How to give more CPU resources to my Ubuntu based guest in VMware Player on Windows 7?

Question

This question is similar to How to allocate more processor power to my (Ubuntu-based) Virtualbox system in Windows 7?, only that now I want to try this on VMware Player in order to see which works better.

CPU-Z displays this about my CPU in Windows:

I have a good answer here on VBox, but the VMware Player 6.0.3 has different options.

I need to know what are the best options for the settings below, so that I can use most of my CPU resources on the VM, knowing that I will not use applications on the guest Win 7 while running the VM and that I will only use one VM at a time.

Answer 1

The only major factors affecting performance would be the Memory and Processor categories.

1. Processors

You should not, however, configure virtual machines to use more CPU cores than you have available physically (real cores, no hyperthreads).

Yes this is true. Since you have 2 cores, set the number of processors to 2.

The virtualisation settings are best set to automatic.

2. Memory

Allocate a minimum of 1GB. If you have about 8GB RAM, for 64bit you can allocate 4GB and it would run well if you have 8GB+ RAM. For 32bit (though I doubt you're using it) 3GB is fine. But since you say that you won't be using applications on Windows when running the VM you can allocate a bit more.

EDIT(RAM)

There is not a fixed rule concerning the amount of RAM you should allocate. I personally allocate 45% of the total RAM for my VM (I run only ONE VM). Since you are going to run only 1 VM in Windows, and you aren't planning on running any applications in Windows, I'd allocate 2GB (2048MB) if I were to do it. However, before all of that you should check whether your computer can support it. Go to Task Manager (ideally do a reboot first), and check how much RAM the computer is using with no applications open. If it is using >1.6GB (due to startup applications etc), then I would allocate 1.5GB for the VM instead, which is just as fine.