12th GEN I9 Workstation PRO 17 issues

[NCCTech41]

Just ordered a new laptop in a hurry because of some laptop issues. Came across some discouraging threads with Win 11 and the above processor/ vmware versions. I'm a field service tech that needs these things to run smoothly. Is there support for this processor? Is it to early in these gen12 with the E cores to expect correct functionality. I have enough to deal with regarding my main work, to not have to deal with the head against the wall VM issues. 

[Technogeezer]

You have a very valid question.  What's even worse is that these issues have been reported for months now and there has been no, zero, nada, zilch response from VMware on them. Technically VMware lists any Intel or AMD CPU launched in 2011 or later as supported for Workstation, for what that's worth (which is practically nothing). 

The various workarounds available have had mixed reviews on their effectiveness. 

It's not clear whether this is a VMware issue or a Hyper-V issue, but whichever it is, it's a royal pain to deal with. Something is not setting thread affinity properly so that the threads representing virtual CPUs don't run on the E cores. 

One question I have is "does Windows give an application the control over core type assignment" or is Windows saying to "don't worry we'll figure it out for you based on how things are running" and almost always guesses wrong for VMs.  It seems that VMware knows how to deal with different host core types because this kind of issue is not seen on VMware Fusion running on Apple Silicon. That architecture has P and E cores.

[NCCTech41]

Thanks for the feedback, and from research I had gathered. So the new laptop is useless for the VM. Nice VM. Time to use something else I guess. 

[Technogeezer]

I wouldn't say that the laptop is useless. It might be fine for what you want to do if you can work with one of the available workarounds (changing the power profile seems to have positive impacts, as well as running Workstation as an administrator). But you shouldn't have to do that. 

[NCCTech41]

Well I've made the jump and have been running my core software in a Win11VM with above processor. It's got it's problems for sure, and I'm frustrated that VMWare doesn't seem to acknowledge the issue. Why can't someone from the VM mothership post something regarding the issues? I would be ok with hey we know about this but were not going to fix it. The complete an utter lack of response doesn't fly anywhere in my world, but seems to be acceptable to them. I would love to know how to get this more exposure. If you selling something that you refuse to support in anyway when there is problems that should be exposed, and vetted through people going different directions with another product.