CPU usage way too high

pborzenkov said:
Hello Mudito,

from your Problem Report I see that the system is almost idle:

CPU usage: 2.20% user, 2.90% sys, 94.88% idle

These values (2.20% user and 2.90% system) are normal for the system running 4CPU Virtual Machine + some software (skype, outlook, etc.)

Are these values constant, or you experiencing some CPU usage spikes? If there are some spikes, I'd like you to generate another PR when the CPU usage is high.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

To be honest, this data was after polishing Win7 quite a bit. I gained a lot with that. And, after the latest update that I've installed last week (or this weekend, can't remember) to PD8 it got better, but still.

Pls, have a look at the screen shot. 0% Win7 and constant 13-14% of 1 core. If I put the Win7 guest using only 1 Core and 2GB RAM with DX9, that Parallels process goes down to 0-1%.
 

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Hi,

I seem to be having the same issue as everybody here... 0% CPU consumption in Windows and yet constant 20-30% of CPU consumption by Parallel.

I have created a Problem Report. Report ID is 19988742.

I haven't tried to revert back to DirectX9 instead of DirectX10. My VM is configured with 1vCPU, 3GB (of 8GB) and video memory is set to 256MB.

I am willing to do anything to help with the diagnosis of this issue. I had a similar issue in PD7, but manage to fix it.

Thanks a lot,
Bertrand.
 
I'd like to bump this thread as high CPU usage resulting in high noise from the fans have plagued me ever since upgrading to Parallels 8. The Parallels VM process is at 200-400% whenever I boot the VM and whenever I do anything slightly CPU consuming in the VM, such as compiling a project in Visual Studio. When Windows is idling it's around 10-15%.

I've create a problem report with ID 20470063.

Running the latest build of Parallels 8 as of today and Windows 8 64bit with all updates applied. MacBook Pro Retina 15" with maxed config.

As I'm starting to tire of having to apologise to people around the office for the noise my computer is making I'd very much appreciate any advice on resolving this.

While in OS X not running Parallels I've hardly ever heard the fans.

I have also noticed that even during idling CPU usage goes up every five minutes as Windows Defender is running some sort of scan. The scan fails each time with an event log message saying that it was shut down. Running it manually works fine. I guess this is isn't related, but as I don't know exactly what the Parallels tools in Windows does I thought it was worth mentioning anyway.
 
8.0.18354 - improved CPU and battery life

Hi there,

I've just upgraded to v8.0.18354, which was released on December 4th 2012. I have noticed CPU usage in ACtivity monitor has now dropped to around 15% with 4x cores allocated to the VM when the Windows VM is idle (previously it was 35-45%). So, this seems to be a good improvement.

Can anyone else verify? I'm using Parallels with Windows 7, running a bootcamp partition as a VM.

I also noticed that some processes still raise the CPU on the host side to 60% even though the CPU usage in the guest side is near zero. For instance, the Visual Studio 2012 designer process does this. It occurs when you view any Window.xaml in the VS2012 designer (even after you close the window). It doesn't drop back to 15% CPU on the host until you restart VS2012 (without showing a designer window), or unless you kill the process XDesProc*32.exe

Anyway, good work - if this was a fix, then it has certainly improved matters on my machine :)
 
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Hi There,

I have the same issue, but it's not only with my Windows Guest OSes, it's with all my guest OSes. It's similar in fashion, the Parallels VM app is running at 100% while my Windows XP guest OS task manager shows it idling. But when I try to do anything on my Windows Guest OS, it is WAY too slow.

I have found a work around that you guys could try. Simply put your Mac to sleep with your Windows Guest OS running slow. (I'm running Mountain Lion). After you wake it up, the Guest OS will return back to normal. I don't know if your issue is the same, but it has worked for me so far. Hopes this helps someone else.
 
Strange ... I find I can keep Windows 7 in check but I have to monitor the processes. Basically its not idiot proof.

If I'm out and about (on battery), I need to preserve the battery life as long as possible. This means glancing over at Activity Monitor every 5 minutes to check it isn't burning away Li-ION for no reason!

Often killing a process or a restart here and there drops the CPU down.

Anyway, I'm pleased, because before I was getting 40%+ all the time now I'm getting 15% for the Parallels VM when Windows is idle. That's a great improvement. Of course, I'd love to see 2% and another half an hours battery life ;-)
 
I think I've got an idea whats going on here. I'm developing some software in VS2012 that uses DirectX10. When i run the program Windows Task Manager reports very low CPU usage (2-3%) because drawing calls are offloaded to the GPU.

See the attached image. In this screenshot the green graph to the right is redrawing at around 150FPS in Windows. Windows CPU usage is really low, 3%, however, the host OS is running hot, at around 70% CPU.

So, my hunch is the emulation of DirectX (used in Aero, all sorts of programs, not just bespoke software like the above) has a CPU overhead on the host.

Perhaps this is where Parallels software team can work to optimize?
 

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This is a joke right

Hey there,

I had the same problem when I was using Parallels 6 on my MacBook Pro (2010) and now I have the exat same issue with the Parallels 8 and Windows 7 on my MacBook Pro Retina (2.6, 16 GB, 512GB). I remember me searching for a solution back then and all I found was this forum. The support never really helped to figure it out and all they do is occasionally ask for a error report file, which is what they do again in this thread, in order to buy themselves time and make them look like they are actually trying to solve the issue.

When I first copied the old virtual machine to the fresh installed Parallels 8 on the new Retina MBP everything was fine but now after two months of use all of a sudden the fans go crazy everytime an application in the Windows VM does something lightly CPU intensive.

Task manager in Windows shows a CPU usage of round about 30% and the Activity Monitor in Mountain Lion shows between 130% to 260% and the fans go like crazy.

I have not bought such a great piece of technology to let Parallels burn my machine to death.

So I wonder if the support can come up with a solution to this or not. Clear statements are appreciated here.

I mean the fact alone that you guys are thinking about reducing the CPU to 1 core is ridiculous.
Did you buy a computer with 1 CPU core, I doubt it. You bought a multi core system to use a multi core system and if the assigned cores are the problems source then the support of Parallels should fix it, damnit. It is not our responsibility to reduce the number of cores we use with our VM it is their duty to fix all the issues of their software as fast as possible.

If the problem is DirectX 10 then they should say that and advice us what to do.

I bought the upgrade to Parallels 8 and one of the, if not the, best laptop currently available for money and my fans go crazy when a program uses 20% CPU resources in the Windows 7 Virtual Machine because the process "Parallels VM" takes up between 120% to 260% of my CPU resources according to the activity monitor - are you kidding me.

I hope someone from the support team is reading this. Fix this issue! It has been around for years now.
Don't sell as a shiny new version every other year without fixing the problems that are obviously not affecting just a small group here and are in the threads of your forum for years now.
 
To be honest, the primary reason I bought a Macbook was it was a high quality portable compute, capable of running Windows (for software development in c#), Quad core, 16GB of RAM, with a GPU yet 7 hours battery life.

Unfortunately running Parallels means I get 3-4 hours battery life. I don't think its necessarily their fault - running Bootcamp I also get 3-4 hours battery life! They say its Windows but Samsung, Asus are starting to bring out ultrabooks capable of 7 hours battery life and a decent performance to boot.

I like the Mac but I'm seriously considering getting one of the newer Windows 8 Ultrabooks which now have an actual 7-8 hours battery life (would you believe it!) and dual or quad core processors! So IMO its not just Parallels but also Apple that need to sort it out. You've got competitors chomping at your heels :-)

Yes agree on 1 core CPU, thats not a fix. I run 4x cores but I do get a reasonable performance (around 13-30% CPU usage in activity monitor, which is quite low considering maximum is 800). Battery life is not great but acceptable. Better than a Windows 8 Ultrabook (because I have a GPU) but barely!
 
Hey Andrew,

what settings do you have for your VM. DirectX 10, Vsync, 4 cores and so on. Do you have Aero on or off.
And to be honest I don't care about battery life, when I use Parallels, because I just use that when I am at my desk and plugged in.
I also only get 4-5 hours of battery life when I just use Mac OS, so not sure how some of you get 6 or 7 hours of battery life out of that machine and these 4-5 hours are with brightness at around 60% and websurfing only.

But that is not the point here - the point is Parallels has a problem and this results in 120% to 260% (at least at my machine) CPU usage in Activity Monitor. This needs to be fixed ASAP.
 
BTW Mac measures CPU as a percentage of total of all cores, e.g. 8 cores = 0% to 800% CPU, so one core running flat out is 100%
Windows measures CPU as a percentage of one core, e.g. 8 cores = 0% to 100%, so 1 core running flat out = 12.5%

That explains your 20% in Windows = 200% in Mac, IF and only if you had 8 cores assigned to the virtual machine.

If its one then err ...
 
Yeah that doesn't sound right. I have these settings:

4 of 8 CPUs assigned to Parallels (its Quad core hyperthreading i7)
8GB of 16GB RAM assigned to parallels
512MB of 1024MB Video Ram and DirectX 10 assigned to parallels
Enable faster virtual machine
Tune for longer battery life
Enable Adaptive Hypervisor
Tune Windows for Speed
Disable Windows Aero (in configuration but in windows, err its on)

Im also running parallels on a bootcamp partition and I installed the latest nVidia drivers for it. Although I got similar results (less than 40% CPU when windows was idle) off a straight virtual machine.
 

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I have assigned 4 cores to the VM and get up to 260% usage on the Activity Monitor.
But I don't crae about those numbers as long as the machine stays silent. But whenever I use Parallels 8 now and do something that uses CPU within the Windows VM then my Activity Monitor shows between 120 to 260% CPU usage and the fans go wild and make noise.

As I said I had the same thing with Parallels 6 and my old MacBook pro from 2010. This machine had only 2 cores and I assigned both to the VM -> same result.

When I installed Parallels 8 for the first time on my new Retina machine and copied the VM over and started it everything seemed to be fine and was until after two months.
 
Did you consider wiping your VM and creating a fresh one? One of the conveniences of VMs is you can create a blank one with all your regular programs and config and copy it, then run off a copy. If at any time you need to roll back, you can
 
Never wiped my Virtual Machine but it is not that old.
I just did not do it in the last 4 months because it is such a hassle to install everything again.

How can I install it freshly and copy my apps and config over?

But I doubt that this fixes the problem.
 
You can't - you'd have to start from scratch. First thing I'd do is create a new Virtual machine, blank, and see if that has the same CPU issue. If not, start re-installing stuff, keep testing (does it have same issue). If not, at some point take a copy of it onto a USB drive and start working with it, delete your old VM. If the new VM ever acts up you can restore to a known point (from your USB drive)
 
Would be an option, but with all the software that I need to reinstall and aks for new licenses each time you reinstall them this hassle is to big. I want this problem to be solved by the Parallels support team.
 
CPU usage

Hi all,

I'm using a MacBook Pro 6 GB ram, OSX 10.7.5 and I have the same problem.

But I found that if you reboot the Mac resetting NVRAM it works; I check also NVRAM content and I found that are different.

After the NVRAM reset the OS put in NVRAM a special boot parm that sets the monitor resolution.

May be you have the same issue. I'm dealing with Parallels support to check if there is a connection between these two things.

To check nvram use "sudo nvram -p"
 
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