I'd be happy to chime in on that question: -->> MODERN GPU HARDWARE SUPPORT <<--
I'm an ex-happy Workstation user who stopped upgrading a few versions ago due to lack of improvements that targeted the features I needed. I recently left Vmware all together for a KVM environment, but it has it's own problems. I'd like to come back to Vmware but until Workstation gets the features I need it's just not worth it.
Who am I? I'm an independent software developer who was really happy with Workstation a few years ago because it allowed me to build, test & deploy apps into isolated test environments with minimal hardware requirements. I was a pretty good salesman for Workstation, pitching it to all my friends & colleagues.
Why am I no longer happy with Workstation? Lack of modern GPU support. Due to this lack of reasonable, basic hardware support by today's standards, I was stuck in a multi-boot world due to the projects I'm working on that require more than basic 'DX8' GPU support. It made booting back into the Workstation environment pretty pointless. So I dumped it and moved on to a KVM host / windows GPU pass-through guest world.
I keep checking to see if Vmware is ever going to update Workstation and add this feature I need. When IOMMU virtualization was added I got excited and downloaded an evaluation copy but was pretty disappointed when I realized it did basically nothing, at least for my needs. Yes an important building-block to GPU virtualization, but just not there yet. Disappointed, I restored from backup and started looking for other solutions. Which took me to KVM.
Now, as a Windows user living in a linux KVM world, it has it own problems. I'm not exactly happy with it. I'd jump back to Workstation in a second if it were to add decent modern GPU support into the product. Yes, it's a hard feature, rife with hardware, software & legal (cough GRiD cough) loopholes. But until Workstation gets this feature to be honest it doesn't really deserve to be called 'Workstation' any more. Sorry if that's a little harsh, but there it is.
