Virtual Machines: What components should I upgrade to improve running virtual machines?

Posted by joshsvoss on Super User See other posts from Super User or by joshsvoss
Published on 2014-08-23T02:00:45Z Indexed on 2014/08/23 4:23 UTC
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Filed under:

windows-7

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memory

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graphics-card

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virtual-machine

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vmware

at work I need to have one or sometimes two instances of a vmware virtual Windows 7 machine running on my real Windows 7 machine. The computer I'm using is Dell Precision 490 from 2009 I believe, possibly earlier. Running Windows 7 ultimate.

Problems while running VM's: The entire computer slows down when a vmware instance is running. Pages take a while to react to a scroll, applications take forever to launch, and programs hang both in the virtual machines and on the real one.

So, what components should I upgrade to improve this? I guess a more pointed question would be, which components will help the most?

Possible options:

Getting 8gb of RAM instead of 4gb
new graphics card
new processors? (Is that really an option?)

My intuition tells me it will be a combination of the RAM and graphics card. There is also the possibility that an '09 tower just isn't cut out for vm's and our business should purchase a new tower.

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