VMWare Player 12 with XP guest using a DOS window is slow

Using VMWare Player 12

Problem host machine is a Desktop server AMD 2x 2380 (2.5G quad core) Opteron 16G RAM 64 bit 320g SSD Windows 10 with virtualization enabled.

Compared to a notebook AMD Phenom II (2.9 G dual core) 6G RAM 64 bit Windows 10 320g HD with virtualization enabled.

My test program is DOS CAD which I run in a window on XP. I have made a test program so that my testing is exactly the same. The program loads a fair sized drawing, sizes it to fit the screen then hides hidden lines at the end of which it appends a log file as to date stop and start times. I know it is old but I have 100s of hours of programming involved in this program, which I wouldn’t live long enough to replace.

The guest is XP 800G RAM 40G HD and 1 core.

The problem machine is the Desktop I’ve been knocking my head on the for the last 3 months now and am about ready to go back to 2 computers (Linux and XP). Running the test program it will finish in less the 2 minutes on the notebook (Phenom II) running in a VMWare 12 Virtual machine, compared to more than 10 minutes on the desktop.

The desktop has no problem running the program directly, using a bootable DOS thumb drive it can boot directly to DOS where it takes much less than 2 minutes to hide the lines and uses the entire screen. Which is another item which will be addressed if I can get the speed up.

Hi there

things like CAD are cases where CPU "Oomph" is important -- Opteron isn't the best for this process -- but I rather suspect that in your VM you have only 1 processor enabled -- normally that's fine but running an Intensive CPU program I think you should change the VM settings to use say 2 processors -- experiment a bit.

VMWARE - especially with the VM on an SSD is quite efficient. The Opteron though isn't as fast as your CPU in the laptop so the laptop probably will run the program quicker in any case. The Phenom is a much more capable processor than the Opteron -- though that said you should still be able to get better performance. Also check where your CAD data is on the desktop -- if you are using slow HDD's then all bets are off -- even an i7 processor will run "hobbled" and very slow if you have slow HDD's.

Cheers
jimbo

Thanks Jimbo
As far as I know 16-bit DOS programs can only run on 1 core, That being said I have tried 2 cores hoping that XP efficiency would help. Nope, no marked difference

The test itself is most definitely a CPU capability test with more than 90% of the working time spent calculating where to break lines during line hiding.

My old system (A6-3600 2.0ghz quad-core) became un-reliable forcing me to replace; the new one I bought (A10-4800 4.1ghz quad-core) was only half as fast as the "slow" machine. So there are CPU changes made between the 2 models. I made the bootable thumb drive to test new ones and non of the new AMD ones tested (4-6minutes) were faster than the A6 (2.2 minutes) one I had. I got this server for durability reasons and it is capable of being faster than the A6 at 1.5 minutes.

Virtual machines can run the DOS program at nearly the same speed as booting directly to DOS with the advantage of multi-tasking, which is why I keep working at it. I'd be happy if we could get it down to 2-1/2 minutes in a virtual machine.

I have been frustrated by this on my last 5 computers, the first 3 I went back to XP Pro from the W7 Pro they were shipped with, as VMs were not user friendly. I've even tried Hyper-V on the A10 and the Opteron Hyper-V is definitely not user friendly. I have W10 and using VMWare on the notebook and it works fine

Hi there

IMO you are actually much better off using Intel processors these days (YMMV of course).

I'm using a fairly modest i3 equivalent processor in an HP Microserver (ProLiant Gen 8) which runs 3 or 4 VM's for me just fine plus it serves as a NAS box running PLEX, and SQUEEZEBOXSERVER (Logitech media server), and a datastore for backups.

VM's perform just fine even when dishing out Media at 1080p to a remote TV into a Chromecast device.

I've got a feeling that your opteron processor isn't up to the job here when running a VM.

BTW these microservers are really great if you aren't an extreme gamer etc -- cheap, 100% robust and reliable as they are SERVERS and designed for low running costs with 24 hrs on time, and really convenient for storage-- I have 1 SSD and 4 X 4TB storage HDD's which works really well. Running CENTOS 7 as Host with W10, W7 and XP as VM's. Haven't had to re-boot for AGES yet - not a single problem.

These microservers are CHEAPER than a lot of desktops, take a tiny amount of space and if you don't mind being restricted to the possibility of only adding one expansion card IMO they are perfect desktop replacements --you can run a desktop OS on these too without difficulty --the HP one has some in built W2012 server drivers which work perfectly on W10 -- I first played around with these running Windows before I set them up as NAS boxes (I've 2 of these identically configured).

Cheers
jimbo