High CPU usage

Hey,

just to join this: Same symptoms here! Since I upgraded to 4560 the PD CPU usage is at least 20% when Windows just started which was not the case before the upgrade to Parallels 3.0.

When starting the first windows apps CPU usage goes up to at least 50% even when the Windows task manager shows the system idle.
 
I can accept bugs. There's no such a thing as a bug-free software.

What surprises me, is unwillingness of Parallels team to provide us with proper support and respond to direct questions. I've asked simple ones, related to our ability to fall back to 2.x. In fact, I've asked them multiple times -- and so far, there's nothing in response.

Just out of curiosity -- is it an accident, or a trend? If it's the latter, we're probably better off as far away from this mess as possible.
 
Andrew or Tim - I am willing to drive to Renton, Washington with my 15" SantaRosa MacBook Pro and allow you to look at it/play with it running Vista and see its CPU usage. Or go over to someones house if they live near me :\

I have attempted to kill everything, all services, all processes, and the change in process time usage is absolutely minimal. Additionally, Vista does not report any apps running above 1 to 2% of CPU time at idle.

PM me if you are interested.
 
agranovsky said:
What surprises me, is unwillingness of Parallels team to provide us with proper support and respond to direct questions. I've asked simple ones, related to our ability to fall back to 2.x. In fact, I've asked them multiple times -- and so far, there's nothing in response.

Just out of curiosity -- is it an accident, or a trend? If it's the latter, we're probably better off as far away from this mess as possible.
Click to expand...
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but an issue is that this forum is not Parallels' tech support, so even though it is monitored by their staff, they are under no "obligation" to respond, although obvious it would be in their best interest to do so on a number of topics. I'm not trying to defend that, but it is an aspect to consider amongst the discussions here.

Myself, I was pleasantly surprised that when I upgraded to 3.0 and purchased another copy, not only did we receive an email, but somebody called as well. But then it was odd, because, the person wanted to discuss the benefits of 3.0, and help us in any way. My immediate thought was that one way to do that would be here, since we ran and run into some issues ourselves that at the time would have been nice to have been addressed.
 
ccparallels said:
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but an issue is that this forum is not Parallels' tech support, so even though it is monitored by their staff, they are under no "obligation" to respond, although obvious it would be in their best interest to do so on a number of topics. I'm not trying to defend that, but it is an aspect to consider amongst the discussions here.

Myself, I was pleasantly surprised that when I upgraded to 3.0 and purchased another copy, not only did we receive an email, but somebody called as well. But then it was odd, because, the person wanted to discuss the benefits of 3.0, and help us in any way. My immediate thought was that one way to do that would be here, since we ran and run into some issues ourselves that at the time would have been nice to have been addressed.
Click to expand...

You're right, it's not support forum (yet, it is monitored, and they are aware of the issue, and they've obviously read these threads). So, I ended up opening up a support ticket on the issue. This was done ~30 hours ago, so far no response ... but still hoping.
 
I see the exact same problem, constant 40-50% cpu usage on idle (win task manager shows 0% cpu usage), which depletes the batteries and makes the computer run way too hot.
This is on a brand new macbook pro with latest build 4560 of pd 3.0 and win xp sp2. The only thing installed in xp so far is an anti-virus (f-prot), nothing else is running in the background.
 
Flash seems to be one culprit

Tim Surgent said:
agranovsky,

Thanks for the shot. Can you please locate exactly the process in Windows that causes such huge CPU usage in Mac? It could be the process in Windows that consumes even 0% CPU, but still it can cause PD itself consume 10-20%. The process will be like this:
1. Exit some process in Windows.
2. Check PD CPU usage. If CPU usage is still the same, exit the next process. And so on.

Finally you will have one (maybe two) process names. Having them located will greatly help us to investigate the issue and fix it in the next update.

You should start from the processes that you expect could work in 16-bit mode.

Thank you in advance. We're looking forward to your results.
Click to expand...

My brand new XP installation idles at 11% to 12% on my Mac mini 1.83 GHz Core Duo, and runs at about 15% with IE open (with a blank window or a simple page, such as Google's home page). However, when viewing a page with one or more Flash applets, the CPU utilization zooms up to about 60%, even if there's no visible animation on the page. "Hiding" the flash by scrolling the applet off-screen or behind another tab doesn't seem to help. Opening multiple pages with Flash applets causes an incremental change of about 5% per tab. Viewing the same pages with Flash disabled barely registers at all (once the page initially loads, that is). All the while, the Windows Task Manager registers between 0% and 1% CPU utilization (except during the actual page loads, that is).

Hopefully someone at SWSoft will find this information useful in figuring out how to keep CPU levels from frying our Macs!

Tony
 
Even Parallels 2.5 sucks up 20% CPU when idling...

mosco said:
I see the exact same problem, constant 40-50% cpu usage on idle (win task manager shows 0% cpu usage), which depletes the batteries and makes the computer run way too hot.
This is on a brand new macbook pro with latest build 4560 of pd 3.0 and win xp sp2. The only thing installed in xp so far is an anti-virus (f-prot), nothing else is running in the background.
Click to expand...

My Parallels VM of MS Windows XP SP 2 idles at 20% and causes my laptop's fan to kick in more than usual. I'm not running iTunes or anything funky. No USB devices are hooked up. Nothing shows up in the Windows Task Manager as consuming CPU.

And I'm running Parallels 2.5.3214! I did a Google search for "Parallels 3.0 cpu usage" and found this thread... I was hoping that version 3.0 addressed this problem. :-(

Is this really something that can be fixed? Or is there something fundamental about VM software (maybe screen updates?) that requires constant work? It would be interesting to hear the technical wizards behind Parallels comment on this issue.

But, hey, if it's the screen updates, they could at least be turned off when I hide Parallels. :-)

-Chuck
 
I have to chip in here as well:
With build 4560 and no USB devices:
- Clean WinXP Pro SP2 siting idle is using 25% CPU.
- Killing the groove sync process brought the usage down to just under 20%.
- Disconnecting all shared folders knocked usage down to around 16-17%.
- Muting the sound brought it down to 12%.

Uninstalling parallels tools and disabling DirectX did not seem to have any effect.

Just for comparison purposes with fusion, a clean xp pro sp2 installation uses around 8% when idle. After following the above steps, playing Pinball in Parallels (without sound) ranged from 40-55% depending on how often I hit the Z and / keys. In fusion Pinball (with sound), usage ranged from 50-60% depending on key activity.

Edit: I have made some corrections to fusion's statistics. Both tests were done in windowed mode with the windows open and visible but not active.
 
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Thanks for the comparison. That's pretty dismal, hopefully parallels will address this promptly. If fusion can provide this type of performance I would expect nothing less from parallels or what reason is there to stick around (besides the hassle of reinstalling xp)?

jmstacey said:
I have to chip in here as well:
With build 4560 and no USB devices:
- Clean WinXP Pro SP2 siting idle is using 25% CPU.
- Killing the groove sync process brought the usage down to just under 20%.
- Disconnecting all shared folders knocked usage down to around 16-17%.
- Muting the sound brought it down to 12%.

Uninstalling parallels tools and disabling DirectX did not seem to have any effect.

Just for comparison purposes with fusion, a clean xp pro sp2 installation uses less than 1% when idle. After following the above steps, playing Pinball in Parallels (without sound) ranged from 40-55% depending on how often I hit the Z and / keys. In fusion Pinball (with sound), usage ranged remained under 1% with only 40MB of real memory usage. (Yeah, I double checked to make sure because I didn't believe it at first).
Click to expand...
 
Just so folks know, I've updated Fusion's usage information in my previous post. The original info was only of the user level process. It turns out that there is another vmware process that runs as root which does the brunt of the work.

Although the statistics aren't as mind boggling awesome as I had initially reported, they are still considerably below Parallels (when idle), and does not require my MBP fan to kick in just to have it sitting in the background doing nothing.
 
jmstacey said:
Just so folks know, I've updated Fusion's usage information in my previous post. The original info was only of the user level process. It turns out that there is another vmware process that runs as root which does the brunt of the work.

Although the statistics aren't as mind boggling awesome as I had initially reported, they are still considerably below Parallels (when idle), and does not require my MBP fan to kick in just to have it sitting in the background doing nothing.
Click to expand...

I've ran my own test with Fusion, and it looks like it's 8-10% when idle vs 16-18% for Parallels, and when running a particular app that causes Parallels to go to 40-50%, VMWare sits at around 25-30%.

I think Parallels 2.5 was better than both of those; I need to find some time (maybe this weekend), when I can uninstall 3.0 and see the numbers for the old version.
 
agranovsky,

You can significantly reduce CPU usage by 3 things:

1. Disconnect all USB devices from virtual machine (menu Devices->USB).
2. Mute Sound (menu Devices->Sound).
3. Close Parallels Tools Center in guest Windows (right click on icon in tray and menu Exit).

We are investigating all these CPU usage related issues and will come with fixes soon.
 
Thanks for the response, Andrew. Doing what you suggested reduced my CPU usage to about 15%, but I do miss the application icons on my dock.

Do you have a timeline for when Parallels hopes to resolve these issues? Also, wrong thread, but is there a timeline for when the Coherence mode is going to support expose (individual windows)? What about being able to drag and drop windows across multiple displays in Coherence mode?

Thanks
 
Awesome!

I won't have to convert to Fusion any more! Just so your team knows, the same CPU usage issue exists in the beta. My current CPU usage is about 20% without anything running in Windows, and the task manager is at about 1%.

I am LOVING expose integration and the new drop shadows! Thanks!
 
Thank you esgargs!

We are aware of CPU usage problem is still exists in beta and development team is working on it. Are you using XP or Vista?
 
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