Workstation 15.5.5 performance hit

[Thorarin]

Just a couple of hours ago, I've updated from 15.5.1 (?) to version 15.5.5 of Workstation Pro.

I've been exited about this update, especially being able to use WSL2 on my developer system is a plus.

However, immediately after updating, I noticed a quite dramatic performance hit.

My mouse cursor doesn't even move fluently anymore, it hangs and stutters a lot.

I haven't installed Hyper-V related services yet.

Anyone else experiencing this?

System summary:

i9-10940X, 64GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070.

Running Windows 10 1909 still.

[hotvooboy]

Thanks AaronChangAaronChang, we have got the videos and will investigate it.It's really useful.

BTW, do you feel any performance issue(operation slow) when Win 7 OS is running?

[AaronChang]

hotvooboy​

test case:

     right clicked on windows 7 desktop, and click refresh in context menu

windows 7(aero enabled) works fine. when bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off

windows 7(aero enabled)   works slowly. when bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto

The difference is not obvious

[scott28tt]

I've also experienced significant perfomance degradation which made using virtualized MacOS X not usable. That happed after updating Windows 10 to 2004 version and enabling WSL 2. Also I had to update VMWare Workstation to latest version 15.5.6 (from 15.5.1) for it to able to start VM.

Moderator: Running MacOS on anything other than Apple hardware is a violation of the EULA, and cannot be discussed here. Further comments specific to that configuration will be removed.

[hahakiki2010]

AaronChang​,

Sorry for the late response. Yes, we have got the video, and able to reproduce the issue in-house. The investigation is ongoing.

Your video is really useful for us to find this issue. Many thanks!

BTW, if possible, could u try to change the firmware type of the VM to "UEFI" and see if the performance has any improvement? You can do this in VM setting ->Options->Advanced->Firmware. The default firmware for win7 guest is Bios. If changing it, the VM needs to be recreated.

Best Regards,

Yan

[jfmackay]

Glad you have repro'd the issue. I can confirm that using UEFI bios does not fix the problem.

Setup:
Microsoft development VM for VMWare: Download a Windows 10 virtual machine - Windows app development

VMware Workstation Pro  15.5.6 build 16341506

Windows 10 version 2004 build 19041.388

A. Convert to UEFI
1. Boot into VM

2. Convert OS to UEFI boot: Inside Guest, CMD as Administrator, `mbr2gpt /convert /allowfullOS`

3. Shutdown Guest, Reboot. Verify no performance issue.

B. Install WSL2

1. Start "Turn Windows Features On or Off"

2. Install Virtual Machine Platform and WSL2 for linux subsystem, as well as Windows Hypervisor Platform for Hyper-V integration with VMware

3. Reboot

4. Cmd as administrator, bcdedit, verify 'hypervisorlaunchtype=Auto' and 'hypervisorschedulertype=Classic' to avoid perf issues that come with side-channel attack mitigation in newer schedulers.
5. Boot guest VM, observe incredibly slow performance

[AaronChang]

hahakiki2010​

hyper-v offed is better than hyper-v on, I think

Windows 7 (hyper-v offed ) 3D perfornance is better than hyper-v

[GregF4]

Any progress on this Workstation performance issue? Its been a couple weeks since the last reply to this thread.

I am running Workstation 15.5.6 build-16341506....on Windows 10 2004. I have installed WSL 2 on the host, however both WSL2 and Hyper V are both disabled.

All of my VM guest OS's are pretty unusable. CPU in the guest stays at 100% with memory at 50% no matter how many processors I add.

And when the CPU does goes below 100% (although rarely), running any application or doing anything (opening a browser, or file folder, etc.) sends it back to 100%.  (And yes, I am only running one guest at a time.) Before WS 15.5.6 I did not have any issues with these VM guest environments.

Should I roll back to a workstation version prior to 15.5.5?

I have tried a few workarounds from this thread but have not see any improvement.

[Alex1T]

@GregF4 For me advice with BcdEdit helped.

Workstation 16 is out. Anyone have tested it for this perfomance hit and ability to run WSL and VW without turning off Hyper-V?

[AaronChang]

hahakiki2010​

vmware 16 has the same issue what in my video.

[hahakiki2010]

@AaronChang

We aware this performance issue on win7 bios. Investigation is ongoing.

Thanks,

Best Regards,

Yan

[mateuszd]

Also affected by this, 15.5.6 with a Windows 10 UEFI VM.

Since updating to 2004 and 15.5.6 and enabling the Windows Hypervisor based mode, performance is terrible.

Feels like the VM is running via RDP from the moon - I can't do my work any more in the VM to be honest.

[vyuschuk]

I did not try the workarounds in this thread, but I have similar conditions to what you described.  My own workaround is VM > Settings > Hardware > Display > uncheck "Accelerate 3D graphics".

[briskspirit]

Yesterday also installed WSL2 to use Docker and now my Win 7 guest VM is like a slideshow... Guest OS asks to optimize graphic performance.

VMWare team, when you will fix it? As I read it is a long time bug. Previously I was able to use even Photoshop inside VM and now few small GUI apps work like a game from 90s...

[QuickWire]

Well after updating to WSL2 and installing Docker, I am also faced with intolerable VM performance.

I hate to say it but I'm going to rebuild my VM's on Hyper-V, compared to 15.5.6 it screams.

[zaptrem]

Also experiencing unusable speeds with any Windows VM features enabled. Works perfectly with those turned off, but hyperv-dependent features are becoming harder and harder to avoid in modern Windows 10. 

i7 10700k

32gb RAM

RTX 3080

Win 10 Oct 2020 Update

[francoisguerin]

Same here with WS Pro 16: I had to desinstall WSL2 and Hyper-V win10 features to get back to previous performance on my vm. Not working at the expected performance level, this integration... so avoid it for now if you want to keep vm working fast enough to be usable.

[hellerim]

Hi scott28tt,

what about Darwin? As far as I know this is released to developers without their own Apple hardware to make it possible for them to create applications for the platform. I suspect Apple is interested in them doing so.

[hellerim]

When I upgraded my Windows host system to 20H2, all Windows 10 guests could no longer be started. Windows 7 VMs and Ubuntu run quite normally. Since I need the VMs for lecturing purposes, I upgraded Workstation Pro from version 15.5 to version 16. Now all the VMs can be started again, but this comes at a horrible price: They are so slow that they are practically unusable. My machine has an Intel Core i7-2670QM CPU which runs at 2.2 GHz which is not extremely fast but nevertheless delivered satisfying experience. RAM is 16GB. I have VMs with 2 or 4 cores, all at a minimum of 4GB RAM, but they are runninng at inacceptably low speed by now.

Since Win 10 20h2, I cannot switch off Hyper-V on the host for several reasons.

It looks to me as if the VM internal drivers have a RAM optimization strategy which conflicts with that of Hyper-V. (This is a non-expert opinion, or better: belief. ;). Converting the VMware VMs to Hyper-V VMs (using Starwind's utilitiy) did not solve the problem either: The converted VMs run as slow as they did before under Workstation Pro. (The conversion just changed the virtual disk format to vhdx; I had to import them to Hyper-V then.)

I did not yet create a new VM with Workstation Pro 16. This is what I will be trying next.

[hellerim]

"Preparing files for installation" was at 8% when I suspended the new VM becasuse Workstation 16.1 is available. It's just installed, and I'm really curious about the difference -if there is one at all. Installation on the VM is resumed no, the process appears to run at the same speed as before the upgrade, and this speed in turn seem to be normal, not low. Later, I'll try to start some other VMs.

[hellerim]

OK, OS installed. This took about 30 min (which is normal to me) with CPU load consistently below 40%. Since the Windows version is 1903, installing all the upgrades will give a good measure for the performance improvements. Before doing this, I'll suspend the new VM and try some of the other VMs.