That's a good data point about your colleague running SQL Management Studio under Parallels. I agree that it does point to an issue with VMware's drivers.
Original Message:
Sent: Jan 17, 2025 04:14 PM
From: Bigdave1357
Subject: Windows 11 Arm guest poor graphics performance
I'm not sure you can infer that they haven't tested it just because they're not supporting it. They might well be not supporting it because they have tested it and can see the effort needed to bring it into compliance to be supported. But I take your point - simply disabling 3D only proves that the interaction between these apps or the emulator and the VMWare driver is the problem, not necessarily where the fault lies.
That said, I know of a colleague who runs SQL management studio within Parallels on Windows 11 Arm, and there's no problem there. I should have divulged that previously. Hence my claim that I think the disabling of 3D does go some way to proving that this is a VMware issue.
Original Message:
Sent: Jan 17, 2025 03:02 PM
From: Technogeezer
Subject: Windows 11 Arm guest poor graphics performance
The fact that SQL MS isn't supported officially shouldn't be a factor, and the fact that turning off 3D acceleration allows it to run normally proves this.
You could also infer that Microsoft hasn't done testing for it on Windows ARM if they're not listing support - which means as well that if you have a problem, Microsoft may reiterate that same point back to you.
If they haven't tested it, who knows what kind of misbehaviors exist. There are plenty of reported instances for Windows 11 ARM where x86_64 applications (mostly games, though) don't work well under the emulator.
It would be very interesting to see how these titles run on an ARM Copilot PC. That would narrow down if it's a VMware driver problem or a translator problem.
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- Paul (technogeezer)
Original Message:
Sent: Jan 17, 2025 02:21 PM
From: Bigdave1357
Subject: Windows 11 Arm guest poor graphics performance
I'd not thought to try disabling 3D acceleration for the guest VM. That seems counter intuitive - like it would make matters worse.
Having tried it, I'd say it makes things MUCH better. Both apps work as if they're native with respect to graphics performance.
Sounds to me like this is indeed related to the VMWare drivers.
As I said above, VM Tools is up to date - version 12.5.0.
I can confirm that both problem apps are emulated.
The fact that SQL MS isn't supported officially shouldn't be a factor, and the fact that turning off 3D acceleration allows it to run normally proves this.
It would appear that some emulated applications, or possibly the emulator itself, have a graphics performance problem when running with 3D acceleration turned on in Fusion.
If there are any Broadcomm Engineers reading this, I'm happy to run further tests to help diagnose the problem further.
Original Message:
Sent: Jan 17, 2025 11:19 AM
From: Technogeezer
Subject: Windows 11 Arm guest poor graphics performance
Not saying that there aren't performance issues with VMware's drivers. The more information you can provide about how to reproduce this, the more you might get the attention of a Broadcom engineer.
Have you tried disabling 3D acceleration for the VM and seeing if it changes anything? There were reports of slow graphics performance with some applications that seemed to get better when 3D acceleration is off?
What version of VMware Tools do you have installed in the VM? (The latest version, 12.5.0, is not currently bundled with Fusion -- you need to download it from Broadcom's software download site).
Have you confirmed with tools available in the Windows VM if those components exhibiting poor performance are indeed running under Microsoft's Prism (x86_64) emulator? I've heard of instances on the Microsoft side of the world where some games in particular have issues running under the emulator -- perhaps there's something similar going on here.
I'm also seeing that SQL Server Management Studio 20.2isn't supported by Microsoft on Windows ARM (see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/ssms/download-sql-server-management-studio-ssms?view=sql-server-ver16) . Neither is the SSMS 21 preview 1 release). Both are x86 or x64 only. It's possible that it's having issues running under the translator.
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- Paul (technogeezer)
Original Message:
Sent: Jan 17, 2025 10:58 AM
From: Bigdave1357
Subject: Windows 11 Arm guest poor graphics performance
I've noticed that some graphics performance - not all - is poor.
I'm running Windows 11 Arm (24H2) in Fusion Pro 13.6.2 on an M4 MBP.
The guest has 16GB of RAM, 8 processor cores and 8GB shared graphics memory allocated, with VM Accelerated Graphics enabled. The M4 MBP has 64GB RAM, 16 cores - it's a beast and plenty capable of incredibly fast processing and graphics output.
For most of the time graphics is excellent, but I'm seeing some applications struggle, in particular Microsoft Sql Management Studio and the Windows Forms editors within Visual Studio 2022.
I know for sure that the former is running under emulation and I strongly suspect that the WinForms editor component within VS2022 is also emulated - even though the bulk of that app is native.
I can't see anything obviously wrong - VMware Tools is installed and up to date, graphics configured correctly in the VM and most of the apps are running really well. I know that emulation will slow down apps, but I have other emulated apps that run just fine graphically, so it must be something to do with the way the problem apps are accessing graphics - perhaps some form of acceleration isn't working correctly.
Anyone else seeing anything like this. Any suggestions?
The slow performance is REALLY slow - MSMS takes about 20 seconds to repaint some grids of data - you can literally watch it drawing the rows, line by line....