Fusion 7 graphics performance - Windows Experience Index drops

[CSL5000]

I re-ran the Windows Experience Index following the upgrade to Fusion 7.

My CPU and Hard Drive results remained the same, and my memory result (operations per second) increased from 5.5 to 7.4 which is great.

I saw my graphics performance drop however :-

* Desktop performance for Windows Aero went from 5.4 to 4.4

* 3D business and gaming graphics went from 4.7 to 4.5

Anyone else seeing similar results? I am running on an early 2011 MacBook Pro with a 2.3GHz Core i5, 8GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics 3000 512MB, and my VM is running with 2 cores and 4GB of memory assigned.

[homm86]

I can confirm. With Hardware Version 10 I get 4.9 graphics and 5.5 3D, while with HW version 11 only 2.0 graphics and 4.9 3D. Also Age of Empires III works much smoother woth Hardware Version 10. I use Retina macbook pro 13 with haswell on OS X 10.10. Retina support in disabled.

[kellydavid]

Hi,

I'm experiencing a similar graphics slowdown with VMWare Fusion 7 Pro, after upgrading from Fusion 6. I have a 4-year-old 17" MacBook Pro with integrated and discrete graphics. I was running Windows 8.1 and MS Word 2013 under Fusion 6, and am now running under Fusion 7. My problem is that highlight text in Word 2013 under Fusion 7 takes a couple of seconds - there is a time lag between dragging the mouse cursor over the text, and the text being highlighted. Very annoying and unproductive. I didn't have this problem running the same Windows 8.1 virtual machine under Fusion 6. No change to the VM except for upgrading to Hardware Version 11 when I moved to Fusion 7 Pro. I've now reduced the Hardware Version back to 10 but it seems to have made no difference - text highlighting in Word still lags terribly.

The VM has the same resources as before - 2 cores and several GB of RAM and running off an SSD. Not sure if Fusion 7 Pro is only using the integrated graphics when running Word, whereas Fusion 6 used to run the discrete GPU all the time. Is there any way (other than the Hardware Version setting, which doesn't seem to make any difference), so force Fusion 7 Pro to use the discrete GPU?

Or is some other fix forthcoming? (I thought graphics performance was meant to be BETTER in Fusion 7?)

[Tim_King]

Ditto with VMWare Fusion 6 to 7 upgrade here. I have a Macbook Pro Retina with 8GB Ram. I got 6.0 Windows Experience Index score on Vmware Fusion 6, and I only get 5.4 now. With all graphics options set to recommended (1024mb) I only get a 4.0 score on graphics performance. This reflects in the usability as well - i.e. it is not just Windows Experience Index misreporting a score. VMware really need to patch this obvious problem.

[NathanKendall]

I'm very reassured now that I've found this thread.  I'm a late-2013 MBPr15 user that immediately saw a major decrease in graphics performance when moving to Hardware Version 11.  I did extensive testing with a variety of tools, and then submitted my results to the VMWare support team.  They had me run debug logging on both versions, and I am still waiting for their response, but this is now very obviously a huge general problem that they will hopefully address soon.  All that boasting of "dedicated graphics" boost and all, what a joke!  Did they even test it first?

For the moment I have all my VMs in version 10, which runs just like on Fusion 6... fairly decently.

[rdpiccard]

As of this evening, I have installed 7.0.1 and find that Windows 7x64 reports the same experience numbers for hardware v 11 with 7.0.1 that I was getting with hardware v 10 with 6 or 7.0.

With my physical hardware, there is no improvement using V7.0.1, but there is also no degradation.

[AllBallsRacing]

rdpiccard wrote:

As of this evening, I have installed 7.0.1 and find that Windows 7x64 reports the same experience numbers for hardware v 11 with 7.0.1 that I was getting with hardware v 10 with 6 or 7.0.

With my physical hardware, there is no improvement using V7.0.1, but there is also no degradation.

Curious to see if others have this experience as well... nothing in the release notes indicates that this has been addressed unless it was a symptom of one of the extraneous log emissions.

[NathanKendall]

I did just upgrade to 7.0.1, and I confirm that the performance and Experience Index with the Hardware Version 11 is identical to Hardware Version 10.  I'm somewhat assuming that they just went back to the Fusion 6 platform, I can see no noticeable difference, even when adjusting the size of the "shared graphics memory" in the VM options.

I guess we'll have to cross our fingers that there's one day a real "increase" as promised.

[NathanKendall]

Well, I have to update my post now, because after about 2 hours on V11 in Fusion 7.0.1, I opened a simple PDF document, and suddenly Windows 7 freaked out and disabled Aero, told me there was a problem with the graphics adapter, and I was unable to reactivate Aero without restarting.  Now, upon restarting, the horribly poor graphics performance of Hardware Version 11 on the 7.0.0 release came back, and upon refreshing the Experience Index it confirmed a drop in graphics performance.  I certianly confirmed the horrible problems of moving / resizing windows that I experienced upon first trying V11.

So, beware of the 7.0.1 update, as for me I'm sticking to V10 which still works great.

Get your act together please VMWare!

[AllBallsRacing]

NathanKendall wrote:

Well, I have to update my post now, because after about 2 hours on V11 in Fusion 7.0.1, I opened a simple PDF document, and suddenly Windows 7 freaked out and disabled Aero, told me there was a problem with the graphics adapter, and I was unable to reactivate Aero without restarting.  Now, upon restarting, the horribly poor graphics performance of Hardware Version 11 on the 7.0.0 release came back, and upon refreshing the Experience Index it confirmed a drop in graphics performance.  I certianly confirmed the horrible problems of moving / resizing windows that I experienced upon first trying V11.

So, beware of the 7.0.1 update, as for me I'm sticking to V10 which still works great.

Get your act together please VMWare!

I have since personally confirmed NO performance increase in 7.0.1 vs. 7.0 as well in my test environment.

Sticking to 6.0.5 and Mavericks for now.

[NathanKendall]

Honestly I do believe that the problem does not come from Fusion 7 but from the Hardware Version, I have done testing between Fusion 6 and Fusion 7 with a W7.SP1 x64 in Hardware Version 10 and there is no noticable difference.  I would say that you can safely upgrade to Fusion 7 and stay in Hardware Version 10 with no risk.

[Rohland]

I upgraded to 7.0.1, set hardware profile to 11. Rebooted VM, updated VM Ware tools, rebooted again. No luck.

To confirm, 7.0.1 does not seem to address my graphics performance issues at all. I immediately restored my snapshot, downgraded to hardware profile 10 and the VM was usable again.

[hieu1]

I should have been more cautious like you. I agree Mavericks with Fusion 6.x always worked well for me too. It was fast and stable.

Upgrading to Yosemite revealed a flickering issue even on Fusion 6.x.

Upgrading to Fusion 7.x resolved the flickering issue but has always given me problems. There have been performance issues as mentioned and then stability issues with Yosemite. At least for me simply switching tabs in Google Chrome was laggy in my Windows 7 guest. My Windows 7 guest also crashed a few times and  VMWare Fusion 7.0.1 has even locked up requiring me to kill processes with Activity Monitor.

[MaciekP]

On my MBP 2011, I7 i had on Maverics and Fusion 6.0.5 both graphics related indexes=6.0

the same for MBP 2014 15" quad core=6.0

After I migrated the older MPB 2011 to Yosemite I had index=4.5 on Yosemite+6.0.5

With Yosemite+Fusion 7.0.1 I have index=4.9

The same is for hardware 11 and hardware 10.

Settings for CPU and RAM are the same as for Maverics+fusion 6.0.5.

I have installed also Parallels 10.1.1 trial and migrated the same VM with same settings as for maverics and I have got graphics indexes around= 5.1,

so Paralles are FASTER a bit than Fusion but STILL BELOW what I had with Maverics+Fusion 6.0.5 - the best combination

It looks like the YOSEMITE is a problem, not Fusion or parallels!

[NathanKendall]

Yep, in my experience it is never a good idea to move to the newest OSX until about the 10.X.2 release.  I'm definitely staying away from Yosemite for the moment, I have heard nothing but problems from anyone that uses professional tools (VPN clients, virtualisation, etc).

Fusion 7.0.1 and Hardware version 10 on Mavericks still working great for me.

[MaciekP]

"However MackieP, your index seems low, I have a late 2013 MPBr15 quand core with 8Go and no nVidia, and I have 5.9 Aero / 5.6 Gaming indexes on a W7 SP1 x64 VM."

so 5.9 and 5.6 vs 6.0.

What is funny, my older MBP 2011 with integrated intel graphics has the same 6.0 graphics index as my MBP 2014 with NVIDIA

VMWARE slows it down

[NathanKendall]

Whoops, I took that out of my post because I realised that you were talking about the difference in performance on your older macbook, and not the retina!

[MaciekP]

Older MBP 2011 is NON-RETINA, new is Retina MBP. Resolution change of the screen doesn't influance graphics index of WIN 7

[exbuzz]

I am having a similar issue that is most noticeable in chrome but affects all programs to some extend.  Generally speaking, everything got slower on both the CPU and graphics front after upgrading to Yosemite / Fusion 7. At first, I was on Yosemite / Fusion 6 but...wow, that was completely broken.  I was getting these weird triangles appearing on all my Office applications whenever I'd do anything like hover over text, etc.  Upgrading to Fusion 7 fixed that problem, but I'm not happy with the performance at this point.  I'm considering going back to Mavericks / Fusion 6 because of this...everything was really good then!!!

Here's a video of the most noticeable symptom.  Watch the CPU/memory usage in task manager, as well as the window resize issue: http://youtu.be/sbgxfHdA47Q

iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2013)

3.1 GHz Intel Core i7

16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 1024 MB

VM:

Windows 7

2 cores

4096 MB RAM

Accelerated 3D graphics w/ 1024 MB shared memory (I have tried settings from 256MB through 2048MB, no change.  I have turned Acceleration on/off, no change).

[wila]

Hello exbuzz,

As you have an iMac, not sure what version "late 2013" is.. is it an iMac 12.2? (Apple -> About this Mac -> More Info -> Model Identifier)

Please have a look at this answer from DariusD here:

Yosemite and Fusion 7 - Very Very Slow

and for more details read this answer from HPReg here:

Re: Fusion 7 is running VERY SLOW on the GM of Yosemite

--

Wil

[exbuzz]

I previously tried "sudo nvram boot-args=debug=0x10", no affect.

Here's the output of "sudo powermetrics -s interrupts".  Note the machine model.  I don't see any very high interrupts like in the mentioned post. 

Machine model: iMac14,3

SMC version: 2.17f7

EFI version: IM143.0118.B07

OS version: 14A389

Boot arguments: debug=0x10

Boot time: Wed Nov 12 20:32:55 2014

*** Sampled system activity (Wed Nov 12 20:39:18 2014 -0500) (5000.57ms elapsed) ***

****  Interrupt distribution ****

CPU 0:

  Vector 0x73(XHC1): 1.00 interrupts/sec

  Vector 0x75(HDEF): 0.60 interrupts/sec

  Vector 0x76(GFX0): 8.60 interrupts/sec

  Vector 0x78(SATA): 418.75 interrupts/sec

  Vector 0x79(ARPT): 22.00 interrupts/sec

  Vector 0x7a(SSD0): 491.34 interrupts/sec

  Vector 0xdd(TMR): 219.38 interrupts/sec

  Vector 0xde(IPI): 27.80 interrupts/sec

CPU 1:

  Vector 0xdd(TMR): 0.40 interrupts/sec

  Vector 0xde(IPI): 10.20 interrupts/sec

CPU 2:

  Vector 0xdd(TMR): 350.56 interrupts/sec

  Vector 0xde(IPI): 20.80 interrupts/sec

CPU 3:

  Vector 0xdd(TMR): 0.40 interrupts/sec

  Vector 0xde(IPI): 9.40 interrupts/sec

CPU 4:

  Vector 0x20(): 0.20 interrupts/sec

  Vector 0xdd(TMR): 274.57 interrupts/sec

  Vector 0xde(IPI): 20.20 interrupts/sec

CPU 5:

  Vector 0xdd(TMR): 0.20 interrupts/sec

  Vector 0xde(IPI): 9.00 interrupts/sec

CPU 6:

  Vector 0xdd(TMR): 338.76 interrupts/sec

  Vector 0xde(IPI): 19.80 interrupts/sec

CPU 7:

  Vector 0xde(IPI): 10.60 interrupts/sec