Slow GUI with not VBoxVGA drivers - VBox 6.0.12

Discussions about using Linux guests in VirtualBox.
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AndrewTrapani
Posts: 7
Joined: 25. Sep 2019, 22:12

Slow GUI with not VBoxVGA drivers - VBox 6.0.12

Post by AndrewTrapani »

Bottom Line: If this bug persists, I won't be able to use VirtualBox 6.1.X or higher because VBoxVGA graphics controller will go away.

Ubuntu 14 and 16 guest systems.

Virtual Box 6.0.12 r133076 (Qt5.6.3) with recommended Extension Pack and Guest Additions installed onto guest systems.

Code: Select all

VBoxClient --version
6.0.12r133076
~:$ VBoxControl --version
6.0.12r133076
128MB video memory
3D Accel Enabled
2D disabled

VM set to View -> Auto-resize Guest Display

Graphics Controller: VBoxVGA results in warning message when starting the VM:
This VM is configured to use 3D acceleration using the VBoxVGA graphics controller. Support for this will be removed with version 6.1.0. ALL saved states and snapshots will cease to work when using this configuration. Either switch to the VMSVGA graphics controller and update guest additions, or disable 3D acceleration.

Error ID: 3DCrDeprecated
Severity: Warning
When VirtualBox will do a major rev, this graphics driver will no longer be available

However the two other graphics controller options are very slow with UI inputs:

VMSVGA with and without 3D Acceleration
VBoxSVGA with and without 3D Acceleration

Repeatable test:
Boot up
Log into Ubuntu user
Open a terminal
ls -la
Use mouse to highlight some text.
Move the mouse around quickly with a careful eye to responsiveness.

With the above two graphics controllers, the highlighted area has high latency compared with where I've been moving my mouse.

In the VBoxVGA graphics controller and 3D Acceleration, the GUI is fast, and with my human reactions, "feels" on par with host Mac OS.

The current state is unusable with VMSVGA and VBoxSVGA.

HOST: MacBookPro 2018 15" MacOS 10.14.6 and Intel i9, using native display. No external displays tested.
VM:Has access to 4 CPUs and 8 GiB of RAM

Only one VM online at a time.

I've attached the output of "glxinfo" command for each of the graphics controller modes with 3D Accel enabled. All other settings stay the same.


CPU Usage summary:
VMSVGA with 3D Accel: About 190~200% CPU usage using the above highlighting test and sluggish response.
VBoxVGA with 3D Accel: About 110~130% CPU usage using the above highlighting test.
Attachments
VBox_SVGA_3D_glxinfo.txt
(57.37 KiB) Downloaded 47 times
VMSVGA_3D_glxinfo.txt
(27.07 KiB) Downloaded 28 times
VBoxVGA 3D glxinfo.txt
(3.26 KiB) Downloaded 35 times
Last edited by AndrewTrapani on 16. Oct 2019, 02:52, edited 2 times in total.
AndrewTrapani
Posts: 7
Joined: 25. Sep 2019, 22:12

Re: Slow GUI with not VBoxVGA drivers - VBox 6.0.12

Post by AndrewTrapani »

Attached VM logs here.

I believe I got the correct file names with the correct VBox log for each of the graphics drivers.

bzip2 compressed.
Attachments
Ubuntu16-2019-09-25-13-32-48_with_VBox_VGA_3D.log.bz2
(33.07 KiB) Downloaded 24 times
Ubuntu16-2019-09-25-13-29-19_with_VMSVGA_3D.log.bz2
(36.26 KiB) Downloaded 22 times
Ubuntu16-2019-09-25-13-32-48_with_VBox_SVGA_3D.log.bz2
(35.99 KiB) Downloaded 20 times
maker675
Posts: 90
Joined: 30. Oct 2015, 08:16

Re: Slow GUI with not VBoxVGA drivers - VBox 6.0.12

Post by maker675 »

Having exactly the same problem with Windows 10 guest on an OSX host and Macbook Pro 15inch 2016.
AndrewTrapani
Posts: 7
Joined: 25. Sep 2019, 22:12

Re: Slow GUI with not VBoxVGA drivers - VBox 6.0.12

Post by AndrewTrapani »

This is under "Linux Guest"

You should take a similar approach and post your setup and as many details as possible in the "Windows Guests" forum.

There may already be a thread.
mulad
Posts: 2
Joined: 4. Oct 2019, 17:21

Re: Slow GUI with not VBoxVGA drivers - VBox 6.0.12

Post by mulad »

I'm also very concerned about this change, since I have atrocious video performance with the VMSVGA device when running Linux Mint under Mac OS X. The VBoxVGA controller has also always been somewhat slow on this system, but not nearly as bad as VMSVGA. I had previously used this VM on a Windows host, where performance was vastly better.

This is on a "MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports)" system.
Host: Mac OS X 10.14.6 (Mojave)
Guest: Linux Mint 19 (Tara)

I am running the laptop with the internal HiDPI "retina" display (13.3-inch 2560x1600) plus two external displays with regular resolution (1920x1080) and standard DPI. When running Windows, I typically just ran with the two external displays and everything was at standard DPI.
Attachments
Linux-Mint-19-on-MacOSX-10.14.6-VMSVGA.log
Log from running Linux Mint 19 on MacOSX 10.14.6 with VMSVGA
(97.95 KiB) Downloaded 28 times
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: Slow GUI with not VBoxVGA drivers - VBox 6.0.12

Post by socratis »

mulad wrote:I'm also very concerned about this change
Try being on the developers' shoes! They had to devote serious resources to keep the old VBoxVGA going. Would you want them to keep on spending time on "making a hole in the water"? Because that's what the old VBoxVGA was, an exercise in futility.

At least now that they decided to get rid of 3D+VBoxVGA (not VBoxVGA alone), they can focus on improving the newly added VBoxSVGA (for Win guests) and VMSVGA (for Linux guests). What do you prefer?
mulad wrote:I have atrocious video performance
Then you shouldn't be affected by the 3D component of VBoxVGA getting removed.
mulad wrote:I am running the laptop with the internal HiDPI "retina" display (13.3-inch 2560x1600) plus two external displays with regular resolution (1920x1080) and standard DPI.
You are also using an exotic and DPI-complicated setup, not everyone has that. ;)
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.
AndrewTrapani
Posts: 7
Joined: 25. Sep 2019, 22:12

Re: Slow GUI with not VBoxVGA drivers - VBox 6.0.12

Post by AndrewTrapani »

OK, so VMSVGA is the standard for Linux.

Until that works, I won't be able to upgrade to Virtual Box 6.1.X or higher, since the old graphics controller will be gone.

FYI, I updated my OP to state I'm using the native Mac Book Pro display during the testing.
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: Slow GUI with not VBoxVGA drivers - VBox 6.0.12

Post by socratis »

AndrewTrapani wrote:Until that works, I won't be able to upgrade to Virtual Box 6.1.X or higher
Really? When is that, do you know? Because I don't think anyone knows for sure, not even key developers. And yet again, only the 3D component is going to be gone...

Just don't freak out until then, this is a warning for a future version at the moment, that's all. If you or anyone else wants to help ironing out the issues, start or keep on testing the Development snapshots...
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.
mulad
Posts: 2
Joined: 4. Oct 2019, 17:21

Re: Slow GUI with not VBoxVGA drivers - VBox 6.0.12

Post by mulad »

I have found these responses to be unhelpful. I don't know what's going on under the hood of this software, so I just have to poke and prod it to try to get the best behavior I can, which is why I was previously using VBoxVGA. I can understand developers wanting to do away with old code that has become unmaintainable, but the replacement options are not up to snuff -- that's the problem.

As an experiment regarding the DPI situation, I unplugged my laptop from my USB-C docking station that my monitors are connected do, then rebooted and tried running my VM just on the internal screen. If anything, the performance was significantly worse, at least after I went to "View" -> "Virtual Screen 1" -> "Scale to 200% (autoscaled output)". I guess I would have expected VirtualBox to be using a hardware-accelerated video context to paint the VM's screen in the VirtualBox window, but a dramatic slowdown when going to 100% to 200% scaling (4x the pixels) suggests it's relying on software methods to do it.

I've attached a log from running VirtualBox without any external monitors attached. If there are any suggestions on configuration changes I can make, I'd appreciate it.
Attachments
Linux-Mint-19-sinagle-display-VMSVGA.log
VirtualBox running Linux Mint 19 with no external monitors attached
(98.59 KiB) Downloaded 20 times
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: Slow GUI with not VBoxVGA drivers - VBox 6.0.12

Post by socratis »

'mulad', before I forget, and for future reference, you should ZIP your logs. It helps you, it helps us, it helps the server, it helps save a (virtual) tree or two... ;)
mulad wrote:I have found these responses to be unhelpful
WARNING:
The truth might not be optimized yet and may not be ready for general consumption, it's difficult to digest.

mulad wrote:the replacement options are not up to snuff -- that's the problem
Yet! I would add the "yet" in your sentence. There has not been a forced move to the new vGPUs yet...
00:00:01.555081 NumCPUs <integer> = 0x0000000000000002 (2)
00:00:01.828712 CPUM: Physical host cores: 2
00:00:01.828980 Full Name: "Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7567U CPU @ 3.50GHz"
You have assigned all your CPUs to the VM. The host is going to run low on resources, since VirtualBox cares about physical processors (cores), not logical ones (threads). Just check the link for your CPU above, and make sure you read the text in the "?" next to the "# of Cores" and "# of Threads" in that Intel page...
00:00:01.555177 [/Devices/ahci/0/LUN#0/Config/] (level 5)
00:00:01.555179   BlockCache <integer> = 0x0000000000000001 (1)
Go to the "VM Settings" » "Storage" » select your SATA controller » enable "Use Host I/O Cache".
00:00:01.555413   VRamSize           <integer> = 0x0000000004000000 (67 108 864, 64 MB)
Go to the "VM Settings" » "Display" » "Screen" » max the "Video Memory" at 128 MB.
00:00:02.363757 GUI: UIMachineViewNormal::resendSizeHint: Restoring guest size-hint for
                screen 0 to 1600x900
You might want to try a lower resolution, less pixels to move around, something like 1280x800.
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.
AndrewTrapani
Posts: 7
Joined: 25. Sep 2019, 22:12

Re: Slow GUI with not VBoxVGA drivers - VBox 6.0.12

Post by AndrewTrapani »

socratis wrote:
AndrewTrapani wrote:Until that works, I won't be able to upgrade to Virtual Box 6.1.X or higher
Really? When is that, do you know? Because I don't think anyone knows for sure, not even key developers. And yet again, only the 3D component is going to be gone...

Just don't freak out until then, this is a warning for a future version at the moment, that's all. If you or anyone else wants to help ironing out the issues, start or keep on testing the Development snapshots...
Please be patient with us end users.

For the first time ever I got a pop up dialogue every time I start my Linux VMs, warning me of a future change that will effect me in VirtualBox. That effect currently looks extremely negative.

Since they went through the trouble of making this warning, I went through the trouble of making this report now, to raise a red flag, to better benefit the community. I'd rather not wait and see if this fails as it's important to me.

I will look into your suggestion on development builds, as I have done that before.

Also, the current development is version 6.1.X, perfect. I can test if they've resolved the issue "VirtualBox-6.1.0_BETA1-133813-OSX.dmg"
AndrewTrapani
Posts: 7
Joined: 25. Sep 2019, 22:12

Re: Slow GUI with not VBoxVGA drivers - VBox 6.0.12

Post by AndrewTrapani »

Updated. I have installed the development version of 6.1.X and it does not fix the graphics issues. Both VMSVGA and VBoxVGA both failed to provide adequate guest response in my test.

Log files attached.

Same Mac Book pro as OP.
  • Installed VirtualBox-6.1.0_BETA1-133813-OSX and Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-6.1.0_BETA1-133813.
  • Rebooted host system.
  • Boot up guest Ubuntu 16 system and install the guest additions VBoxGuestAdditions_6.1.0-133815.
  • Power off guest system.
  • Make sure all other VMs are powered off.
Now try test in OP, where I open a terminal, use "ls -l", and then left click and hold, dragging my mouse quickly up and down, highlighting the file names and information, checking CPU usage and response compared to same test on Host system.
I test this in the following display settings.
  1. Graphics controller VMSVGA with 3D Acceleration
  2. Graphics controller VMSVGA without 3D Acceleration
  3. Graphics controller VBoxVGA with 3D Acceleration
  4. Graphics controller VBoxVGA without 3D Acceleration
All of these failed to have a good GUI response, compared to 6.0.12 with VBoxVGA with 3D Acceleration that did have a good response compared to Host MacOS. Host MacOS is of course very responsive and relatively small CPU usage.

Video Memory 128MB, Monitor Count 1, Scale Factor 100%

Operate Virtual Machine in windowed mode, with Resolution near full screen on MacBookPro 15" display.
Achieve this by pressing alt and left clicking the green "+" icon on the top left of the Virtual Machine display panel. This will auto fill available space.
At 100% unscaled settings.

For either Graphics Controller mode, summary of CPU usage:
VMSVGA was slightly better at all resolutions, at about 10 percentage points of CPU usage.

In MacOS Activity Monitor, "VirtualBox VM" process was showing up to over 190~200% CPU usage during the test.

I tried to reduce the resolutions to 100% unscaled at 1600x900 and 1680x1050.

While response time did improve, it covers about 1/5th of my native MBP display, and the CPU usage was still at 170~180% CPU usage in MacOS Activity Monitor on the "VirtualBox VM" process associated with this VM.

If I up resolution to 1920x1200, which covers about 1/4th of my native MBP display, the CPU usage was up to 180~190% during the test.
Attachments
VMSVGA_2019-10-15-14-20-03.log.bz2
(36.27 KiB) Downloaded 16 times
VBox_VGA_3DAccel_2019-10-15-14-20-03.log.bz2
(32.3 KiB) Downloaded 15 times
Andrew Trapani
Posts: 1
Joined: 4. Nov 2019, 21:35

Re: Slow GUI with not VBoxVGA drivers - VBox 6.0.12

Post by Andrew Trapani »

While I have switched jobs in the meantime, I have come to a likely resolution for this issue.

Another virtualization software allows for more video memory.

The VM settings GUI in VirtualBox with default settings for Ubuntu 18 allows for a max of 128MB of virtual memory. I recommend to increase this to a much higher maximum on the slider bar.

The slider bar and video memory settings are at:
Virtual Machine Settings -> Video Memory -> slider bar and text field, with a max of "128" MB of video memory.
I am unable to slide higher than 128MB. I am unable to enter a value higher than 128.

When I decrease the resolution enough, the problems I describe go away.
When I increase the resolution enough, the problems I describe become apparent and are exacerbated with higher resolutions.

The other virtualization software recommended 768 MB of memory of my mac book pro, which has:
Radeon Pro 555 2 GB
Intel HD Graphics 630 1536 MB

This other virtualization software does not suffer from this problem at any resolution, but if I reduce the video memory to 128MB, it becomes just as bad.
dacohen
Posts: 1
Joined: 14. Dec 2019, 00:04

Re: Slow GUI with not VBoxVGA drivers - VBox 6.0.12

Post by dacohen »

I am having this same issue with MacOS/macbook pro host and Ubuntu guest. Virtualbox is unusable for daily tasks that involve GUI.

I did a comparison and (it could be relevant or not) when I'm using VboxVGA MacOS tells virtualbox is triggering Macbook pro to use the high speed GPU (instead of battery friendly integrated), while with VMSVGA it does not enforce high speed GPU.
socratis
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Re: Slow GUI with not VBoxVGA drivers - VBox 6.0.12

Post by socratis »

'dacohen', now that 6.1.0 is out, there's no point in posting on a 6.0.12-related thread, this is not relevant any more, so I'm going to lock it.

If you have an issue with 6.1.0, please open a new thread, it's just as easy. When you do, we are going to need to see a complete VBox.log, from a complete VM run, where the problem occurs:
  • Start the VM from cold-boot (not from a paused or saved state) / Observe or recreate the 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.
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