Best setting for Windows 7 VM performance on an i7-920?

[mrdelurk]

I have a Windows 7 VM running on an i7-920 CPU (1366 MOBO, Gigabyte X58A-UD3R, 6 Gigs of RAM) on a boot Windows 7. The system works, but the same app that reports 14% CPU usage on the boot Win7 reports 24% CPU usage on the VM Win7.

It's bearable, I just wonder if I'm really using the best performance settings. Here is what I set the most important VM parameters:

RAM: out of 6 Gigs physical RAM, VM gets 4.444   (Workstation 7.1 is the only app running on the boot OS)

Virtualization used: automatic

CPUs: 2, x 4 cores = 8

In the VM, Windows is set to High Performance, just like the boot Win7.

(Does the VM Windows 7 itself has a BIOS I also need to overclock to 3.3GHz as the boot Windows 7?)

Thank you in advance for all the help

George

[continuum]

nope - running ESXi as a guest inside workstation will not help you at all

ESXi is an operation system in itself and you need to install it on a blank USB-stick.
You also need a blank harddrive to store the new VM with the sampler on it.

Note - to access a VM running on ESXi you need a second machine as the ESXi itself can not display VMs

but you may want to install ESXi as test inside Workstation so that you can check out if you like it at all

[mrdelurk]

I am pressing ahead with the topic... I'm down to 10% CPU on the Ableton test with max overlocking. Reached the end of this path.

Next path: reaching for extra performance by substituting a Linux-class OS for a host. ESXi looks like a great little OS, but needing two physical computers to interact with the VM programs will not work for most mainstream end-users. (I'm researching this to publish an article with virtualization recommendations to fellow musicians.)

Thus, searching for a same-computer Linux VMware host, I tried a 64-bit CentOS 5.6. So far it did not play nice with VMware. (It's a shame because CentOS offers clustering.) A second 64-bit Linux distro I tried, "64 Studio" would not even install. So I'm still looking for a 64-bit Linux distro with high performance and VMware - friendliness for a VMware host test spin. I did get two 32-bit host Linuxes working all right with my 64-bit VMs, but you can guess the performance.

Whatever I figure out, the results will be published on July 4th, (Computer) Independence Day.

[continuum]

to get good VM performance with Workstation you want a Windows - host - if possible XP 64 or 2003 64

[mrdelurk]

Can a XP 64 handle 8 CPU cores, 18 Gigs of RAM and three internal 1TB SATA HDs? I only used 32-bit XP, that tops out at 4 Gigs of RAM.

[continuum]

not absolutely sure about that but as XP 64 is a very close relative of 2003 I think it can

[mrdelurk]

With the max overclocking, the best final CPU% I got from the Ableton test app was 10% on host Win7, and 13% in a VM.

Running the VM on various Linux hosts instead of Win7 produced lower performance.

I'm still fishing around for a 64-bit XP, but I published the current scores for the same VMs on Win7 / OSX / Linux in this article:

Computer Independence Day

[mrdelurk]

My Windows XP Pro x64 CD arrived yesterday, so I installed it along with VMWare to see if the virtual machine runs with even better performance on a XP x64 host instead of Windows 7.

XP itself hummed nicely. It recognized all 18 Gigs of RAM, my 1TB HDs, the i7 CPU, everything ran peachy. Launching VMware Workstation went fine. Then I loaded the Windows 7 VM file... still all good... I pressed Start...

"Brrrrt!" The biggest BSOD I ever saw. (I upgraded to a 42" LCD recently.) "Bad system config info 0x00000074" Sic transit gloria XPi. Windows 7 keeps the host champ title, I guess...

The only remaining test is to see if a FireWire to USB adapter (soon to arrive) will provide FireWire functionality to Workstation 7. This is by far the most asked question from the end-user readers of my article.