Optimize CPU usage within VMware ESXi environment
Optimize CPU usage within VMware ESXi environment
Hey everyone, I know this might sound a bit basic, but I wanted to share what’s going on with my setup. I have an Intel Core i7 4790k (4C/8T) at 4.6GHz, 32GB RAM with some overclocking. It runs VMware ESXi with one Windows gaming instance. The specs are: 6 vCPUs, 14GB RAM, GTX 1070, and it passes through to the host. I’m mainly playing CoD Modern Warfare, and I usually get around 80-90 FPS on average (about 120 max). It feels like the CPU is bottlenecking, since it’s about 95% usage during gameplay. I tried boosting vCPUs to 7, but that actually hurt performance—it only leaves one thread available for the host and the other instances (CentOS). I’m looking for any clever tips to improve CPU performance for the Windows instance in VMware. Any suggestions? Thanks!
7 vCPUs may cause issues because of uneven CPU allocation. Your machine has 4 physical cores, each supporting two threads, giving a total of eight threads. The best setup is dedicating the entire core to the VM, meaning both threads. Giving just one thread per core would cause constant switching between tasks, which severely impacts performance. Running the game on 6 vCPUs isn’t certain—I haven’t explored gaming VMs on ESXi. I understand unRAID lets you assign specific cores to a VM to avoid conflicts, but ESXi doesn’t offer that flexibility—it manages it internally for efficiency. It might be the scheduler not functioning optimally, or there could be another factor at play. To begin with, check if the game runs smoothly on Windows and the hardware alone (without the hypervisor).
It seems you're discussing a feature of ESXi and need clarification on the correct value input. Your understanding about checking benchmarks is sound. You mentioned a screenshot showing the help prompt, which likely confirms the expected input. Just to confirm, you're unsure if "0-5" is appropriate based on your theory, but you agree to verify it online due to system downtime concerns.