BUG: 4GB Graphic memory will be reserved no matter what!!

[jen2]

I started a thread earlier but I edited it a lot so it was deleted. I will rephrase my question as now I knew the reason.

VMware will reserve 4GB from the RAM to the 3D acceleration no matter what amount for the graphic memory in the settings you choose. Even if you choose 8GB, 4GB will be reserved.

It definitely is a bug, I have never noticed before. I really hope someone will look into it

[scott28tt]

@jen2 

Version of Workstation?

What evidence do you have? (for others to be able to help you, a log file or screenshot)

[jen2]

I did post image in my first thread, however here we go.

There is nothing noticeable in the logs, will not post them, you need just process explorer to reproduce the bug. I am using now Linux ubuntu, I had the same issue with Windows 10 insider DEV latest version.

Album 1: I choose 512MB, but it is always the same no matter what graphic memory you are choosing,¨Notice the reserved memory went up by 10 GB although I chose 6GB for the VM. it went from 30.9GB to 41GB, notice the executable mksSandbox.exe is running. https://imgur.com/a/ufVepMm

Album 2: I disabled 3d acceleration, notice the reserved memory went up by 6 GB exactly as I chose for the VM. it went from 31.1GB to 37.2GB, notice the executable mksSandbox.exe is NOT running. https://imgur.com/a/gjRKJgl

[wila]

Hi,

Your original thread was not deleted, but the new forum software marked it as spam, it marks a lot of good posts as spam, moreso than actual spam.
Sadly the "release spam" functionality has been broken for several weeks now and the moderators have not gotten any time line on when this will be resolved.

re. your problem. Perhaps this reply on a reddit post by the Fusion/Workstation product manager helps a bit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/vmware/comments/k766t0/vmware_workstation_16_where_is_the_8gb_virtual/gepl4...

--
Wil

[jen2]

Hey!

The link you provided doesn't answer my question, I know the memory allocated for the 3D acceleration, but it is a bug to reserve 4GB om mermory even of you choose different values.

It is a bug to reserve 4GB when you choose other amount for graphic memory

[wila]

Hi,

Yes, I never claimed that it would answer your question, I said "it might help", the reason being that it is related to how RAM is used for virtual graphic adapters now.
This is one of those things that changed in the most recent versions of Workstation/Player.

What you can try is using an earlier virtual hardware version, but even if that would help (which I doubt) it would still be a workaround.

Your question is for VMware, I'm not from VMware.
Also note that this is not an official support channel and you need a support contract in order to get access to support (the exception being that you have 30 days complimentary email support immediately after a new purchase of a license).

--
Wil

[banackm]

Enabling 3D graphics unfortunately uses up a large amount of host memory, and newer versions of Workstation with the "GPU Sandbox Renderer" feature started using more host memory for this than previous versions, which I think is what you're seeing here.  This jump in memory usage is definitely something we hope to optimize in future releases.

The setting for "Graphics Memory" limits the amount of graphics resources that the guest is allowed to use, but that value includes memory allocations coming from the guest, host, and graphics card.  So it doesn't directly translate into host memory usage, and not all of the memory that the guest is allowed to use for graphics is allocated when the guest starts running.  You can see this if you start launching large graphics applications in your guest, where you should see the consumed memory in the vmx process increase.  So turning the limit up should let your guest graphics applications be able to use larger amounts of graphics resources inside the guest, which should hopefully translate into higher performance for memory constrained workloads.

[jen2]

Thanks for the answer, waiting patiently for future releases.

In virtualbox, only in Linux guests, the VM doesn't reserve memory at all, and only the used memory will be allocated, it would be nice if this can be in Vmware as well. In windows guests virtualbox will reserve all memory at start up.

Though no way to compare vmware with virtualbox, vmware is a thousand times faster

[banackm]

I'm not an expert at how guest main memory is managed, and it gets pretty complicated quickly, but depending on what precisely your system monitors are using, it's possible that they're over-estimating the amount of memory that Workstation is actually using.

We use a variety of tricks to manage host memory usage, including swapping portions of it out to disk when the host is under pressure.  So just because we're using that much memory when your system has available memory doesn't mean that we need that much if the host is under load.

You might enjoy the "Memory Resources in Workstation and Virtual Machines" section of the Performance Best Practices for VMware Workstation .  It's a little old, but I think most of it is still accurate.

[jen2]

Still 4GB are taking from the ram to the file mksSandbox.exe in the version 16.2.3 I hope VMware will fix this issue

[jen2 · Accepted solution]

This bug has finally been fixed in Tech Preview 2023. Technically not 100% solved. Still 1 more GB is allocated, but much much better than before