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My MacBook Pro 13" has been extremely sluggish ever since I started working my new job earlier this year, to the point it significantly affects my productivity. I have finally decided to do something about it this weekend as I have enough time to work on a major upgrade now.

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There are three things I am doing to unleash the full potential of this laptop:

  • replacing HDD with SSD
  • reinstalling OS X Mavericks on the Mac itself (would've gone for Yosemite as I usually like to be bleeding edge, but I've already read about how there is no VMware support yet so can't run the latest Mac OS at the moment)
  • reinstalling Windows 7 Professional for my virtual machine, which runs on the Mac

Previously, I tended to work in the guest operating system most of the time: Windows 7 (32-bit) with 2 GB of memory allocated to this VM. The other 6 GB of RAM were left for the host OS (OS X Mavericks). Both the Mac host operating system and Windows 7 guest operating system have been handed down from user to user over the years, so performance has gradually degraded over time.

So far, I have replaced the original mechanical hard drive with an SSD (Samsung 840 Evo Series MZ-7TE250BW 250GB) and done a clean install of Mavericks. This has already brought the boot time of the host OS down from 2 minutes to just under 25 seconds! It's hard to know how much credit goes to the SSD and how much goes to the fact OS X was clean installed, but I'm glad I did both.

Question 1:

How much of my Mac's 8 GB of RAM should I allocate to the Windows 7 virtual machine?

Question 2:

Should I install 32-bit or 64-bit Windows 7 for the virtual machine? If I allocate less than 4 GB of RAM to the VM, then I'm guessing it won't make sense to install the 64-bit version of Windows 7. Ordinarily, I would just put 32-bit on without even giving it a second thought but one of my colleges reinstalled his Windows 7 VM last week (same model Mac as me but without the SSD) and he is convinced going 64-bit helped him. Incidentally, he set his VM to use half of his RAM: 4 GB.

Looking forward to hearing everyone's thoughts on this!

Austin ''Danger'' Powers
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    “Hearing everyone’s thoughts” is a surefire way to get your question closed. ;) – Daniel B Oct 26 '14 at 12:06
  • I think, even though it would appear opinion-based, there are sufficient grounds for keeping it open; there are real considerations to be weighed up. – Tetsujin Oct 26 '14 at 12:12
  • @DanielB I don't mean that *literally* want to hear *everyone's thoughts* on this. People are smart enough to know that was a short way of saying: "*I would appreciate it if people could answer my question with succinct, relevant advice which helps me now and is likely to help others in the future*". Enough with the talking about closing sensible questions already. People here get a rush out of pressing the big red button. http://sergworks.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/why-stackoverflow-sucks/ – Austin ''Danger'' Powers Oct 26 '14 at 12:18
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    One upvote for this nice Mac Book picture and the link provided in the comment "Why SO sucks".... Nice one. Also someone mentioned about the pseudonames - Hilarious - I loved it – Prasanna Oct 26 '14 at 15:42
  • possible duplicate of [Is there any benefit from installing Windows 7 64-bit when you have less than 4GB of RAM?](http://superuser.com/questions/183201/is-there-any-benefit-from-installing-windows-7-64-bit-when-you-have-less-than-4g) – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 Oct 26 '14 at 17:03
  • @Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007: yet more overzealous flagging. "Possible duplicate" of that question, despite the fact my MacBook has 8 GB of RAM (which is clearly not "less than 4 GB of RAM"). It's a totally different scenario. I suggest the people who get a thrill out of flagging legitimate questions on SE take up a real hobby, such as learning to cook or maybe joining their local gym :P – Austin ''Danger'' Powers Oct 28 '14 at 00:04

2 Answers2

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Answer 1: It depends. Where is it that you primarily work? Windows? Does your work require memory? If so, allocate 6 GB to your VM. Otherwise, use 4 GB. Unless you’re only doing Notepad-y stuff, then 2 GB is fine. Otherwise, it absolutely isn’t.

Answer 2: Well, if it’s less than ~3.6 GB, yes. VMs suffer from the same effects like a real PC, so you can’t fully utilize more 4 GB of RAM with a 32-bit OS.

Daniel B
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  • I'm going for 32-bit. I've decided that it's better to use the slightly lighter/smaller OS as RAM isn't needed so much on the guest. Also, the official Microsoft recommendation of 1 GB RAM (minimum) for 32-bit and 2 GB RAM (minimum) for 64-bit suggests that there will be lower RAM requirements on the part of Windows if I go with 32-bit. Ironic really. – Austin ''Danger'' Powers Oct 26 '14 at 13:15
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IMO, swapping HD to SSD made the difference, not the reinstall of the OS.

To bypass Qs 1 & 2 entirely - did you consider running Windows from Bootcamp rather than in VM. It would be considerably faster & then 64-bit would make far more sense.

Partial answer to 1 & 2 would be... at 4GB [windows] RAM, there is very marginal gain from a 64-bit OS, at the risk of it getting greedy with memory & wanting to page all the time, which from a VM would be staggeringly slow. 32-bit would be 'safer' in that respect, though would cap RAM at about 3.6GB.

Tetsujin
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  • The problem is that we rely heavily on Apple Remote Desktop to connect to some of the Mac desktops and servers in our organization. If it wasn't for that (and possibly a couple of other similar roadblocks requiring me to work on a Mac occasionally) I would have gone for it! – Austin ''Danger'' Powers Oct 26 '14 at 12:39
  • ah, OK, then the latter part may still be worthy of consideration. – Tetsujin Oct 26 '14 at 12:42