VMware OS X guests stuck at 3M video memory

Question

On a Windows 8.1 host, running VMware Workstation v 12.5.1 (+ Unlocker 208). Following virtual machines set up: OS X 10.8 thru 10.11, macOS Sierra.

All but 10.9 and 10.12 show within the guests 3M of video memory. It also happens that all these have very slow performance when running (the mouse cursor lags pretty bad). Mavericks reports 32 MB, Sierra 128 and they offer "real-time" performance.

Since even Lion works slowly, I don't think Beamoff is the solution for my problem. (Changing RAM size, processing power did nothing to improve the performance.)

Configuration-wise (both from the GUI and by comparing side-by-side the vdx files), all machines seem to be set up the same.

Steps I tried, but didn't make a difference in the guest (memory size unchanged):

• editing the vdx file and specifying svga.autodetect = "FALSE" and svga.vramSize = 134217728 (notice no quotes for the numeric value, otherwise I'd get a complaint that the file has been corrupted);
• clicking Accelerate 3D graphics then allows me to specify a custom amount of VRAM.

(FWIW, smc.version = 0 for all machines.)

Any suggestions? Thank you.

Solution

Installing VMware Tools in one of the guests affected (El Capitan) solved the issue.

Comments

[Tetsujin]

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because the use of OSX on non-Apple hardware is a legal grey area and as a result "Hackintosh" questions have been deemed off-topic.

[elder elder]

I see. In my "defense", I didn't know about this aspect - plenty of similar questions not marked as such on Superuser. This may have been a recent change, though. Apologizing if so.

[Tetsujin]

It's a highly contentious issue, tbh. Though from my own personal perspective it's the equivalent of asking for dodgy Windows serial numbers. Mac doesn't use serials - so workarounds, whilst possible, are simply not licensed.

[elder elder]

@Tetsujin Got it, thanks for the heads-up. I appreciate it. Hope it's not bad form to have posted my answer in the mean time as well. If this will be deemed off-topic it will go away with the question itself, if not - it may help someone else. As a developer, I have only two physical Macs and testing my software on several versions is somewhat challenging. I'll check some alternatives (VMs running on those Macs?).

[Tetsujin]

You can legitimately VM OS X on Mac, from 10.6 server or 10.7 'user' upwards [& no-one really supports anything earlier so should be no worry] Parallels is good, but paid, VM software. There's also VMWare Fusion, but I haven't used that in a decade, so completely out of touch with it.

[elder elder]

@Tetsujin Excellent, thank you for pointing me in the legitimate direction.

[Tetsujin]

Most welcome - wish you luck :)