Slow performance

[JMprod]

I have the following performance issues:

- Saving virtual machine state takes up to several minutes. Parallels used just a few seconds.

- Moving a windows window around in unity-mode is extremely sluggish and slow

- Performance is so sluggish that even notification sounds in Windows are played back with jitter/noise

Is this normal with VMware?

In comparison; Parallels was fluid and the apps seemed to run just as good from windows as native macOS'apps.

[scott28tt]

MacOS version?

Fusion version?

VMware Tools installed in Windows?

Leftover devices (possibly hidden) in Windows from Parallels?

[ColoradoMarmot]

And to add to Scott's questions:

Host and guest configurations (RAM, CPU, etc)

[JMprod]

- macOS 10.15.7

- Fusion 12.0.0 (16880131)

- VMware Tools are installed and reinstalled with repair, just to be sure

- I started with a fresh virtual machine.

[JMprod]

CPU: 6 of 12 cores

Memory: 16384 of 98304

[scott28tt]

Disk type/capacity/space on which you store the VM?

Does the VM need 6 CPUs and 16Gb memory?

[ColoradoMarmot]

Hmm, so what Mac is the host machine?

[JMprod]

I use a professional grade SSD, it has about 30 GB of free space.

I sat VMware to use 6 cores, as that's half of the cores available. Do WMware occupy all the cores, or does it only mean that it can use up to 6 cores?

What would you recommend?

[JMprod]

Mac Pro 5.1 using OpenCore. AMD 5700XT 8GB GPU.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Unfortunately that's unsupported hardware for both the OS and for Fusion, so the best troubleshooting advice is to upgrade to a supported configuration. 

[JMprod]

Except for the sound-issue, my laptop shows similar issues. I could boot my 5.1 into Mojave and try an installation there for testing purposes, but I would be surprised if it would change anything...

[ColoradoMarmot]

That might be worth trying, so you're comparing like to like - be aware though, that 11.5 changed the requirements in mid-stream, so I think you'd need 11.5.3 not 11.5.6.

The general rules for good performance are:

- No more than N-1 cores, where N=physical cores in the system, for any given VM

- At least 2 cores for OSX and W10 guests

- Leave at least 4GB of RAM for the host

- Leave at least 2 cores for the host (N- the total across all running guests)

Other tips:

- run in fullscreen or windowed (not unity) mode

- enable 3d acceleration

- assign as much video ram as appropriate (if you're doing graphics)

- build a VM from scratch, not a converted physical machine

- disable system restore and antivirus scans in the guest (autoprotect is fine)

- run off an internal SSD if possible

More modern machines have substantially better performance (better than just the raw cpu) because of more advanced features that fusion takes advantage of.