Windows Experience Index low scores (only 1.0) for graphics in VMWARE

[yoo711]

I got 5.9 for all components on Vista with direct booting with BootCamp on my Mac Pro.
But I got 1.0 for both Graphics and Gaming when I use VmWare/Fusion regardless of using virtual machine or bootcamp partition.
So the windows on desktop does not look move or dragged smoothly like those did on BootCamp. When I write some program writhing on graphic buffer, the image in my program (written in C++, MFC etc) is especially slowly drawn. Is there anyway to improve the Graphics on Vmware(I think it occurs in the same way in Parallels too)? I am using VMware 2.0 beta 1.

 

[VideoFreek]

You might want to try your question over at the VMWare forum...it is quite active and covered by company reps. They might be able to help you with your specific coding question.

In general, however, the graphics under emulation don't come close to running native. A FAQ on VMWare's site briefly discusses the reasons for this...here is the relevant excerpt:

Video cards are an example of a device which assumes it is controlled by exactly one OS. If a guest were to be able to access a graphics card directly, it could draw anywhere on screen it wanted, affect host textures, etc. Even a well-intentioned guest would cause problems, because it wouldn't be aware of what the host is doing ("Hey, what's this texture? I don't recognize it, must not be important!" and then your windows/icon/desktop/menus/etc. disappear). It's not possible to dedicate an entire graphics card to the guest either, since the underlying buses are also not safe to pass through - see for example Re: Guest able to directly access PCI cards for a good explanation.

Because of this, we take the emulation approach. The guest sees a VMware video card, and we do the work of converting guest commands into something that's safe for the host video card. There's no point in installing drivers for the host video card in the guest (with the exception of Boot Camp virtual machines, where you might want to native boot) since the guest never gets to speak directly to the host video card.

One future possibility is the notion of virtualization-aware hardware, which does not make the assumption that it's only ever talking to one OS. Such hardware would have different contexts that the host can switch between for its own use or for guest use. Intel's Vanderpool and AMD's Pacifica are examples of virtualization-aware CPU technology. Other virtualization-aware hardware, such as for graphics, network, or storage, is theoretically possible but I don't think any currently exist, especially not for the consumer market. I'm am not sure when or even if they might become available.​

They won't comment on future releases, but are believed to be working on better support. Whether it will ever be good enough to run Aero remains to be seen.

 

[Stridder44]

But do the graphics and gaming aspects work (and I use the term "work" loosely, as you are using a virtual machine)?

I got 1.0 on my MacBook Pro for a small time. But games and everything worked/ran fine (was using Boot Camp).

 

[yoo711]

Well, I tried to register the forum on VMware but it did not work, whatever username for the registeration I put, I got an error message similar to "the name is used by others put another name". I could not get in the Forum of VMware. But I have a good feeling on is MacRumors anyway this is the reason why i put this here. Thanks for the comment and your explanation was very helpful to me.

It worked nicely on BootCamp only (say with natural booting). The score is above 5.0 I think 5.8 for graphics and games.
But for virtual machine, it is not more than 1.0 for graphics and sometimes 1.8 for games(Maybe i used 3d?)

If I use 2 processors with VMware, it became worse. The actions of mouse dragging of windows on the desktop are more slow than using one processor.
I feel not comfortable in working with that environment like doing my work while sitting on an uncomfortable chair in my office.

I understand the explanation why it becomes slow but the difference is too much. My machine is a MacPro with 4 Processors with 8G memory.
If I just use BootCamp, which is sooo nice for working on windows, the problem is I can not run my computation program with multiprocessing benefit. I usually write a computational program on windows environment and test on Mac side with multiprocessing. So the virtual machine is a great benefit for me since I can use only one desktop with two screens.

Why the score can not be ,say, at least 2.0 or 3.0 if 5.8 is too much?
What I feel is that the people who are working on VMware or Parallels, (especially VMware) are hiding or hesitating too much in writing the users manual, that make users spend their time too much for trying to improve their machine on the virtual machine environment. If they put "to do or not to do items" clearly on the manual which is accessible easily to normal users like me, I would not have tried such a hopeless attempt.

In the view of users, I have a very nice machine and worked very nicely with BootCamp as Leopard OS promised. Now product of virtual machine like VMware and Parallels are promising that it will work very nicely on top of that. So I spent money and time for that. Oh no, it works very well EXCEPT one, which is the one very important for me. That is what it is....

 

[kkat69]

It doesn't matter if your running 16 processors (you might see a small increase but nothing to shake a stick at) the video is still emulated via software. That software has limits and can only run so fast regardless. It's not a direct tie to the hardware by any means. No dedicated gpu.

Emulated graphics works to some extent and to that extent works pretty well for most things.

Do not expect a high score on emulated video.