OpenGL performance is horrible

Has anyone else seen this? OpenGL behavior is awful in Parallels 4.0. There was a definite regression. Parallels 3.0 did not suffer from this.

You can find out real easily by downloading and running the OpenGL Extensions Viewer at http://www.realtech-vr.com/glview/ and running the "test" within the application. Note the reported (by the app) framerate is quite reasonable, but for some reason, the window isn't being refreshed often enough, so we get an apparent framerate of like 1fps. This happens with the sample OpenGL apps I have, as well as an app I'm developing, but running the OpenGL Extensions Viewer is the easiest way for someone to try to reproduce this slowness.

Sadly, this OpenGL extensions viewer actually crashes on the last few Parallels 3.0 builds. I was happy to see that it doesn't crash on Parallels 4.0, but alas the performance regression makes this build unusable for me.

I've filed a ticket #617802.

I should reiterate that the crippled OpenGL performance makes Parallels 4.0 completely useless for me. In fact, the reason I'm using Parallels, and not VMWare Fusion, is because of the OpenGL support. Without this, I've suddenly lost all reason to use this product.

Anyway, if anyone else is experiencing this, I'd be curious to know as well.

[EDIT] DirectX also seems to be broken in the exact same way. Is ANYONE here actually running any nontrivial graphical app with any degree of success? Anything I can download and try on my system to see if it's just me?

 

I get around 58 fps for all tests on my Mac Book Pro Early 2008.

 

What app did you use for that test? The OpenGL extensions viewer?

I should also note that this happens in windowed, full-screen, and coherence mode.

 

I noticed something suspicious in my dxdiag on my WinXP VM. Can someone confirm?

Launch dxdiag and go to the Display tab.

Does anyone's dxdiag report that all three DirectX features (directdraw, direct3d, AGP texture acceleration) is "Not Available"?

 

Directdraw and direct3d is operational on my computer. AGP texture acceleration is not available.
My graphics are very responsive in Parallels 4.

Imac Windows XP. 4gb memory.

 

You should install Parallels Tools to be able to use DirectX and OpenGL features. slimemold, did you install tools?

 

Yes, of course I have Parallels Tools installed. This is currently being tracked in ticket #167802.

 

Everything fine on mine. DirectDraw + Direct3D are on.

 

But that totally sucks.

I get about the same:

Vista SP1, Parallels 4-Core: 56, 58, 56, 57, 57, 53, 51.
Mac OS X 10.5.5: 593, 620, 613, 587, 591, 546, 393.
- Both in 1920x1200 fullscreen 24-bit, 60Hz.
- Mac Pro 1.1, 8-core @ 2.66

That's like one twelfth the speed.
EDIT: But it looks to me like Parallels's driver has the VSync permanently set to on. This is bad actually and should be a user option.

Additionally, if I test with the multi-cube scene and turn on fog and set anisotropic filtering to 2 the mac side shows no significant speed decrease but the parallels driver in Vista slows down to: 18, 20, 32, 31, 31, 11, 8

Of course I didn't expect great speed but a surprise would have been nice. Some of the OpenGL screen savers in Vista are around 1-FPS or less. Very bad.

At least the GL-Extensions test is not 1-fps like slimemold. Poor guy.

PS:
Here's another OpenGL app to test with: http://www.newtek.com/lightwave/lwtrial.php
Something a little more "real-world-ish".

 

Yeah, poor me I use my Macbook Pro to develop Windows OpenGL apps, so I'm in pretty bad shape. On the bright side, my ticket has been elevated to the developers now. I'm hopeful that there's a solution, though, since at least the high-level problem seems to have been identified (that is, the Parallels video driver, on my WinXP VM, refuses to advertise support for DirectX acceleration).

What I'm most surprised about is that I haven't seen anyone else on these forums complain about this particular problem. How weird.

 

I think it's because people just expect it to be that way. Full speed virtualizations just aren't assumed by most so there's little or no disappointment. That's my guess anyway. That and the coming engineered economic depression might have them preoccupied.

 

On my Macbook Pro (2.5GHz, early 2008), the OpenGL Extensions Viewer tests give me frame rates of:

53,51,52,51,50,17,19

running under Parallels/WindowsXP, as against

1172,1476,1445,1376,1383,1156,118

running under OS X.

That's certainly quite a difference.

It does look as if something has gone bad in Parallels Desktop 4.0, because Pandromeda's Mojoworld 3 Pro, whose interface uses OpenGL heavily, is pretty much unusable under PD4, whereas it worked quite well under PD3 and BootCamp.

For the record, diagdx reports that directdraw, direct3d are OK, and AGP texture acceleration is not available.

 

New update is published, which is right now available at http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=31764
The most of problem were fixed.
Please navigate to that link, and download build 3540
In post there are various instructions, how to fix problems.

 

Thanks for your advice.

Build 3540 (and advice from Parallels given at http://forum.parallels.com/showpost.php?p=133955&postcount=5) resolves some problems that I have been experiencing. However, as far as I can see, neither that nor the suggestions given at http://forum.parallels.com/showpost.php?p=133975&postcount=7) do anything to improve poor OpenGL performance or resolve the issues I have been having with Mojoworld.

 

I sure hope they can improve the speed. That would be truly wonderful!