virtualbox.org

Hello,

New VB user, new installation - happy to have a Windows VM, but the video performance is choppy and useless for some applications, like an old WinXP install before you installed the actual correct video driver. For example:
- Fails the "famed" "drag a window around" test. It's choppy and slow.
- YouTube videos (latest Chrome) never play all frames, choppy.


VB 6.0.8
Host: Mac OS X 10.13.6, 8-core Xeon, 32GB RAM, ATI Radeon 580X, SSD
Guest: Win7 Pro 64bit SP1, clean retail install
Settings: 3GB RAM, VBoxSVGA, 64MB VRAM, 2D Video acceleration enabled, 3D acceleration disabled, 1 monitor.
- Installed Windows updates, installed guest additions.
- Guest reports using "VirtualBox Graphics Adapter"
- Same video performance at 1400x1050 (windowed) and 1920x1200 (full screen)

Thanks!

Please post a VM log file. With the VM fully shut down, right click and "Show Log" in the GUI, save "VBox.log" (no other file) to a zip, and attach the zip here.

Thank you for the response, mpack. Log attached.

I tried to get more empirical data than "it's choppy" (I'm a video engineer, so I'm certain I can tell when video is at 30fps or 15fps... but objective numbers are always better).
I tried to run Passmark in the guest, but it kept throwing a BSOD (in DirectIO64.sys) before I could even start any test.
Ran CanvasMark 2013 HTML5 2D benchmark in Chrome, and got a 6,200 score, which seems fine (natively on my host it's 7,209). So it seems as if the guest "thinks" it's rendering video at >30fps but by the time it reaches my monitor and my eyes, it's not.
Gets me wondering if the issue is actually on the host side, in whether VBox is properly relaying the graphics to Apple's APIs and the Radeon GPU (which is officially supported, with a built-in driver in OS X).

On the same note, is this normal?
https://photos.app.goo.gl/8Z4zooh7vgAWHt6S7
Booting the guest in safe mode, takes ~5 seconds to draw the screen in text mode.

I don't recommend trying to run automated benchmarks in a VM. Time is a resource shared with the host, all unknown to the VM.

I recommend changing the graphics RAM to 128MB, also change the graphics controller to VBoxVGA (not VBoxSVGA or VMSVGA), since AFAIK, 2D accelaration does nothing with the new graphics chipsets introduced in v6.

You may have to restart the VM a couple of times before the GAs adapt to the change in graphics controller.

I see 24bpp graphics modes being selected in a couple of places, though perhaps that's just a transitional state during boot. You'll appreciate that to get maximum graphics performance the color depth of the guest should not require per-pixel translation in order to be rendered on the host. I.e. always use 32bpp graphics modes in the guest, as that is certainly what your host uses.

Otherwise your VM looks fine to me.

Thank you, mpack.
I changed to VBoxVGA, upped the VRAM to 128MB, confirmed color depth was set to 32bit, restarted twice - no change, unfortunately.

I noticed that the VM routinely uses >200%, including when trying to play video in the browser. (It's set to use 1 HT core.) I tried to double the CPU allocation, booted and rebooted - and it's running way, way, way worse. It basically choked up trying to load a video at all.

Any more ideas? Should we move the post to the OS X hosts forum?

Same problem. Youtube videos plays with microfreezes, and all works without good smoothness. Furmark benchmark shows 50 - 60 FPS, but actually test runs at 10 - 20 FPS, that obviuosly seen by eye Tried max video memory, 2D and 3D acceleration (with reboot). No effect. Guest additions installed.