I get increased battery drain with VMWare Fusion without even turning a VM on for similar reasons as just starting Google Chrome - it causes a switch to discrete graphics merely by starting the program up with no clear pattern of releasing it. It has rather little to do with a VM workload in my observations. If I completely disable discrete graphics, that stops the switch and the subsequent battery drain. However, I lose my external graphics output when I do that evidently, so if I need to use my external monitor, I will lose battery anyway.
I can see the graphics switch happen with gfxCardStatus notifying me. The process occupying the GPU is from Fusion plain as day (I think it's vpx agent?). This happens with nothing else running. This switching is one of the known quirks with OS X after years and years now.
Also, older versions of Fusion may have been less careful about avoiding graphics modes that potentially cause graphics acceleration to kick in and maybe more recent versions than mine do better (still on 6 because I'm a cheapskate).
I can see the graphics switch happen with gfxCardStatus notifying me. The process occupying the GPU is from Fusion plain as day (I think it's vpx agent?). This happens with nothing else running. This switching is one of the known quirks with OS X after years and years now.
Also, older versions of Fusion may have been less careful about avoiding graphics modes that potentially cause graphics acceleration to kick in and maybe more recent versions than mine do better (still on 6 because I'm a cheapskate).