More video memory?

BoJaN · Post by **BoJaN** » 31. Jul 2008, 10:22

Hey, I just installed XP under VBox.

The problem is I can't give it enough video memory, I want to run TVU player on it but 128mb is not nearly enough to run it.

Is there any way to increase the video memory or another video driver for virtualbox?

I'm using Ubuntu as my host.

Post by **h1d** » 31. Jul 2008, 10:26

Guessing out of nowhere, but how about edit the config xml by hand? Or rather should wait for more valid response from others. VBox may not simply support more than that.

BoJaN · Post by **BoJaN** » 31. Jul 2008, 10:33

I'll try that, I was wondering if there might be a way to increase it in a config file but I didn't really want to try but I can always change it back if it screws me up.

Technologov · Post by **Technologov** » 31. Jul 2008, 11:38

BoJaN: Why you think you need more video memory ? It won't affect your applications anyway.

-Technologov

BoJaN · Post by **BoJaN** » 31. Jul 2008, 12:45

It does, its like running on a 128mb video card! I've got a 512MB Gforce 8800 OC I want to be able to use at least half of it's power

Edit: It doesn't let me set it higher in the xml, it gives me an error saying it has to be under 128 when I start up

Post by **h1d** » 31. Jul 2008, 13:07

In the end, it's never going to use much potential of the host's graphic capability. (It's not even recognized as the vid card you have plugged in with no 3D acceleration.) I neither get how much increasing vram helps though. It's not just the amount of ram that gpu will use to put its power.

Technologov · Post by **Technologov** » 31. Jul 2008, 13:44

You won't get half of the power of GeForce 8800. Forget it. Not even 10%. VirtualBox doesn't supports 3D acceleration.
Adding more video RAM doesn't affect VirtualBox at all.

-Technologov

d2globalinc · Post by **d2globalinc** » 11. Oct 2008, 06:20

Ok - how bout this.. I want to boost my ram up beyond 128 because I want to emulate 6 monitors at 1680x1050. Which also just happens to be how many monitors I'm running on the host w/ Ubuntu Linux 8.04 hardy. The guest is windows XP Pro.

Thanks!

Shane Menshik
D2 GLOBAL INC

p.s. Tried setting manually but receive an error before even turning on the machine in the GUI. I run 6 monitors in Vmware Workstation 6.5 and had to manually edit the config to allow more memory there. Also I can run unity mode with all 6 monitors (split up correctly over the host and guest monitors)...

Post by **Sasquatch** » 11. Oct 2008, 13:34

6! monitors? What do you use them all for? Why do all the trouble if you can have only one monitor with the VB GUI? If you want more monitors, with 1680x1050 each, 128 should be more than enough. Did you read the manaul about multi-monitor support in VB?

d2globalinc · Post by **d2globalinc** » 11. Oct 2008, 15:03

Yah.. 6 monitors (see video link below) - read the manual many times over

- I actually have VB working in seamless mode using a little script i made that will force the VB app back to a window'd application after in seamless mode then it resizes it to the complete size of my desktop - Combined with some xinerama hacks and compiz fusion display settings. So minus the main gnome panel - VBox becomes (5040x2052) - normally the entire desktop is 5040x2100. I then use a program called Virtual Display Manager inside the XP guest to split the one large monitor up into 6 with 1680x1050 for each of the top row monitors (3) and then 1680x1002 for the bottom row monitors (3). This works OK - but I'd like to be able to do it without the VDM program (which I can do with vmware unity). Vmware actually detects all 6 of my monitors and sizes the virtual displays accordingly. There are still some minor bugs in the vmware setup and the unity performance I don't think is as good as virtualbox (even with a single monitor)..

Anyway I know this setup is not the norm so I'm not coming here expecting any modifications to code to help me out

.. But - I did want to say when I forced the VirtualBox VM to use 6 monitors then attempted to put that VM into seamless mode it gave me the message that i needed to up my VRAM to 256. (I know seamless is not support nor is multimonitors in the main virtualbox gui - but i had to try

).. Anyway I thought it was weird that it told me I needed to bump my VRAM up to 256 when the limit is 128. I even tried this in the xml config for the VM but it of course gave me a VM config error in the main GUI even before I started the VM.

Again I know I'm not doing anything that's supported here - but I did want to share my experience with VB vs VMware with this workstation - Perhaps it will help devs plan something in the future or at least match vmwares features in some way. I will use Vbox over Vmware Workstation any-day and really think its a great piece of software and getting better all the time!

Here is a video of this workstation on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DWzuIreDGA

I'm also preparing another set of videos showing off windows apps running on this with one for Vbox and one for Vmware so people can see the differences under this setup.

Also - on a side note - I tried to use VBOX to do the old rdesktop using seamless windows w/ windows RDP - unfortunatnly I hit a wall there because windows RDP has a max resolution of 4096x2048

.

One thing that would help with any of these multimonitor systems is if there was a way to set custom xinerama dimensions / monitor configuration information per each application you run. This way you would have more control over what these apps do when they go fullscreen (like in seamless and fullscreen mode) - and tell them to use all your monitors instead of just 1.. Then of course there are times you want the app to use just 1 monitor in fullscreen mode.. So that's why the need for sending custom xinerama info per app would be nice! (so if anyone knows where to find an app like this or who I should get in touch with to make one, let me know).

Sorry for the information overload

- but just wanted to give my insight on this and other multimonitor setups.

Also we have a forum thread over in the Ubuntu forums about Dual Display + Multi Monitor systems (more for the 3+ monitor setups) - feel free to join in the conversation or ask for assistance on a setup!
Thread URL: http://ubuntu-virginia.ubuntuforums.org ... p?t=884161

Thanks!

Shane Menshik
D2 GLOBAL INC
http://www.d2global.com

de_llamaman · Post by **de_llamaman** » 8. Jun 2010, 17:02

guys, Stop asking why and answer the question, if u need more than 128mb of graphics memory on your virtual machine how do you do it??

Post by **Perryg** » 8. Jun 2010, 17:15

The original post was old. VBox has increased the top to 256MB. You should be able to change it in the GUI or by CLI.
VBoxManage modifyvm <uuid|name> [--vram <vramsize in MB>] Up to 256MB not more. It is restricted to no more then 256 MB

virtualbox.org

More video memory?

More video memory?

Ok how bout this..

Yup - Dual Monitors ++ - 6x 20" LCD monitors at 1680x10

Re: More video memory?

Re: More video memory?