Optimizing XP speed?

I

iocomposer

Member
I'm not really happy with the performance of XP running with this product. I mean, this macmini is a dualcore 1.66Ghz processor and should be running my simple sound editor at BLAZING speed and yet the actual experience is generally kinda slow and dodgy. The auto scroll function worked very smoothly on a P2 233Mhz PC, so why is it so stuttery on a machine supposedly 12x faster? I do understand that this is an "emulation" of WinXP but something that ran so well on a far inferior machine should seriously run at least equally as smooth even in emulation mode given that this new machine is so much more powerful.

So what do I have to do? Do I need more RAM? Is there some way to optimize the guest OS? Sound Forge is not a CPU intensive application....it runs well on a P1. There must be something I can do to pick it up a pace or two.

I REALLY want this to work!! Please show me the way, oh enlightened ones :)

Thanks!

MacMini CoreDuo 1.66Mhz
1.25Gb RAM
Parallels workstation b5
WinXPHome
Sound Forge v.6
 
You should have run the DOS emulator I used to have for my Atari ST.

I'm running with a 1gig MBP and was running the virtual machine with 256 memory. Increasing that to 384 made things much smoother.
 
vamp07 said:
You should have run the DOS emulator I used to have for my Atari ST.
QUOTE]

Hilarious. I used Steem the other day to get my Brattacus fix. My dad tried to throw away my 520ST; no way.
Click to expand...
 
Did you install Parallels tools? That alone should help some of your issues. Also, the more memory you can spare, the better. I run Parallels on a MBP 2.0 with 2 GB RAM; the VM has 512 MB assigned to it and it runs, even in full screen form, with respectable speed.

It sure as heck beats Virtual PC on my 1 GHz TiBook, which compares to this really does run like a 233 MHz PII.
 
Just ran a speed comparison, I'm a happy camper

Dell 1.7 GHz 1 GB Memory using RadioSoft Comstudy
The Dell took 1 minute and 17 seconds to calculate the a 300 square mile RF study.
MBP 2.0 Ghz 512 memory for VM calculated in 45 seconds.
I have been very very pleased with the speed on everything I have tried.
 
You could always use DSP Quattro for Mac instead ... I like SF too, but I find DSP Q to be just as good....and a lot cheaper.
 
Ok - just wasn't sure if you'd tried or heard about it - a lot of people think Peak is their only option on Mac (which sucks).
 
Yeah, I used D-SoundPro quite a bit about 8-9 years ago and upgraded when it became DSP-Quattro. It's definitely good, but for the kind of editing that I need to do, Sound Forge is the best option.
Thanks for the input!
 
iocomposer said:
So what do I have to do? Do I need more RAM? Is there some way to optimize the guest OS? Sound Forge is not a CPU intensive application....it runs well on a P1. There must be something I can do to pick it up a pace or two.

I REALLY want this to work!! Please show me the way, oh enlightened ones :)

Thanks!
Click to expand...

How much RAM have you assigned for the VM in PW? You have enough physical RAM on your machine, assuming you are not doing much else in OS X, to give it 768Mbytes or more. Sound apps in Windows (and Mac) are RAM hogs, and if you don't have enough Windows will go down the toilet perf-wise.

--Tim
 
iocomposer said:
I'm not really happy with the performance of XP running with this product. I mean, this macmini is a dualcore 1.66Ghz processor and should be running my simple sound editor at BLAZING speed and yet the actual experience is generally kinda slow and dodgy. The auto scroll function worked very smoothly on a P2 233Mhz PC, so why is it so stuttery on a machine supposedly 12x faster? I do understand that this is an "emulation" of WinXP but something that ran so well on a far inferior machine should seriously run at least equally as smooth even in emulation mode given that this new machine is so much more powerful.

So what do I have to do? Do I need more RAM? Is there some way to optimize the guest OS? Sound Forge is not a CPU intensive application....it runs well on a P1. There must be something I can do to pick it up a pace or two.

I REALLY want this to work!! Please show me the way, oh enlightened ones :)

Thanks!

MacMini CoreDuo 1.66Mhz
1.25Gb RAM
Parallels workstation b5
WinXPHome
Sound Forge v.6
Click to expand...
Please provide us with following details:
1. Memory confuguration:
- menu Edit->Preferences->Memory - memory reserved for all VMs value
- memory allocated for VM in VM configuration
2. VT-x: check menu Parallels Workstation->About->Virtualization mode for booted VM. Does it claim Intel VT-x or Software mode 0/2?

BTW: To unlock VT-x on Mac Mini you should go to sleep and back after each cold reboot.
 
I'm using B6 on a MBP w/ 2G ram and am very impressed with the speed of XP. I have 768M assigned to the XP VM and 1248M assigned as max memory to Parallels. VT is enabled.

/D
 
I've run some benchmarks on my MBPro on Windows code run under Windows (Boot Camp) run under Parallels, and run natively under OSX. This code loads a large file, does a whole bunch of math, and saves. I know that natively under XP, I'm allocating enough RAM that a 512M machine is decidedly slower than a 1G machine. The task takes 20s to run on either native system with 2G of RAM and 26s on a virtual machine with 512M of RAM. That's pretty darn impressively fast in my book.

Craig
 
Andrew @ Parallels said:
Please provide us with following details:
1. Memory confuguration:
- menu Edit->Preferences->Memory - memory reserved for all VMs value
- memory allocated for VM in VM configuration
2. VT-x: check menu Parallels Workstation->About->Virtualization mode for booted VM. Does it claim Intel VT-x or Software mode 0/2?

BTW: To unlock VT-x on Mac Mini you should go to sleep and back after each cold reboot.
Click to expand...

Here's my info:
Memory reserved: 884Mb
Memory for VM: 512Mb
Virtualization mode: Intel VT-x

Maybe I'm allocating too much RAM? Thanks for the help.
 
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