INFORMATICS

 VMware workstation 17 Windows Performance Optimization

I recently installed Windows 11 on VMware, but I'm getting extremely poor CPU performance, the CPU usage is around 60-70% usually, and if I run any applications it gets to 100%.

SOLUTION

You have an Intel Alder Lake CPU with performance and efficiency cores. There are known issues with Windows scheduling virtual CPUs on efficiency (less powerful) cores. It's very possible that Windows is deciding to run your 8 virtual cores on the efficiency (less powerful) cores. I don't think it's a coincidence given that your CPU ha 8 performance and 4 efficiency cores. 

Verify whether you are running under Hyper-V or the native VMware Hypervisor by examining the vmware.log file found in the virtual machine's directory and look for "Monitor mode". If it's set to "ULM", you are running under Hyper-V (which is the default if you haven't done anything).

The first thing to try if you're running under Hyper-V is to change the power throttling status of the vmx executable To do this,  open a command prompt as administrator, and execute: 

powercfg /powerthrottling disable /path "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\x64\vmware-vmx.exe"

or 

powercfg /powerthrottling disable /path "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Player\x64"