VirtualBox VM much slower on Windows host than on Linux host

[Jimz]

Hi,

I have a kind of a problem running VirtualBox VM on Windows 7 host. The performance appears poor. And I do no talk about 3D performance, but simple CPU performance. I have a Linux guest running on Windows 7 host, and sysbench show me following on CPU performance on single thread:

CPU speed:
events per second: 632.79

When I run Linux host on the same hardware (dual boot), and similar VirtualBox Linux quest, i get much better performance, same sysbench command shows be about 1050 events per second (again single thread performance).

The Windows host is to High Performance power profile. Any ideas why the performance is so bad in Windows host?

[socratis]

First of all, don't trust benchmarks inside a VM. Second, we're going to need a complete VBox.log, from a complete VM run, from BOTH hosts:

• Gather the necessary information:
  1. Start the VM from cold-boot (not from a paused or saved state).
  2. Observe the erroneous behavior. Login, do something.
  3. 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.

[andyp73]

and similar VirtualBox Linux quest

Similar doesn't necessarily mean identical. Are you using the same version of VirtualBox? Is the Ext Pack installed on both? Are there any differences in the guest configuration? Windows is also notoriously bad for doing things in the background which can make the performance seem worse.

-Andy.

[Jimz]

OK, good points. I will try a run the same VirtualBox version on both, and I try to run the same VM on both, and collect the log files from both.

[Jimz]

The VirtualBox version on both hosts is: 5.2.14 r123301, and the Extention pack was installed on both. I created a new linux guest VM (Fedora 28 Cinnamon), and executed the same tests on the VM on both hosts. This time the test was Geekbench 4. I also executed the same test on both hosts, to see if there is something wrong with the Windows performance itself. The results for single thread CPU performance are:
- Windows host: 3704
- Guest on Windows host: 1809
- Linux host: 3959
- Guest on Linux host: 3882
So the hosts have quite similar results, but the guest on Windows host has very poor performance. The windows host was not executed nothing much, but the VirtualBox (according to Task manager and Resource manager).

Logs from both hosts:

WindowsHostLog.zip

VBox.log from Windows host

(25 KiB) Downloaded 113 times

LinuxHostLog.zip

VBox.log from Linux host

(25.14 KiB) Downloaded 153 times

[Jimz]

I am not able to see any problem in the log files. Can anyone else?

[Jimz]

So, nobody has any ideas on this? Should I just try VMware instead?

[Jimz]

Ok. So I tried free VMware Player, and I got very good performance on it. Geekbench 4 single thread performance: 3739, compared to 1809 on VirtualBox.
So, something appears to be wrong with VirtualBox.

I understand that only one hypervisor (VMware or VirtualBox) can use the hardware acceleration at the time. The strange this is this: whether or not the other virtualization (vbox/vmware) is running or not, I seem to always get good performance on VMware and bad performance on VirtualBox. So, can it be that VirtualBox is not using hardware acceleration at all???

[Jimz]

I opened a new topic: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=88706

[duraturk]

...not anything scientific by any means, but...

I have always believed that vmware is faster than virtualbox by some insignificant margin.
I have always believed that virtualbox performs significantly better on a linux host.

I recently tested both of them on my ubuntu host, windows guest. Not benchmark tested but tested the latest version of both with my regular tasks. I tested while both of them installed at the same time, as well as one installed at a time.
I couldn't tell (feel) performance difference between two.

I am not gonna say your test results are meaningless but I believe they are hardly accurate and reliable.
VirtualBox on VMware on Windows host performs better than stand alone virtualbox? come on now.
There is something wrong somewhere and I don't think it's the virtualbox.

[Jimz]

I am not gonna say your test results are meaningless but I believe they are hardly accurate and reliable.

OK. So, any idea how to get more accurate and reliable results?

There is something wrong somewhere and I don't think it's the virtualbox.

Absolutely there is something wrong somewhere, and I would really really like to know what and where to be able to fix it. So, if it is not VirtualBox itself, any idea what it could be?

[Jimz]

Solved. See viewtopic.php?f=6&t=88706

[ponomarenko.aleksandr]

Dear Jimz, thank you so much for this thread. I've spend 3 evenings and almost migrate to vmware, after i had to move from my old amd fx-8350 to laptop with i5-2410m due to business trip.
This info should be more easy to find... So others might solve same issue.

Btw tested vmware - and i'm so glad i can stay with vbox!