Do you have an SSD in the host system? As with many things when running outside of a VM, I've found that the SSD provides the greatest performance boost to most applications other than 3D gaming.
I've been doing web development work in a Windows VM for a number of years now and found it to be very responsive even on older MacBook Pros with with only one core of a Core2 Duo allocated to the VM. Adding more RAM helped a little bit, but the biggest speed boost was the addition of an SSD.
I've been doing web development work in a Windows VM for a number of years now and found it to be very responsive even on older MacBook Pros with with only one core of a Core2 Duo allocated to the VM. Adding more RAM helped a little bit, but the biggest speed boost was the addition of an SSD.