Performance question: VMware Workstation 17.6 vs VirtualBox 7.1.10


Mirlind

New member
Local time
4:33 AM
Posts
6
OS
Linux Mint XFCE
Hi all,

I used to be a relatively happy user of VMware Workstation 7.x.x, but since that version it went downhill in terms of performance, slow and sluggish, so I turned to VirtualBox, which was much better in that regard.

Now my question is in regards to the current performance status (CPU/RAM/sluggishness) of VMware Workstation 17.6. While I'm generally happy with V-Box, one thing that irks me is lack of tabbed interface in its UI (useful in laptops) and there's no plan to introduce it soon from the company. So I thought I could give vmware workst. a try again, given that it already has the tabbed interface baked in it.

Said that, what are your current experiences with VMware Workst. 17.6 ? Worse or better than the old version 7.x.x in terms of performance?

My setup: Latest Windows or Linux hosts. I have plenty of ram and a decent cpu in a DELL laptop, still want a good performance out of it.
VMs usage: Usually one or two at a time.
 
Windows Build/Version
Windows 11, Linux Mint 22

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Linux Mint XFCE
    Computer type
    Laptop
    Manufacturer/Model
    Dell Precision
    CPU
    Intel® Core™ Ultra 5 135H, vPro® Enterprise
    Memory
    48GB
    Hard Drives
    2.25 TB (two NVME drives)
    Internet Speed
    300 Mb/s
    Browser
    Different
    Other Info
    Very professional laptop
Hi @Mirlind & welcome,
When you have time, please fill out your system specs in your profile.

I am a VMware user of many years after having tried out Hyper-V & Oracle's.
I both run Windows & Linux Arch on VMware workstation 17.6.3-24583834.
I see no drop of performance at all between the guest & host machines in Windows.
VM resources are set to 6 cores & 4.632 GB RAM.
I do recommend letting Windows manage your pagefile.sys if you intend to use it as a host.
 

My Computers

System One System Two

  • OS
    Windows 11 Pro/All Channels
    Computer type
    Laptop
    Manufacturer/Model
    Acer Nitro ANV15-51
    CPU
    AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS 3200-4500 Mhz 8 cores x 2
    Motherboard
    Sportage_RBH
    Memory
    32 GB DDR5
    Graphics Card(s)
    Radeon Graphic / NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 8 GB GDDR6
    Sound Card
    AMD/Realtek(R) Audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Integrated Monitor (15.3"vis)
    Screen Resolution
    FHD 1920X1080 16:9 144Hz
    Hard Drives
    Kingston OM8SEP4512Q 500 GB
    WDS500G2B0A-00SM50 500.1 GB
    PSU
    19V DC 6.32 A 120 W
    Cooling
    Dual Fans
    Mouse
    MS Bluetooth
    Internet Speed
    Fiber 1GB Cox -us & IGB Orange-fr
    Browser
    Edge Canary- Firefox Nightly-Chrome Dev-Chrome Dev
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender
    Other Info
    VMs of Windows 11 stable/Beta/Dev/Canary
    VM of XeroLinux- Arch based & Debian 13 (Trixie)
  • Operating System
    Windows 11 Insider Canary
    Computer type
    Laptop
    Manufacturer/Model
    ASUS X751BP
    CPU
    AMD Dual Core A6-9220
    Motherboard
    ASUS
    Memory
    8 GB
    Graphics card(s)
    AMD Radeon R5 M420
    Sound Card
    Realtek
    Monitor(s) Displays
    17.3
    Screen Resolution
    1600X900 16:9
    Hard Drives
    1TB 5400RPM
HyperV is much faster as it is a type 1 hypervisor unlike VMware/vbox which are type 2.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 11 Pro + Win11 Canary VM.
    Computer type
    Laptop
    Manufacturer/Model
    ASUS Zenbook 14
    CPU
    I9 13th gen i9-13900H 2.60 GHZ
    Motherboard
    Yep, Laptop has one.
    Memory
    16 GB soldered
    Graphics Card(s)
    Integrated Intel Iris XE
    Sound Card
    Realtek built in
    Monitor(s) Displays
    laptop OLED screen
    Screen Resolution
    2880x1800 touchscreen
    Hard Drives
    1 TB NVME SSD (only weakness is only one slot)
    PSU
    Internal + 65W thunderbolt USB4 charger
    Case
    Yep, got one
    Cooling
    Stella Artois (UK pint cans - 568 ml) - extra cost.
    Keyboard
    Built in UK keybd
    Mouse
    Bluetooth , wireless dongled, wired
    Internet Speed
    900 mbs (ethernet), wifi 6 typical 350-450 mb/s both up and down
    Browser
    Edge
    Antivirus
    Defender
    Other Info
    TPM 2.0, 2xUSB4 thunderbolt, 1xUsb3 (usb a), 1xUsb-c, hdmi out, 3.5 mm audio out/in combo, ASUS backlit trackpad (inc. switchable number pad)

    Macrium Reflect Home V8
    Office 365 Family (6 users each 1TB onedrive space)
    Hyper-V (a vm runs almost as fast as my older laptop)
Have always found Vmware to be more advanced than Vbox, running Windows 10/11 guests on Linux.

But then stopped using Vmware, after the experience of it taking down the OS, while running a VM.

Also of note, found Ubuntu LTS + Vbox (latest version), to be much more stable, than latest Fedora + Vbox.

These days, time is too precious to be continually tinkering with W11 VMs, trying to get sound working properly in Citrix, with Teams/Zoom, was easier to just buy £100 GBP 8th gen Win 10 machine, with COA in Bios, allowing direct Win 11 Pro install.
 
Last edited:

My Computers

System One System Two

  • OS
    Linux Ubuntu 24.04.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    Manufacturer/Model
    Dell Optiplex 5810
    CPU
    Xeon 2680 v4
    Motherboard
    Xeon V4 Motherboard
    Memory
    64GB ECC DDR4
    Graphics Card(s)
    nVidia GTX 1650
    PSU
    850W
  • Operating System
    Windows 11 23H2
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    Manufacturer/Model
    HP Z640
    CPU
    Xeon 2667 V4
    Motherboard
    HP Z640 V3/V4
    Memory
    32GB ECC
    Graphics card(s)
    nVidia Quadro M4000
    Monitor(s) Displays
    LG Gsync 27" 144hz
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080 144hz
HyperV is much faster as it is a type 1 hypervisor unlike VMware/vbox which are type 2.
I can't say I share your opinion but the lack of audio is a show stopper for me.
Please note that the OP is looking for something that Linux would host as well.
 

My Computers

System One System Two

  • OS
    Windows 11 Pro/All Channels
    Computer type
    Laptop
    Manufacturer/Model
    Acer Nitro ANV15-51
    CPU
    AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS 3200-4500 Mhz 8 cores x 2
    Motherboard
    Sportage_RBH
    Memory
    32 GB DDR5
    Graphics Card(s)
    Radeon Graphic / NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 8 GB GDDR6
    Sound Card
    AMD/Realtek(R) Audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Integrated Monitor (15.3"vis)
    Screen Resolution
    FHD 1920X1080 16:9 144Hz
    Hard Drives
    Kingston OM8SEP4512Q 500 GB
    WDS500G2B0A-00SM50 500.1 GB
    PSU
    19V DC 6.32 A 120 W
    Cooling
    Dual Fans
    Mouse
    MS Bluetooth
    Internet Speed
    Fiber 1GB Cox -us & IGB Orange-fr
    Browser
    Edge Canary- Firefox Nightly-Chrome Dev-Chrome Dev
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender
    Other Info
    VMs of Windows 11 stable/Beta/Dev/Canary
    VM of XeroLinux- Arch based & Debian 13 (Trixie)
  • Operating System
    Windows 11 Insider Canary
    Computer type
    Laptop
    Manufacturer/Model
    ASUS X751BP
    CPU
    AMD Dual Core A6-9220
    Motherboard
    ASUS
    Memory
    8 GB
    Graphics card(s)
    AMD Radeon R5 M420
    Sound Card
    Realtek
    Monitor(s) Displays
    17.3
    Screen Resolution
    1600X900 16:9
    Hard Drives
    1TB 5400RPM
Have always found Vmware to be more advanced than Vbox, running Windows 10/11 guests on Linux.

But then stopped using Vmware, after the experience of it taking down the OS, while running a VM.

Also of note, found Ubuntu LTS + Vbox (latest version), to be much more stable, than latest Fedora + Vbox.

These days, time is too precious to be continually tinkering with W11 VMs, trying to get sound working properly in Citrix, with Teams/Zoom, was easier to just buy £100 GBP 8th gen Win 10 machine, with COA in Bios, allowing direct Win 11 Pro install.

That's a very serious bug, hoping that VMware has taken care of it.

I'm actually dual booting, Mint + Win11, so Im interested in both versions of workstation.

Thanks!
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Linux Mint XFCE
    Computer type
    Laptop
    Manufacturer/Model
    Dell Precision
    CPU
    Intel® Core™ Ultra 5 135H, vPro® Enterprise
    Memory
    48GB
    Hard Drives
    2.25 TB (two NVME drives)
    Internet Speed
    300 Mb/s
    Browser
    Different
    Other Info
    Very professional laptop
Hi @Mirlind & welcome,
When you have time, please fill out your system specs in your profile.

I am a VMware user of many years after having tried out Hyper-V & Oracle's.
I both run Windows & Linux Arch on VMware workstation 17.6.3-24583834.
I see no drop of performance at all between the guest & host machines in Windows.
VM resources are set to 6 cores & 4.632 GB RAM.

I do recommend letting Windows manage your pagefile.sys if you intend to use it as a host.

Good to hear that, I can safely try again the latest version of the workstation to see for myself, possibly on a Win11 host first. That's what I was more interested in, a general evaluation of the most recent vmware's performance.

Thanks @OAT
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Linux Mint XFCE
    Computer type
    Laptop
    Manufacturer/Model
    Dell Precision
    CPU
    Intel® Core™ Ultra 5 135H, vPro® Enterprise
    Memory
    48GB
    Hard Drives
    2.25 TB (two NVME drives)
    Internet Speed
    300 Mb/s
    Browser
    Different
    Other Info
    Very professional laptop
  • Like
Reactions: OAT
Not a bug, but because of win11 is "basicly running as a virtual machine it self". vm in vm will run worse, however with Hyper-v virtual machine it will run next to your windows 11 installation, and then the vm runs beter. So thats the diffrence.

Turn off hypervisor on your machine to disable that will improve the speed voor your vmware workstations vm's.

To disable VBS complely:
Open command prompt as admin, and type:
bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off
Reboot machine and it is off

Try your virtual machine now.

When you want to turn VBS back on.
Open command prompt as admin and type:
bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype on
Reboot machine and it is back on.

This will also solve the audio stutter glitches, when playing music in vmware virtual machines or playing a game.

I btw using the vmware workstation daily, with multiply vm's active all day, including a few different linux distro.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 11
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
Not a bug, but because of win11 is "basicly running as a virtual machine it self". vm in vm will run worse, however with Hyper-v virtual machine it will run next to your windows 11 installation, and then the vm runs beter. So thats the diffrence.

Turn off hypervisor on your machine to disable that will improve the speed voor your vmware workstations vm's.

[...]

Interesting, but a bit unclear for me. Are you saying that I need to manually disable Win11's Hyper-V or leave it as is ?

On that note, now with vmware workstation installed, we have two virtualization agents conflicting with one another ? VMware's one on top of Win11 Hyper-V ?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Linux Mint XFCE
    Computer type
    Laptop
    Manufacturer/Model
    Dell Precision
    CPU
    Intel® Core™ Ultra 5 135H, vPro® Enterprise
    Memory
    48GB
    Hard Drives
    2.25 TB (two NVME drives)
    Internet Speed
    300 Mb/s
    Browser
    Different
    Other Info
    Very professional laptop
On that note, now with vmware workstation installed, we have two virtualization agents conflicting with one another ? VMware's one on top of Win11 Hyper-V ?
Basicly yes. And thats why its running slower.

And yes, manual disable the hypervisor in window 11 with the commands i gave you.
That is turned on, even if you don't install Hyper-V under Windows Features. (disabling it there won't work anyway, need to do it with the commands)

Vmware Workstation can run: (type 2)
Hardware -> Hypervisor -> Windows OS(running like a vm) -> VMware + your own virual machine.
or without vbs. (still type2, but runs like it used to run on xp, win7, win8.1)
Hardware -> Windows Os -> VMware virtual machine (faster)

Or use Hyper-V (type 1) (Most fasted way, but i don't really like hyper-v)
Hardware -> Hypervisor -> Windows OS
and your own vm
Hardware -> Hypervisor -> Your Virtualmachine
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 11
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
Basicly yes. And thats why its running slower.

And yes, manual disable the hypervisor in window 11 with the commands i gave you.
That is turned on, even if you don't install Hyper-V under Windows Features. (disabling it there won't work anyway, need to do it with the commands)

Vmware Workstation can run: (type 2)
Hardware -> Hypervisor -> Windows OS(running like a vm) -> VMware + your own virual machine.
or without vbs. (still type2, but runs like it used to run on xp, win7, win8.1)
Hardware -> Windows Os -> VMware virtual machine (faster)

Or use Hyper-V (type 1) (Most fasted way, but i don't really like hyper-v)
Hardware -> Hypervisor -> Windows OS
and your own vm
Hardware -> Hypervisor -> Your Virtualmachine

Great explanation, it makes sense now!

Thank you!
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Linux Mint XFCE
    Computer type
    Laptop
    Manufacturer/Model
    Dell Precision
    CPU
    Intel® Core™ Ultra 5 135H, vPro® Enterprise
    Memory
    48GB
    Hard Drives
    2.25 TB (two NVME drives)
    Internet Speed
    300 Mb/s
    Browser
    Different
    Other Info
    Very professional laptop
I switched to VirtualBox many years ago. and have been using it by now.

my Vbox is hosted on Windows 7, the latest version is VirtualBox-7.0.26-168464-Win which will guest Windows 11 24H2 or earlier Windows.
this version wouldn't work until update of Windows 7 latest hotfixes (my running UpdatePack7R2-25.4.10.exe). otherwise VBox failure because of Signature issue.
my guess is VirtualBox-7.0.xx is the Ver. for Windows 7.

VirtualBox-7.1.10-168469-Win, latest version, wouldn't support/host Windows 7. my guess is VirtualBox-7.1.xx is the Ver. for Windows 10/11.


Per specs, VBox supports Windows 8.1 or above. If Windows 7, its support is limited. I have obtained all features needed. shared folders, dual-monitor, RTD , , , NOT bad at all.

I wish VirtualBox could be more powerful. it runs much weaker than physical computer. anyway, its' better than nothing.

several apps on my computer request modern Chromium and Java v17 or higher (Java LTS, long term support), which are supported only on Windows 11 OS.
hence I let the Windows 7 OS host VBox, in where runs those apps on Windows 11, meanwhile leave all other tasks to run on Windows 7.

that's much more complex than my previous simple Windows 7 settings. but better than nothing. at least, the computer finishes all tasks on time. no delay or stop. If running then on Windows 11, would be too slow within my test.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7/11
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    Manufacturer/Model
    HP/Lenovo/Asus
    CPU
    Intel i7-11800H
    Motherboard
    Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Gen 6
    Memory
    32GB DDR4 3200MHz
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
    Monitor(s) Displays
    LG 35WN65C-B
    Screen Resolution
    3440 x 1440
    Hard Drives
    1TB PCIe SSD
Thanks @siliconbeaver for sharing your experience! I find VirtualBox running very well on my linux host, no lag for what I do, no 3D or gaming though. But the lack of a tabbed browsing bothers me.

Smart decision to stay on a tried and true Win7 host (Win11 is slower). Other (more dangerous) tasks can be completed safely in VMs.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Linux Mint XFCE
    Computer type
    Laptop
    Manufacturer/Model
    Dell Precision
    CPU
    Intel® Core™ Ultra 5 135H, vPro® Enterprise
    Memory
    48GB
    Hard Drives
    2.25 TB (two NVME drives)
    Internet Speed
    300 Mb/s
    Browser
    Different
    Other Info
    Very professional laptop
I can't say I share your opinion but the lack of audio is a show stopper for me.
Please note that the OP is looking for something that Linux would host as well.
If the Linux guest supports xrdp, you get sound (Ubuntu, Kali for example) when running in enhanced mode.

Regarding bare performance, it is really no contest.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 11 Pro + Win11 Canary VM.
    Computer type
    Laptop
    Manufacturer/Model
    ASUS Zenbook 14
    CPU
    I9 13th gen i9-13900H 2.60 GHZ
    Motherboard
    Yep, Laptop has one.
    Memory
    16 GB soldered
    Graphics Card(s)
    Integrated Intel Iris XE
    Sound Card
    Realtek built in
    Monitor(s) Displays
    laptop OLED screen
    Screen Resolution
    2880x1800 touchscreen
    Hard Drives
    1 TB NVME SSD (only weakness is only one slot)
    PSU
    Internal + 65W thunderbolt USB4 charger
    Case
    Yep, got one
    Cooling
    Stella Artois (UK pint cans - 568 ml) - extra cost.
    Keyboard
    Built in UK keybd
    Mouse
    Bluetooth , wireless dongled, wired
    Internet Speed
    900 mbs (ethernet), wifi 6 typical 350-450 mb/s both up and down
    Browser
    Edge
    Antivirus
    Defender
    Other Info
    TPM 2.0, 2xUSB4 thunderbolt, 1xUsb3 (usb a), 1xUsb-c, hdmi out, 3.5 mm audio out/in combo, ASUS backlit trackpad (inc. switchable number pad)

    Macrium Reflect Home V8
    Office 365 Family (6 users each 1TB onedrive space)
    Hyper-V (a vm runs almost as fast as my older laptop)

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