virtualbox.org

Hello all, I'm trying to improve the speed of my installation on virtual box. Whenever I make any popups or graphical movements (like dragging a window, moving around the menu), the frames drop and my CPU usage jumps up. My HDD usage also jumps up to near 100% whenever I open an application for the first time. I assume this is not normal.

My system specs:
i7 2600k overclocked 4.3ghz
8gb ddr3 ram
amd rx480 graphics
virtual machine installed on HDD

Virtual box/bios settings:
2 out of 4 cores
2048mb ram
Max vram settings
3d acceleration enabled
Guest additions installed
pae/nx on
kvm mode
bios virtualization enabled

I'm not sure what to do. I've tried going into virtual box config to bump up the vram manually but that didn't help. Thoughts?

Follow a "start the VM from cold-boot" / "observe error" / "shutdown the VM" cycle. With the VM shut down completely (not paused or saved), right-click on the VM in the VirtualBox Manager and select "Show Log". Save only the first "VBox.log", ZIP it and attach it to your response (see the "Upload attachment" tab below the reply form).

I've now attached the file

VBox.log wrote: 00:00:02.832212 OpenGL Info: Render SPU: GL_VENDOR: Microsoft Corporation
00:00:02.832225 OpenGL Info: Render SPU: GL_RENDERER: GDI Generic
00:00:02.832227 OpenGL Info: Render SPU: GL_VERSION: 1.1.0
00:00:02.832229 OpenGL Info: Render SPU: GL_EXTENSIONS: GL_WIN_swap_hint GL_EXT_bgra GL_EXT_paletted_texture

You can turn off 3D acceleration - your host doesn't provide any. The renderers info highlighted above indicates the most basic software-only renders built into Windows.

I've now turned it off, getting similar performance though perhaps a little choppier with mouse movement. I updated my video card driver today and am now stuck in software rendering mode.

No, there's no need to reinstall anything. Simply restarting the guest (not suspend) should be enough for it to recognize any host changes.

I do see another problem :-

VBox.log wrote: 00:00:02.405637 Host RAM: 8166MB (7.9GB) total, 3973MB (3.8GB) available
...
00:00:02.861470 RamSize <integer> = 0x0000000100000000 (4 294 967 296, 4 096 MB, 4 GB)
00:00:02.861671 VRamSize <integer> = 0x0000000008000000 (134 217 728, 128 MB)

Host RAM overcommitted. I suggest reducing the guest's RAM allocation to 2GB.

That's funny, someone told me to use half and I was suspicious of that. No change in performance, however. Also still in software rendering mode. Looks like there might a problem with my video drivers, let me investigate and see if it makes a difference.

Just updated uninstalled and reinstalled video card drivers, no change.