6700 CPU, 16GB RAM, SSD unit and a 4k display. However, both in Windows and Linux guests the GUI is sluggish and in general very slow.

I'm trying Windows 7 x64, Windows 10 x64 and xubuntu x64 guests. On Win7 I can set the resolution to the native 4k but the display scaling is not great and there is very noticeable lag while moving the mouse cursor or typing on the keyboard. On Windows 10 I cannot set the resolution to 4k (screen goes black when trying to change it) and on Linux I don't have an option to set it (maximum is set by vmware to 2560x1600). So I tried to run all my VMs in 1080p stretched full screen mode. Unfortunately, I still notice bad performance issues when moving the mouse in Windows 7 and in general usage on both Windows 10 and Linux, but it seems to be slightly better if I run the VMs in a window rather than full screen -- but the text is unreadable since it's too tiny. I also tried connecting an external 1080p display to my laptop and running VMWare there but I still get the same issues, plus every time I move my cursor to a corner I see a huge baloon on the screen saying "press Ctrl-Alt to release input" or something.

Does anyone know if it's possible to get acceptable performance with this kind of setup?

Thanks!

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frodo
Community Manager
Community Manager

Could you update your Graphics drivers to the latest one.

And update the vmtools to the latest one  bundled with WS build.

if it's till happened, could you upload a vmware.log for reference.

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