Sluggish Windows 11 VM in VMware on 2019 MacBook Pro

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Level 2

300 points

Sluggish Windows 11 VM in VMware on 2019 MacBook Pro

I’m using a 15” 2019 MacBook Pro Intel Core i9 (32GB RAM) to run workloads, I have used bootcamp to run windows, but I am considering using a virtual machine to run windows 11, now, when I set it up using VMWare, Windows will feel very VERY slow, sluggish and laggy, making myself consider it unusable, now I’m wanting to run local LLMs on that windows virtual machine, but I was told that it will not work properly (Windows in general) in a virtual machine due to my Intel processor, I consider my MacBook Pro to have good specifications, Including a core i9, 32GB RAM, and 8 cores in the CPU, I have allocated 4 CPU cores to the virtual machine and 16GB of RAM to go with it, so I’m not sure why it’s sluggish and very slow, and with a very low frame rate, say 10 FPS, THATS WITHOUT ANYTHING ON IT, on the Home Screen!

I believed that I’ve allocated too little cores, so I’ve added one extra making it 4 cores to the virtual machine and no difference, I do not know if this is a GPU issue or anything else related to it (GPU: Radeon Pro 555X)

That local LLM is not supported on Intel Macs and is only available on either windows or Apple silicon macs, I believe that my hardware is not the problem, BUT there is a possibility that there is a solution related to my GPU? No idea, Thank you in advance.

MacBook Pro (2017 – 2020)

Posted on Aug 1, 2026 12:08 PM

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Answer 1

Rudegar

Level 10

184,384 points

Aug 2, 2026 3:12 AM in response to reizerure31

well with bootcamp the 2 operating system have 100% of the hardware to access

where in a virtual machine the host and the vm share the system resources between them, you can check vmwares settings to see if you can reserve more power for the vm and see if that helps

you can also try other virtual machine programs like oracles virtualbox (it's free) or parallels (the most experienced for macos)

and of cause you mention gpu and fps but with virtual machines the vm can't really access 3d features of the gpu at all so it acts like a generic vga adaptor, so not really a gaming suited thing.

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Answer 2

VikingOSX

Level 10

128,188 points

Aug 3, 2026 2:56 AM in response to reizerure31

I am running Windows 11 Pro 25H2 as a guest in VMware Fusion 26 on a 2020 3.8 Ghz Core i7 iMac. That iMac has the Radeon Pro 5500 XT 8GB GPU.

I keep the guest container on a USB3.2 Gen 2 SSD (1050 MB/s) plugged into the Thunderbolt 3 port. I have assigned 6 processor cores and 8GB RAM to that guest and it boots right up and works without lag. I doubt that assigning 16 GB RAM to that guest would make much difference.

Virtual Machines are not intended as game consoles and won't give you bare hardware GPU frame rates. Running the guest with other demanding non-VM loads on your Mac may sabotage guest performance.

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