Tips and Tweaks for creating a high performance Arch linux VM using VMware Workstation 17 on Windows 11

• config.ini file located in "C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Workstation" by default
• VMX file is in VM folder. You can right click the VM in the sidebar to "Open VM Directory"

GLMark2 score: 4342 (Host is using an RTX 3080)

Geekbench5 score: 1875/10016 (8 p-cores of a modestly clocked 12700K, within 5% of host score)

In-guest disk speed: 3500MBPS read 2500MBPS write (on crucial P5+)

Desktop visual performance equivalent to virgl w/ libvirt

Initial Conditions:

• Affinity set to only P-cores in taskmanager

• Hyper-V and associated features turned off

• PVSCSI (nvme) pre-allocated disk for arch root

• PVSCSI (nvme) independent-persistent disk for /var/cache/pacman/pkg - Common pkg cache between all the future snapshot forks of VM - I set it to uses nvme1:0 rather than nvme0:1 so it shows as seperate nvme dev instead of another namespace

• Archiso CD-ROM changed from IDE to SCSI

  • IDE was extremely slow (>10 minutes to login shell)

• Options>Advanced: Disable page trimming, select UEFI

• 3d acceleration enabled

• All CPU options selected > nested virtualization enabled (untested)

• "Other 5.X 64 Linux" selected as OS

• VMW-Workstation config.ini edited to use memory directly

• Some highlited VMX file parameters:

  • vcpu.hotadd = "FALSE"
  • mem.hotadd = "FALSE"
    • arch-wiki mentions problems with mem.hotadd
  • cpuid.numSMT = "2"
    • Enable hyperthreading awareness - set # vcpus equal to # threads
  • priority.grabbed = "high"
    • personal preference
  • mks.forceDiscreteGPU = "TRUE"
  • Possible keyboard lag fix
    • mks.keyboardFilter = "require"
    • keyboard.softAutorepeat = "FALSE"
    • keyboard.typematicMinDelay = "5"
  • vmxnet.alwaysEnhanced = TRUE"
  • ethernet0.virtualDev = "vmxnet3"
    • Defaults to e1000 when choosing "Other Linux"
  • DELETED after done with iso:
    • scsi0.virtualDev = "pvscsi"
    • scsi0.present = "TRUE"

Other VMX paremeters that may do nothing:

• sched.cpu.affinity = "0-15"
• mks.forceDiscreteGPU = "TRUE"
• mks.enableVulkanPresentation = "TRUE"
• mks.enableX11Presentation = "TRUE"
• mks.maxRefreshRate = "120"
• mks.vsync = "FALSE"
• mks.useD3D = "TRUE"
• svga.maxFullscreenRefreshTick = "120"
• svga.maxChangeTick = "120"
• svga.maxLocalChangeTick = "120"
• svga.maxNoChangeTick = "120"
• svga.showUpdateRate = "TRUE"
• svga.debug.showFPS = "TRUE"