VM Performance?

[Feek]

I'm considering creating a VM for a specific purpose (which is what they're for!) but it could potentially be quite demanding in the graphics area.

Does a VM (using VMWare) take advantage of the host PC hardware or does it just load some odd generic graphics driver which will give less than adequate performance?

[Daz]

Graphics is a weak point in virtual hardware at the moment - you're right, it uses generic 2D hardware, which is fine for the main target market (servers).

Depends on what you want to do though. To give you an example, tversity at the moment sits on a 1 core 2003 x64 server, and that transcodes my xvid to wmv and streams to the 360 without missing a beat.

If you're looking at proper 3d rendering then you'll probably struggle with vmware. Iirc, parallels on Mac made some headway there. I'm certain I saw WoW running smoothly in an XP VM.

[Feek]

Aye, I was hoping for some proper 3d stuff, but I've been searching this morning and from what I've discovered it seems as though it's not worth bothering.

Ahh well, it was worth a thought.

[Mark]

You're right. It isn't. 3D graphics in a VM officially sucks. Badly.