Vista RC2 performance under Parallels

N

NosillaCast

Member
I'm running Vista RC2 under Parallels release 1922 on a MacBook Pro with 2GB (1GB dedicated to Vista). Vista positively HAMMERS the cpu's on the Mac. I've been monitoring the load using MenuMeters from http://www.ragingmenace.com, and both cpu's are running about 60-70%. This is in comparison to XP which uses maybe 15% or so. Inside Vista I ran the cpu monitoring tool, and I found that if I simply jiggle the mouse, I can get the cpu to hit 100%.

to make sure I understood the cause, I took the same ISO image on the same CD for Vista and I had it installed on an HP workstation (Intel Core 2 Duo) and found that it did not hammer the cpu. Wiggling the mouse did not push it at all.

I think I've done a good enough test to show that Vista isn't necessarily at fault hee in terms of poor system resources, but rather it's Parallels. Know that I would rather blame Microsoft!

Allison
NosillaCast at http://podfeet.com
A technology geek podcast with an EVER so slight Macintosh bias!
 
I'm experiencing similar problems. I get over 100% CPU utilization while Vista is essentially idling. I'm running Parallels Desktop build 1940, Vista RC2.
 
i can replicate the behavior you describe by installing vista on my 1.7ghz PentiumM viao and using the "Standard VGA" driver instead of the ATI driver. that leads me to believe that its due to the lack of decent graphics support in parallels or the shitty Vista VGA driver. I mean afterall, its basically doing on the CPU what would be done on any regular machine in the video chip.

EDIT: i should note that my vaio has an ATI Radeon Mobility (the one before they started appending model numbers to the end!) with 8mb of video ram, ie it pretty much sucks.
 
One thing I've noticed since upgrading to build 1966 is that the CPU load in Vista has dropped tremendously. Whereas previously I'd see 80-100% utilization on one of the cores (I am running Parallels on a 1.66 GHz Intel Core Duo Mini) I now see the CPU drop down to 20% or less thereabouts, at least when Vista isn't doing whatever it is doing when it's grinding down the read/write head on my drive to a nubbin... I'm running Vista RC2, BTW.

Anyone else seeing the same?
 
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