Question about vmware and windows xp professional SP3

[LuismaSP89]

Hello everyone : )

Question 1:

This is strange... I installed a clean windows xp SP3 (four times) in my vmware workstation 12, and it seems a bit slow, unless i turn hardware compatibility to vmware 6.0.... why is this happening?

Question 2:

If i set more than 1 processor or processor thread in the guest hardware options, it slows, why if i set more processors for the windows xp it slows?

Question 3:

I set the vram of the guest graphic´s card to 512MB, but if i run a dxdiag in the virtual windows XP it shows me that the SVGA II  allows only 128MB, why i can set 512MB, 1GB, etc, if the SVGA II  can only handle 128MB?

I tried all of this in vmware 11 and 12, with WXP SP2/SP3 and the same results.

My host hardware:

i7 4790k   4.4Ghz

8GB ram DDR3

Nvidia GTX 970

Thanks in advance, and sorry for my bad english :smileyconfused:

[rachelsunsm]

Thanks for using Workstation

for Question1:

could you try to disable 3d to see if the vm get slow too? so we can tell if it's related to the MKS issue.

for Question 2, I didn't hit this issue. could you tell me what's your host? I will try to set up the env based my Nvidia 980 Graphics card.?

For Question3. I found the same issue with you I will try to ask for help from dev team.

Thanks,

Rachel

[LuismaSP89]

Mmm... nope, disabling 3d makes no change in the performance.

I don´t understand what you mean with "what´s my host" if you´re asking what is my OS, it´s a WIN 7 ultimate x64. And the specs of my computer are in the previous message.

Thanks a lot for your help Rachel  : )

[rachelsunsm]

thanks!

yes, I mean your os. I will try to reproduce question#1.

for Question 3, following is the answer from dev team:

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There are many things that are called "VRAM" in our stack, as well as Microsoft's.  The UI setting does control the amount of host resources that we will allow the guest to use, and the guest can use up to that amount. However, the number reported in the dxdiag tool, is the size of the PCI bar, which is capped at 128 MB.  (This was never messaged to customers very well.)

Essentially, our video card has as much off-screen memory as the user sets in the UI (ie the virtual graphics hardware can use all of it) but the Microsoft Runtime is only allowed to address 128MB of it at at time (and doesn't know that we're using the rest of the memory behind it's back).  This is really a Microsoft limitation on how VRAM is reported to the user.

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Thanks,

Rachel

[LuismaSP89]

Thanks to you Rachel

[RDPetruska]

Question 2:

Windows XP was never very good at multi-processor systems.  You will get your best performance keeping it at 1 virtual CPU.