Why so slow and clunky?

Treble57 · Feb 12, 2007

Running Parallels and XP Pro was fine (in fact, fantastic!). Running with Vista - another story.

I have a 17" MacBook PRO with 2.33 Core2Duo and 2GB RAM. Ought to run like a champ. I just don't get it. And where is the Aero Experience? I have a 256MB Video Card, and yet only 32 is used. Is this just a temporary setback?

I've tried emailing Tech Support, but no response

Help!

Bob

drval · Feb 12, 2007

Treble57 said:
Running Parallels and XP Pro was fine (in fact, fantastic!). Running with Vista - another story.

I have a 17" MacBook PRO with 2.33 Core2Duo and 2GB RAM. Ought to run like a champ. I just don't get it. And where is the Aero Experience? I have a 256MB Video Card, and yet only 32 is used. Is this just a temporary setback?

I've tried emailing Tech Support, but no response

Help!

Bob

Yes, I suspect it is temporary. In the prior build (3120) only 16 MB could be effectively used. I don't know what their roadmap is for more complete video support but they've been working on it.

VTMac · Feb 12, 2007

You won't get Aero until the next MAJOR release of parallels. I still can't comprehend why this is important for people, but it must be because everyone is trying it. In short there is no 3D hardware support in parallels right now. Unless you have a compelling reason to run Vista (ie. a feature you need to perform some funciton) I suggest you stick with XP. You'll get better performance and less resources consumed.

dkp · Feb 12, 2007

Treble57 said:
Running Parallels and XP Pro was fine (in fact, fantastic!). Running with Vista - another story.

I have a 17" MacBook PRO with 2.33 Core2Duo and 2GB RAM. Ought to run like a champ. I just don't get it. And where is the Aero Experience? I have a 256MB Video Card, and yet only 32 is used. Is this just a temporary setback?

I've tried emailing Tech Support, but no response

Help!

Bob

Experiment with your memory settings. By this I mean create a simple, repeatable, measurable (you can't improve what your can't measure - yes, I worked for Boeing) test and try it with various memory allocations.

drval · Feb 12, 2007

VTMac said:
You won't get Aero until the next MAJOR release of parallels. I still can't comprehend why this is important for people, but it must be because everyone is trying it. In short there is no 3D hardware support in parallels right now. Unless you have a compelling reason to run Vista (ie. a feature you need to perform some funciton) I suggest you stick with XP. You'll get better performance and less resources consumed.

And FWIW that's probably very good advice at this time even on native Windows boxes...

Treble57 · Feb 13, 2007

Thanks for the responses. I apologize for not explaining my self more fully:

1. I only run Windows xx in order to demonstrate our companies software application on a MacBook. We have lots of customers wanting to own a mac and be able to run our software (which is radiology related).
2. Since I have "doctors" as my customers - they want the latest of anything / everything. Including Vista / Aero. Frankly, it matters not otherwise.
3. BTW - I'm running 3150, with 1.5MB RAM (of my 2GB) allocated to Vista. I run (during demos) a dual monitor setup with my Mac apps on the primary screen, and Vista on the other.

I note, that after what seems like a "forever" boot into Vista - eventually, things seem to get better. Speed wise. Is this the norm? And, once I get my app running in Vista, it hauls butt. Nothing like it in the PC world (portable anyway). The decompresion of 10MB XRay files is snappy. Very impressed, as I was with XP on the Mac.

Thanks!

Bob

VTMac · Feb 13, 2007

Treble57 said:
3. BTW - I'm running 3150, with 1.5MB RAM (of my 2GB) allocated to Vista. I run (during demos) a dual monitor setup with my Mac apps on the primary screen, and Vista on the other.

That's most likely part of your problem right there. Parallels is a MacOSX application. Since you are allocating 1.5 G to Vista, you are only leaving 500M for Parallels, OSX and whatever else you're running, most likely causing a situation of drastic thrashing initially as everything in OSX is swapped to disk. If you only use Vista, then overtime it would probably smooth out a bit as OSX will stop thrashing.

I suspect you've made the same mistake the majority of people have made by assuming more memory produces better performance for your VM. This is categorically NOT the case. You should set your VM to the MINIMUM amount of memory necessary to run your workload. For example, you may find that you can demo your Radiology app with no slow down at only 256M. (I run all of office in an XP VM with 256M and have 0 slow down.) Or it might be 512 or 384. Whatever the number, you need to do a bit of experimenting to figure it out. The thing to remember is you want to leave as much Ram as possible for OSX, while not starving your VM.

As for Aero, you're simply not going to have that anytime soon.

Treble57 · Feb 13, 2007

Thank you for THAT response. Yes, I believe that maybe I am just simply pouring too much RAM into the VM. That is what sales guys do - load up on the RAM. I will run the "experiment" you suggest. I'll assume that "maybe" the boot time will improve with more RAM for OS-X?

Regarding Aero, that is not an issue. If I can't have it on my Mac, then the Docs can't either. That they can figure out....

Bob

Treble57 · Feb 13, 2007

Treble57 said:
Thank you for THAT response. Yes, I believe that maybe I am just simply pouring too much RAM into the VM. That is what sales guys do - load up on the RAM. I will run the "experiment" you suggest. I'll assume that "maybe" the boot time will improve with more RAM for OS-X?

Regarding Aero, that is not an issue. If I can't have it on my Mac, then the Docs can't either. That they can figure out....

Bob

I'll be damned! I changed the RAM to 512, and the OS loads fast, and, in general, things are working better inside od Vista.

I've learned my lesson!

Thanks,

Bob

PS: MS sayst that when running Aero, 1GB of RAM will be the minimum, however, I think we will just cross that bridge when we get to it....

radesix · Feb 13, 2007

Treble57 said:
I'll be damned! I changed the RAM to 512, and the OS loads fast, and, in general, things are working better inside od Vista.

I've learned my lesson!

Thanks,

Bob

PS: MS sayst that when running Aero, 1GB of RAM will be the minimum, however, I think we will just cross that bridge when we get to it....

I am new to Macs and at this time I don't have much use for the Mac OS until I learn more about it. Given that scenario I assigned 1.5 GB to Vista and left the remaining of 2GB to OS X. I have no speed issues on either side that I can tell.

I did notice, however, that attempting to install Vista to an expanding disk results in terrible performance. Convert it to a plain disk and voila! It runs fantastic.

VTMac · Feb 13, 2007

Try backing that Vista RAM back to 1G and see if things don't get faster. More RAM for VM does not = best performance.

drval · Feb 13, 2007

VTMac said:
That's most likely part of your problem right there. Parallels is a MacOSX application. Since you are allocating 1.5 G to Vista, you are only leaving 500M for Parallels, OSX and whatever else you're running, most likely causing a situation of drastic thrashing initially as everything in OSX is swapped to disk. If you only use Vista, then overtime it would probably smooth out a bit as OSX will stop thrashing.

I suspect you've made the same mistake the majority of people have made by assuming more memory produces better performance for your VM. This is categorically NOT the case. You should set your VM to the MINIMUM amount of memory necessary to run your workload. For example, you may find that you can demo your Radiology app with no slow down at only 256M. (I run all of office in an XP VM with 256M and have 0 slow down.) Or it might be 512 or 384. Whatever the number, you need to do a bit of experimenting to figure it out. The thing to remember is you want to leave as much Ram as possible for OSX, while not starving your VM.

As for Aero, you're simply not going to have that anytime soon.

My major WIndows app requires a great dela of RAM so on my MBP C2D with 2 GB RAM, I allocate 1 GB to VM and let it "Allocation automatically". It works quite well for me.

The point is well taken to not "short" OS X as that is the primary platform.