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Visual Studio: significant performance difference on VMware Fusion vs Bootcamp?

Visual Studio: significant performance difference on VMware Fusion vs Bootcamp?

I've just purchased a new MacBook Pro and was looking at installing Windows 7 via Bootcamp, so that i can do Visual Studio development work, but i was thinking it would make more sense to move my non development stuff (email etc) to the Mac and launch Windows 7 via VMWare Fusion. Im also looking at doing iPhone development as well so was wondering if that made more sense?

Asked by: Guest | Views: 382
Total answers/comments: 4
Guest [Entry]

"I convinced my work a while back to get me a Mac Pro instead of the intended, comparable, Lenovo (they bought in on the whole idea because it ended up being about $800.00 cheaper, macs aren't always the most expensive :) )

I'd been using Fusion over Parallels, due to my original experience with the early versions. I have a Windows 7 x64 VM that I use for Visual Studio, and offload everything else that I can to the OS X. It had been working great. VS2008 loaded up quick, builds where quick etc. etc.

Lately I've been using VS2010 and I've noticed a significant performance hit. I decided to give Parallels another go due to all of the latest reviews about performance with version 5. Both Parallels and Fusion work great, but there is a very noticeable performance difference with VS2010 on Parallels vs Fusion.

So to your original question I think you'd be good just virtualizing Windows for development, if you can offload much of your other work onto OS X. Performance has come a long way with Fusion/Parallels and it's a pain to continually reboot to switch your OS for the performance bump. If you're using VS2010 I might recommend Parallels right now simply because of slowdown you get with Fusion. (I think this may be related to VS2010 using WPF which may be faster inside Parallels)"
Guest [Entry]

"I cannot comment on Windows 7 (or even Vista) running on Fusion but I did use Visual Studio 2008 on Win XP inside Fusion and it ran great, even on just a MacBook. I don't want to be the guy asking why you want to do that but... why do you need to have Win7 as opposed to XP?

The main reason I went with XP versus Vista was extra burden Vista (and Win7) put on the graphics card, memory, and the hard disk. Now you'll obviously be in a better position with a MacBook Pro and its additional graphics capabilities; but there is no way around the additional memory and copious amounts of random HD access that Vista and Win7 impose. Yes, you can turn off many of the features that cause the memory and disk usage but even then the tax seems to be higher than it was in XP. Enough about ""why Win7"".

From a performance perspective you'll want to have lots of RAM and a fast HD. I upgraded to 4GB and a nice 7200rpm HD and my performance was great (often better than running native on an aging Athlon dual-core machine). The ability to run VS and still use all my favorite mac programs is something I still miss (I no longer have the MacBook) and I'd highly recommend that setup."
Guest [Entry]

"I have used Vista 64 + Visual Studio 2008 in both BootCamp and VMWare Fusion modes and both perform well. If I was ""playing around"" with some code and not coding intently I could do it in Fusion without any significant performance hit. If I was focusing on my code and needed to get something done, I would reboot into BootCamp mode. This not only ensured that all my resources were dedicated to Vista/Visual Studio, it also helps ensure that nothing in Mac-Land would distract me from working.

Important

The biggest tip I can give you though is if your MBP has dual video cards, and you boot into Windows using BootCamp, Windows will use the more powerful video card. This creates additional heat and your MBP will start to warm up. Normally in Mac-Land the fans will speed up to compensate but in Windows-BootCamp there is nothing to tell the fans to speed up and your MBP will start getting VERY warm.

There is a simple solution that works well though. In Mac-Land, look for an app called SMC Fan Control (you can find it on macupdate.com). Install it and before you boot into Windows using BootCamp, go to Mac Preferences, find SMC, and default your fans to spin at something like 4500 rpm. It will make a bit more noise but will still be reasonably quiet. Now, do not shutdown OS-X, do a Restart, hit the BootCamp key at the right time and go into Windows. By performing a Restart the fan controller on the motherboard will still think it needs to spin the fans at the new setting and it will continue to do so until you shutdown the MBP completely or reboot to OS-X and change the setting down to a slower speed (I run about 1300 normally). This makes development from the couch in BootCamp much more enjoyable as you won't find your clothes being ironed while you develop."
Guest [Entry]

"While I cannot speak to running Windows or Visual Studio in a VM on a Mac in Fusion, I can speak to the part about iPhone development (which requires Xcode and Mac OS X) in a Parallels VM.

iOS Development

I do iOS development with Xcode running in a Parallels (9, 10, and 11) virtual machine on a MacBook Pro Retina with terabyte flash drive.

Generally this works very well. The biggest plus having all my work-related stuff in one single environment. Specifically, Apple stores security keys in the Keychain. Trying to extract that from a real Mac and re-install on another is a mystery and a pain. With a VM, I make occasional manual backups locally and/or to an external drive. Getting a new Mac, or switching to another Mac just means one big file copy, then I'm up and running.

I even use the Notes app and Reminders app within that VM for my development work. I do not activate iCloud within that VM, so it just stays local to the VM.

With Mountain Lion running as the Guest OS in the virtual machine worked so well that I found myself getting confused about when I was in the real Mac and when I was in the virtual Mac. In the VM, I had to switch my Dock to the right-side of the screen to differentiate from the real Mac’s left-side Dock.

I am sure there is some performance penalty when running in the VM, but it went unnoticeable to me. I imagine the speedy flash drive saves so much time that it more than makes up for any overhead of running the VM. Overall, this is the fastest development environment I have ever used. With Mountain Lion, that is… read on.

CAVEAT: Mavericks, Yosemite, and El Capitan run noticeably slower as a guest VM. I have confirmed that in the latest and prior versions of both Parallels and Fusion, neither product makes graphics hardware acceleration available to Mac OS X as a guest OS. They do for Windows as a Guest OS, but not for Mac OS X (ironically).

So everything graphical runs slower. Menus drop down slower, and as you drag your mouse pointer through the menus items, they highlight and draw more slowly. Moving windows is not quite immediate. Animations can be herky-jerky. Scrolling is kind of hyper-active, a series of small visual updates rather than smooth. All-in-all, it is not a show-stopper for me, at least not yet. (I've only recently updated the VM from Mountain Lion.)

Why was Lion and Mountain Lion so performant visually while the later Mac OSes are slow? From what I learned in a brief tech note and email from Parallels company, Apple provided a shim with Lion/Mountain Lion. They had some library that helped to substitute for the lack of graphics hardware acceleration. This library is no longer available with the place-named OS X versions, only with the feline-named OS X versions."