Best VM Configuration... what is wrong HELP!!

R

reedmj

Member
Ok, so I've been using PD for years for work as an online poker player. I love my Macs and currently have a 15" MBP Retina i7 2.6Ghz 8GB RAM, 10.8.4, and PD8. For years I've had lagging issues with VMs, and I've spent countless hours trying to figure out what is the best configuration for what I use PD for without complete success. I have roughly 8 software programs open that all have 10-12 tabs open inside them each (poker tables) as well as a small database app that uses Postgres 9.0, although all of these programs open usually only ever uses about 10-20% of CPU and under 1GB of memory in windows judging by what I see in the task manager.

I've done countless google searches on which version of windows to use, how much RAM to give the VM, running in coherence/fullscreen/windowed mode, and every other little setting you can tweak... nothing makes me happy. For me since I work in Windows that is the most important side to keep running efficiently. Adding CPUs to the VM has caused the applications in Windows to open faster, but I've seen overall machine lag randomly a lot more with more than one CPU committed to the VM throughout the day.

Anyway, here is my current Win XP VM config:
CPU: 1
Memory: 1536MB
Optimization: Faster VM, Enable Adaptive Hypervisor ON, Tune Windows for Speed ON, Power: Better Performance, Automatically compress virtual disks ON
Security: Everything unchecked
Backup: disabled
Sharing: Everything unchecked
Applications: Everything unchecked
Video: 256MB, 3D Acceleration OFF, Enable Vertical Sync OFF, Enable Retina OFF
Hard Disk: IDE
USB: Everything unchecked

Specific Questions:
1. I have two 27" TB monitors attached, will that affect performance? If so, should I be closing the lid on the MBP to lower the total resolution being driven by the MBP's video card?
2. I've seen more lag in coherence, than windowed, than full screen. Should it matter?
3. Given my machine, should I be giving the VM more CPUs/RAM? If so, why am I seeing overall slower performance on my Mac when I'm only running safari, iTunes, Skype?
4. Which version of Windows is going to give me the best performance? XP seems the lightest, but since I have a flash HD will 7 or 8 work better in the real world?

Unfortunately, running boot camp isn't an option for me. I'm really hoping there is something someone can point out what is causing sub par performance.
 
1. Try allocating 3 GB of RAM to the VM.

2. " 3D Acceleration OFF, Enable Vertical Sync OFF"
Turn these 2 on.
 
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Ok I have changed those. Any thoughts on the version of Windows will perform the best? How about CPUs?

Also, is there something with the type of virtual HD used? It defaults to IDE and I have an SSD. Will creating a VM with a SCSI or SATA help?
 
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I'm sorry, there is no silver bullet. What you had in your settings, thou, were two mistakes, turning off graphics acceleration, which doesn't benefit neither host nor guest, hogs the CPU, and gives poor graphics performance in Windows; you didn't have much RAM assigned to the VM, considering an 8GB machine you could have given more, the 1.5 GB might have been the culprit of slowness due to paging.

So this is the test point you should start from, and quite possibly end also and stop tweaking things that won't influence the performance (ie: Harddisk settings).
 
Specimen said:
I'm sorry, there is no silver bullet. What you had in your settings, thou, were two mistakes, turning off graphics acceleration, which doesn't benefit neither host nor guest, hogs the CPU, and gives poor graphics performance in Windows; you didn't have much RAM assigned to the VM, considering an 8GB machine you could have given more, the 1.5 GB might have been the culprit of slowness due to paging.

So this is the test point you should start from, and quite possibly end also and stop tweaking things that won't influence the performance (ie: Harddisk settings).
Click to expand...

Ok fair enough I will start there. I've also been using Win XP all along, although I have no problem using Win 7 or 8 if you feel they give better real world performance.
 
Depends, XP is better in the sense it requires less RAM. I don't know what these online poker games require, if they use flash or not, I really don't think that changing to Windows 7 or 8 will bring any improvement.

What Windows 8 would do faster in your case would likely be booting.
 
Poker clients are designed for the most part to be super light and simple, although at the same time some of them definitely bloat more than they're supposed to due to most of the time being coded in the third world. The database app that uses postgres is no doubt the heaviest app I use (pokertracker 4).

I guess the big question that I'm wondering is do I lose any performance with WinXP since I have an SSD/Flash drive in my MBP Retina, because I've read Win 7/8 supposedly handles SSD drives better. XP has always felt snappier most of the time to me than when I've tried Win 7 VMs, but I'm wondering if that's just because it's a lighter OS by nature with simple tasks. My bigger concern is how the OS will handle the situations where there are multiple tabs in action at once and things start to lag.
 
XP isn't handling the SSD directly, it's a virtual disk, OSX is, so forget about that.
Really, your problem is lack of hardware acceleration (why did you thought turning that off was a good idea?) and insufficient RAM for the VM, when you mention multiple tabs, the load is on the RAM, and the disk is only a matter of concern in your case when there's paging.
 
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Specimen said:
XP isn't handling the SSD directly, it's a virtual disk, OSX is, so forget about that.
Really, your problem is lack of hardware acceleration (why did you thought turning that off was a good idea?) and insufficient RAM for the VM, when you mention multiple tabs, the load is on the RAM, and the disk is only a matter of concern in your case when there's paging.
Click to expand...

Again, google can be your enemy. I read that turning off 3D acceleration was beneficial if none of the applications use 3D which none of the poker clients do. Also there are countless opinions even by Parallels employees that windows works "perfectly fine" with 1GB of RAM. I guess what never really hit home with me is that most of these people asking weren't actually doing real work in their VMs past opening up a random windows app here and there, where as I'm doing heavy multitasking every day nonstop. I think that is what I wasn't considering when reading performance test studies and Parallels employee's opinions.

I will try with the new settings in my existing XP VM and report back in a few days. Appreciate your help, hopefully this is the solution I'm going to enjoy.
 
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