Slow graphics on Windows client guests

[PSolPT]

Hi,

I have recently ran into problems facing slow graphics and slow video playback on my Windows guests. For ex, when watching a video, the stream isn't fluid and is all choppy.
The same problem occurs on 2 different Windows 10 guests, and another Windows 7 guest.

My host is a Dell Latitude with i7 processor, 16GB RAM and SSD hard drive (VM's running on SSD), running Windows 10. Virtualbox is latest version 5.1.16 (guest additions are updated on guests). I also have the updated extension pack installed.

I have tested several different settings on my VM (as found in other older topics), such as:
- Set other Paravirtualization Interface such as Hyper-V
- Enable 3D Acceleration (Log says host doesn't support)
- Increase video memory to 256MB (currently set at 128MB).
- Set SSD on the Storage configuration
- Disable Audio
- Disable Anti-Virus software (Avast)

The weird thing is, IT USED TO WORK CORRECTLY.
I noticed it stopped working correctly when I ran into some problems with networking (Bridged networking didn't work), so I restored a full backup from my host OS, and then updated VirtualBox to the latest version.
There were no other significant changes on the host that I remember (some new softwares installed over time, but no changes in drivers, etc.).

I have attached the current logs.
Any clue why this is happening? Anyone else with the same problem?

Cheers,
MA

[mpack]

When stuck in a mudpit, it's best not to thrash as that rarely improves matters. Only take measures when you have a sound reason for believing it will make things better - by which I mean that I don't see any connection between the problem you reported and the things you tried. Why would enabling trim (aka. tag drive as SSD) improve graphics performance?

I would: (a) enable 3D acceleration (*), (b) bring the GAs up to date, (c) eject the GAs CD which is still in the virtual drive, (d) check the guest and host tasklists for CPU or I/O hogs, since mysterious slowdowns on Windows PCs are IME nearly always caused by Windows Update.

That all said, your PC seems to be a strange beast: oodles of RAM, but only two cores. That means that official advice is only to give 1 core to the VM, and a Win10 VM is IMHO never going to do well with 1 core.

(*) Any modern PC should support 3D acceleration. I would check for graphics driver fixes for your host. Or, investigate getting a new graphics card.

[PSolPT]

Tested recommended settings and managed to get 3D acceleration working (also set video memory to 256MB), but still get laggy video playback.
Only thing left is Windows updates, which I know they were also applied recently. However, I won't be messing with windows Updates for now. When I get a chance, I'll boot from a clean HDD and test on a clean Windows host OS to check if it's my current Windows OS causing this issue.
Thanks for the tips nonetheless..
Cheers

[Hieu]

Does your host also have Avast (a recent version) ?

[mpack]

Only thing left is Windows updates, which I know they were also applied recently.

I did not intend to suggest that an update caused the problem. What I'm saying is that the Windows Update process itself is a notorious bandwidth hog - both CPU and network.

I don't have very fast internet here at home, so when my physical PC suddenly shows a mysterious slowness the first thing I check is whether Windows is downloading updates. And I often find that the answer is yes.

[socratis]

To add another "degree of freedom" to the problem, if you're watching videos online, the latest trend is to move everything to HTML5 instead of Flash-based videos. The problem is that HTML5 is taxiing the system way more compared to Flash. On my physical system I have add-ons/extensions in Firefox that prevent HTML5 and present the alternative Flash-based videos, just because of better performance.

[mpack]

I can't say I've noticed a big performance hit with HTML5, I assume that would depend on the implementation. My problem with flash is that it's proprietary, and I often have problems with it on non-Windows platforms. There have also of course been the well publicised security holes and reliability issues, leading to Mozilla/FIrefox deprecating its use.

[socratis]

I can't say I've noticed a big performance hit with HTML5, I assume that would depend on the implementation.

I wouldn't say "big" (actually I did say that ), but enough to make my fans kick in a notch higher, like from 10% to 20-30% in full screen. On both an OSX and a Win7 host. On the other hand there's the famous Apple iP* devices that dropped Flash because of energy concerns. 6 of these, 1/2 dozen of those...

There have also of course been the well publicised security holes and reliability issues, leading to Mozilla/FIrefox to deprecate its use.

Oh, definitely, no question about it! But in Firefox 52 (the latest as of this writing), they killed every plugin. Except Flash. Popularity I guess... And I'm not sure if they're planning to migrate from an NPAPI plugin style to a PPAPI one: http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/

[PSolPT]

Slow graphics are noticeable even when navigating through Windows. As far as the video playback goes, it's local files (.avi , .mpg , etc.), including mobile recorded videos.
I recently upgraded to the latest virtualbox package 5.1.18, and even created a whole new VM, but issue still persists. As far as I can tell, it must be something related to my host OS. Next step will be to try switching the host's HDD and try with a different (clean) host OS.

[mpack]

The VM is single core and no GPU, so naturally you're going to notice a lag when playing mpegs as all the decoding and rendering is happening on the same core as the rest of your Win10 guest OS.