esx guest video performance

[curriertech]

Would putting a better video card in the host provide better video performance for the guests? I've got a guy running some XP VMs with SolidWorks to do some automated crunching, but the video performance is so bad that his application is unusable, so I'm looking for alternatives that don't include telling him sorry that he spent $12k on that server for no reason.

[weinstein5]

no upgrading the video card in the esx host would have no effect - is your using the vms just for rendering the solid model - if so the video card should have no affect as I understand 3-d rendering because it is soley numbercrunching by the cpu - is he is using the vm to display the model then yes there might be issues - the best you can get is an virtualized SVGA II video card after vmware tools is installed -

[Anders_Gregerse]

ESX is in general designed for server consolidation and the video adapter in the vm is a virtual one so video performance will never be the same as on a desktop pc with just a middle range graphics card, no matter what graphicscard you plug into the host.

However you should post the same question in the VDI related communities, since they might have experience with that issue.

[curriertech]

That's what I figured but I had to ask. Thanks guys.