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Slow graphics performance of VMWare Fusion when Mac client is showing

Slow graphics performance of VMWare Fusion when Mac client is showing

Since a few months, whenever the Spotify for Mac client is showing (but not when it's just open and playing but hidden by clicking the red X) the graphics performance on VMWare Fusion degrades with a factor of 10.

Since I use VMWare to run a Windows CAD-system on the same Mac that I run Spotify on, that's really annoying. It took me a while (and some hair-pulling!) to figure out that Spotify's causing this; I first reinstalled VMWare. By chance, I noticed performance was back to normal when Spotify wasn't running.

Has a recent update caused e.g. the playback bar to constantly re-render on screen or anything? I see the same affected performance when OS X displays moving and drop-shadowed notifications.

 

Info:

 

Early 2011 15" MBP

OS X 10.9.5

AMD Radeon HD 6490M 256 MB

 

VMWare Fusion

Version 6.0.6 (2684343)

running Windows XP SP3 and SolidWorks 2008 SP5

 

(yes, it's not all the latest and greatest 🙂

 

Even if this isn't fixed (it's quite trivial to press the red X every time I use the Spotify window), I hope it helps someone else out there who might experience the same issue: I spent a day troubleshooting the issue and even considered reverting to a Time Machine backup of my system. It might also affect other software than VMWare Fusion. I haven't noticed the issue with any other program.

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2 Replies

Well, one thing is for sure, Spotify shouldn't use that much CPU considering its nature.

HOWEVER, if that IS the case... In windows there's a Hardware acceleration feature within Spotify.

If there is such a function for mac, try using it. If not, activity monitor, and check what's going on:

Activity Monitor (Apple's Website)

Because I *REALLY* doubt Spotify is responsible for that.

Cheers

Thanks for your reply. Haven't changed anything except updating Spotify and since version 1.0.11.134.ga37df67b (latest afaik) the issue seems to be resolved. Really weird. I'll update if it comes back. I haven't found any h/w acceleration btw.

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