VirtualBox 6.0 on Linux host with Windows guest running terribly slow

Discussions about using Linux guests in VirtualBox.
Post Reply
marcuschristopher
Posts: 3
Joined: 17. Apr 2019, 14:37
Primary OS: Linux other
VBox Version: OSE Debian
Guest OSses: Windows
Location: Austria
Contact:

VirtualBox 6.0 on Linux host with Windows guest running terribly slow

Post by marcuschristopher »

I recently got myself a new, more powerful workstation. With Linux Mint (now in version 19.1) as my main system and some programs (that my business depends on) only running on Windows, I also installed the (to my knowledge) newest version of Oracle VirtualBox, hosting Windows 7 as a guest. The problem is: The guest system is now running terribly slow and feels extremely laggy.

What's surprising me is the fact that I had VirtualBox with almost the same setup installed on my old machine and it was working fast and flawlessly. The new machine is much more powerful, so I'm wondering, what's going on. Here's my setup:

Old machine
  • Linux Mint version 18.x, ext4 file system
  • VirtualBox in version 5.x with Guest Additions installed
  • dynamic memory allocation (about 50GB), sometimes running into problems with the pagefile
  • 6-core AMD CPU, 3 of which I had assigned to the guest system
  • 16GB of RAM, 8 of which I had assigned to the guest system
  • NVidia GeForce GTX 980 with 4GB of VRAM
New Machine
  • Linux Mint version 19.1, ext4 file system
  • VirtualBox in version 6.0 with Guest Additions installed (installing 5.x makes no difference)
  • static memory allocation (about 128GB)
  • HP Z820 with 16-core Intel Xeon CPU, 8 of which I have assigned to the guest system
  • 64GB of RAM, 32 of which I have assigned to the guest system
  • NVidia GeForce GTX 980 with 4GB of VRAM
On both machines, "VT-x/AMD-V", "Nested Paging" and "IO-APIC" was/is activated. The system installed (Windows 7) is exactly the same, the software as well. So, to me it looks as if VirtualBox should be running a bit faster on the new machine; and yet, it feels extremely laggy... to the point that I really can't do any work.

Any ideas, what could be causing this? Is there anything that I could try?
Any help would be much appreciated.
socratis
Site Moderator
Posts: 27330
Joined: 22. Oct 2010, 11:03
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Win(*>98), Linux*, OSX>10.5
Location: Greece

Re: VirtualBox 6.0 on Linux host with Windows guest running terribly slow

Post by socratis »

If the old machine is accessible or up and running, we're going to need to see a complete VBox.log, from a complete VM run, for each of the two hosts:
  • Start the VM from cold-boot (not from a paused or saved state) / Observe problem / Shutdown the VM (force close it if you have to).
  • With the VM completely shut down (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.
Image
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
If you obfuscate any information requested, I will obfuscate my response. These are virtual UUIDs, not real ones.
marcuschristopher
Posts: 3
Joined: 17. Apr 2019, 14:37
Primary OS: Linux other
VBox Version: OSE Debian
Guest OSses: Windows
Location: Austria
Contact:

Re: VirtualBox 6.0 on Linux host with Windows guest running terribly slow

Post by marcuschristopher »

Thank you very much for the quick reply. I now managed to create the requested logs for both machines and am attaching them to this post.

As an aside: The graphics card in the old host is no longer the GTX 980 that I mentioned (I transferred the card to the new machine), but a much weaker NVidia GT card. Still, the old host is running much faster and smoother than the newer one.

Thanks in advance for your help.
Attachments
VBox_NewHost.log.zip
The VBox log file from the new Linux host.
(47.07 KiB) Downloaded 16 times
VBox_OldHost.log.zip
The VBox log file from the old Linux host.
(26.32 KiB) Downloaded 15 times
Martin
Volunteer
Posts: 2560
Joined: 30. May 2007, 18:05
Primary OS: Fedora other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: XP, Win7, Win10, Linux, OS/2

Re: VirtualBox 6.0 on Linux host with Windows guest running terribly slow

Post by Martin »

According to the "NewHost" log you have assigned all 16 of your physical host CPU cores to the guest.
That will almost never produce decent performance.
On your old host you only assigend 3 vCPU to your guest out of 6 physical cores.
There your host had spare cores to handle everything necessary on the host to run the VM.
marcuschristopher
Posts: 3
Joined: 17. Apr 2019, 14:37
Primary OS: Linux other
VBox Version: OSE Debian
Guest OSses: Windows
Location: Austria
Contact:

Re: VirtualBox 6.0 on Linux host with Windows guest running terribly slow

Post by marcuschristopher »

Hmm, I thought I had assigned exactly half of my available cores to the guest system. Indeed, I do have 2 CPUs with 8 cores each, but 32 threads in total, so they appear as "32 CPUs" in Virtualbox. (I mentioned them as "16 cores" and "8 cores", respectively, in my first post to make things easier to explain.)

Do you think, I should decrease that number?
Post Reply