Hi all,

I'm trying to figure out whether it is better for me to run a specialist science program on a machine that's about 4 years old or in a virtual machine (via VirtualBox) on a relatively new Mac from mid-2014. Which system do you think would likely provide superior performance, as this utility will be CPU heavy? The OS will vary between Windows and Linux but will be 64-bit either way.

Due to weird licensing constraints and CPU and OS requirements, I can't run the program natively on the newer computer.

Hi...

I'm thinking it would run best on the actual four year old system, since it's CPU intensive and that running it in a VM would add an extra OS layer, which would undoubtedly add further weight.

However, if running the program in a VM is legal (which you should contact the vendor to verify,) you could give both options a try and see what kind of results you get.

Regards...

A vm is pretty easy to start with. Not sure about using mac but a windows system on a good modern computer would not blink on a vm. Vm's are getting better every day.

As to what is better, we can't even guess. Guess you could look at your current load on host and see how much resources you have. Simple things like ram speed, cpu ratings, and hard drive tend to make choice in end. If this has network issue then maybe that might tip choice back to physical.

I run a core i7 for most testing or high end xeon server. They seem to run vm's with ease.

Thanks - it seems that it is hard to predict - although does knowing the newer computer is a nid-2014 iMac with a 1.4 Ghz i5 Duo Core with 8 GB of RAM help with the hunches?

i'm no cpu expert, but this seems rather measly for a fairly new machine?

also not all cpus support virtualisation - i'm not sure if this is still an issue with newer hardware, but it would be something to check. from the bios, maybe.

if the cpu doesn't support it, it would be like not having hardware accel for your graphics.
which, btw, is also important for vms.

If it has anything to do with 3D (such as CAD, VR, etc.) then you should probably run it on the original hardware it was designed for.

Although 3D is possible in VirtualBox, it is only OpenGL. I hear Parallels has better 3D support.

Here's my luck with 3D on VirtualBox. I only achieved this with playing around with settings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRx91k2SiBY

Yeah...my 9 year old PC has a quad core 3.33 Ghz Xeon, and capable of holding another one. I would look on Passmark and see how it acutally stacks up. (Intel has been reducing processor speed lately)

Just not enough for us to guess a clear winner on this one. Testing may reveal a winner or close tie.

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It looks like that there's no way to tell for certain. Seems like I'll have to do some testing (playing...) to see which is best.

Thanks!

a virtual machine makes a lousy paperweight

If CPU performance is you main concern you might want to go for the machine with the more/most powerful CPU.
Next question: can your software make use of multiple cores?

With most VM solutions you can give one or more dedicated cores to your VM, and you are still able to use remaining cores for other tasks.

But, as said above: only testing can tell...

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I tend to just offer as many cores as I have. Just let the vm decide how to manage. I never over allocate cpus. You can generally over allocate ram however. Watch out for swap use if you do.

I'll agree that some overhead exists on the vm and host then the remaining will be available for the client. A few of the vm's even claim better than native speeds but most tend to be slightly below native.

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Thanks everyone for advice. I'll test this out if this ends up being the solution to my issue.