Graphics performance with Sierra 10.12.5 Guest

Discussion in 'macOS Virtual Machine' started by AllanY1, Jul 10, 2017.

  1. AllanY1

    AllanY1 Bit poster

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    I've created a clean 10.12.5 guest on my Mac book pro 2016, with touch bar, from the restore partition, host OS is also 10.12.5. The guest has been assigned 4 processors and 8GB ram with 256 on the graphics side. The issue I'm having is that clicking Launchpad brings up the icon app list BUT then swiping between screen lists isn't smooth and even worse if clicking the Other app group it takes 2-3 seconds to come up and then 5+ seconds to close. I haven't really done anything else with the VM settings except try the various scaling options but that made no difference or made it worse. I have also tried upping the graphics memory but checking the system properties it says it's still only 256. I have search around the forums etc but can't see any mention of this, can anyone offer a fix or advice?

    Thanks in advance.
     
  2. AllanY1

    AllanY1 Bit poster

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    Anyone?

    If no-one is experiencing this issue could someone that is using the latest parallels software with a touch bar macbook tell me the steps they followed to create a an initial Mac OS guest and any settings tweaked in the process.

    Thanks
     
  3. NoorWik

    NoorWik Bit poster

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    Hi AllanY1,
    I have the same problem. I think, Parallels Desktop don't support 2D and 3D graphic in quest macOS, because Apple didn't release API for graphic. I found in this topic http://kb.parallels.com/eu/113309 . I try VM Fusion 8.5 and the same problem. I hope, that after releasing High Sierra Apple will release the API for 3D Accelarization and Parallels will be able to work with it. Sorry for my english langue skill :)
     
  4. AllanY1

    AllanY1 Bit poster

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    Thanks for responding, really appreciate you pointing me in the right direction and nothing wrong with the English!
     
  5. PaulChristopher@Parallels

    PaulChristopher@Parallels Product Expert Staff Member

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    Hi AllanY1, virtual machine has virtual memory allocated from Mac RAM. Virtual video memory almost does not depend on Mac video card and Mac video memory. While operating with virtual machine, the textures and the other Guest video data are transmitted to the Host OpenGL. OpenGL decides itself whether to collect this data in the Host RAM or in the Host video memory.

    Generally, 256 MB of video memory is enough. Sometimes, Parallels Desktop recommends to increase it to 512 MB, e.g. when retina is enabled and there is an external monitor. Certainly, you can increase the video memory to 512 MB or more, even if there are no retina and external monitor, but it leads to some consequences:
    Virtual machine consumes more Host RAM.

    Windows apps are smart, they adapt to larger amount of video memory and start to load textures with higher resolution. It increases the Guest RAM consumption since Guest DirectX, relatively speaking, keeps the copy of its resources in the RAM. Therefore, increasing the video memory, you should also assign more RAM to the virtual machine.

    Host OpenGL consumes more RAM since it also keeps the copy of its resources in the RAM. So, virtual video memory has triple prize for Host RAM. So in one word, not only Mac OS Sierra, all the version of macOS virtual machine graphics are adopted their native graphics automatically. You cannot edit the settings at all.
     

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