Slow OSX 10.10 graphics with VB 4.3.18

[socratis]

I know that Mac OSX 10.10 (Yosemite) was just released (16/Oct/2014). I do realize that it just came out and is unsupported as of 4.3.18. I simply wanted to post my experience so that other users and the devs can take a look at it.

I will not open a bug report, because a bug is a problem with a feature that is not working as advertised. This is not the case here, because VBox is not "advertised" as supporting 10.10 yet. I'll wait for 4.3.2x.

- Host: MacBookPro early 2011, 10.6.8, 4 physical CPUs, 16GB RAM, AMD Radeon HD 6750M.
- Guest: 10.10 final, 3GB RAM, 128 VRAM, 2CPUs, SATA controller. IO/APIC, PAE, VT-x, Nested Paging enabled.
- Modifications: 10.9 (64) template. Enabled 1280x1024 via the EfiGopMode=3 method.
- Symptom: Slow as molasses, mainly in the graphics department. CPUs in the guest are barely working, same as on the host, so no problem there. Disk activity is close to zero on both. But, mouse movement is jerky, keyboard input if more than 2 characters per second, misses characters. You can actually read the output of 'ls -alR /' in the Terminal as it scrolls by (haven't seen this one since I was using a 80286, so that brought back memories). Corrupted graphics in the toolbar (that's where the new translucent crap feature was added by Apple).

I compared the logs from a 10.10 and a 10.9 guest. Remember that the recipe is identical. Similar output (except of course the memory locations/assignments) except a minor point:

• 10.10 : 00:00:02.050804 EFI: VBoxDbg> loadimage64 'boot.efi.macho.x8.efi' 0xbe33d000 LB 0x90000
• 10.9 : 00:00:02.656756 EFI: VBoxDbg> loadimage64 'boot.sys.x8.efi' 0x7e363000 LB 0x7d000

[Riot Nrrrd™]

I know that Mac OSX 10.10 (Yosemite) was just released (16/Oct/2014). I do realize that it just came out and is unsupported as of 4.3.18. I simply wanted to post my experience so that other users and the devs can take a look at it.

I will not open a bug report, because a bug is a problem with a feature that is not working as advertised. This is not the case here, because VBox is not "advertised" as supporting 10.10 yet. I'll wait for 4.3.2x.

- Host: MacBook Pro early 2011, 10.6.8, 4 physical CPUs, 16GB RAM, AMD Radeon HD 650M.
- Guest: 10.10 final, 3GB RAM, 128 VRAM, 2CPUs, SATA controller. IO/APIC, PAE, VT-x, Nested Paging enabled.
- Modifications: 10.9 (64) template. Enabled 1280x1024 via the EfiGopMode=3 method.
- Symptom: Slow as molasses, mainly in the graphics department. CPUs in the guest are barely working, same as on the host, so no problem there. Disk activity is close to zero on both. But, mouse movement is jerky, keyboard input if more than 2 characters per second, misses characters. You can actually read the output of 'ls -alR /' in the Terminal as it scrolls by (haven't seen this one since I was using a 80286, so that brought back memories). Corrupted graphics in the toolbar (that's where the new translucent crap feature was added by Apple).

Hate to rub it in, but I'm definitely not seeing most of these with 10.10 final and VBox 4.3.18 on my 6-core 2010 Mac Pro. (8 GB - Guest is given 2 CPU cores, 3 GB and VT-x/AMD-V/Nested Paging and PAE/NX given to VBox; the Video Memory set to 128 MB and Acceleration set to 3D). Seems like we have similar settings so maybe my mighty ATi Radeon HD 5770 is helping?

It's quite usable for me (other than the video glitching when using Chrome that I don't get in Safari) and

Code: Select all

ls -alRF /

streams by very nicely

The funny thing is, I didn't even do a clean install, this was done with the Yosemite final installer installed over the previous Beta 6 over Beta 5 over Beta 4 over ...

[Riot Nrrrd™]

Just thought of something: Do you have Enable Audio enabled?

I had it turned off all this time, and just for grins I tried turning it on (Host Audio Driver: CoreAudio/Audio Controller: Intel HD Audio) and after firing it up I immediately started to notice notable slowdowns like yours

I did hear it occasionally croak once in a while but if you have audio turned on, try shutting down and turning it off and restarting, then see if you still get the same behavior.

[socratis]

Yeap, tried that already, it's one of the most basic troubleshooting steps for a Mac guest. No dice. Nothing in the logs (guest or host). Chances are that it's my graphics card that is not playing nice.

[loukingjr]

Yeap, tried that already, it's one of the most basic troubleshooting steps for a Mac guest. No dice. Nothing in the logs (guest or host). Chances are that it's my graphics card that is not playing nice.

You could be right about your graphics card. When I installed 10.10 DP as a guest back in June viewtopic.php?f=8&t=61825&start=15#p290610 it ran reasonably well. Makes me nervous that Apple has gone back to AMD graphics for the 5K iMac.