Performance question: VMware Workstation 17.6 vs VirtualBox 7.1.10

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.

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.

HyperV is much faster as it is a type 1 hypervisor unlike VMware/vbox which are type 2.

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.

cereberus said:

HyperV is much faster as it is a type 1 hypervisor unlike VMware/vbox which are type 2.

Click to expand...

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.

Silvio said:

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.

Click to expand...

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!

OAT said:

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.

Click to expand...

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

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.

Tester said:

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.

[...]

Click to expand...

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 ?

Mirlind said:

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 ?

Click to expand...

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

Tester said:

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

Click to expand...

Great explanation, it makes sense now!

Thank you!

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.

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.

OAT said:

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.

Click to expand...

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.

Silvio said:

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.

Click to expand...

For Linux Hosts just junk both VBOX and VmWare -- KVM/QEMU is the virtualisation tool to use -- very fast and flexible. Hyper-V on Windows is the one to use for Windows Hosts although it's a bit limited in not having dynamic re-directs and for connecting non disk hardware.

KVM/QEMU is free of course as is pretty well all Linux software -- HYPER-V is also a base component in Windows although officially you need at least W11 Pro to run it.

If you are an Amazon Prime member there's lots of capable "Mini PC's" around for as low as €100 !!! for the next couple of days --these things come equipped with Windows PRO already !! but they run Linux really easily plus a VM or two !!!.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

"Mini PC's" around for as low as €100 !!! for the next couple of days --these things come equipped with Windows PRO already !!

Click to expand...

Try to find one with 2 network cards. Then you could also run OpnSense and pi-hole on it.

Tester said:

Try to find one with 2 network cards. Then you could also run OpnSense and pi-hole on it.

Click to expand...

Most of them do -- usually they have the latest modern Wifi protocol - which is around 1Gbps -- probably more than most typical non Fibre LAN systems and a 1 Gbps->1 Tbps Lan connection -- if your budget runs to 1 Tbps !!!! -- these days even a 1 Gbps unlimited full fibre connection is more than enough for home users even with several people on your network downloading / streaming 4K UHD stuff.

I have 10 Gbps unlimited but I'm sure I've never even used a fraction of the capacity -- even though with friends kids and grandkids watching god knows how many movies -- amazing they all come round here to use my Wifi -- perhaps I'm getting too generous -- still kids are kids so it's nice these days with so much anger and rubbish around to see nice young smiling faces !!! especially knowing with A.I threatening zillions of jobs what their future will be like when looking back at mine - it really was a "Golden period " for my group in my younger and Uni days !!

I'm one of the really lucky generation -- I don't envy the 5 to 7 year old youngsters at all now -- jobs in the future will probably becone a "Luxury" item as valued as say a high end car. I see even in the I.T sector which used to have high wages and really "future proofed" guaranteed employment - the numbers of openings and contract opportunities have hugely diminished -- really glad I'm coming up to retirement. !!

Cheers
jimbo

I have the lowly 1G FiOS, but it's more than sufficient for our needs. Even with two or three streaming videos and my grandson sucking up bandwidth with his games, I never notice any issues in speed. Truthfully, for a typical home, unless you're doing something different than most homes, I suspect 1G service is plenty.