Macbook Pro Host - Linux Guest (Centos 7) /slow

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Mac OS X hosts.
Post Reply
archjeb
Posts: 2
Joined: 7. Jul 2021, 17:27

Macbook Pro Host - Linux Guest (Centos 7) /slow

Post by archjeb »

Hi Folks,

I recently upgraded to a newer MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019) with 32G of RAM, 2.3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9,
Internal Graphics chipset:
AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 8 GB
Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB

Running Catalina release of OSX.


Installed the latest VBox6.1 release.

Trying to run a Centos 7 VM and it is really sluggish. Especially with any video playing in the guest. Just trying to play youtube in firefox is painfully slow and vm is not very responsive when playing video - can't even pause the video because the mouse is not responsive while video is playing.

Host shows VirtualBoxVM processes that is running hot. It does appear that if I lower the video resolution on the guest to 1024 x 768, the performance is better; but still the video and audio is out of sync
and mouse clicks in the guest are unpredictable while the video is playing. Even trying to click on the VirtualBox settings is very sluggish - so VB overall is at a crawl while the guest is playing a video.

General host operation seems ok while the video is playing in the guest. In other words, I can play videos or use my host just fine while the guest vm is crawling.

The guest has the guest additions installed and running. Top on the guest shows firefox only using 13% CPU...so not bad from the guest perspective.

Attached the vbox log. Any ideas of what else to check or tweak to improve this?

Thanks,

-J
Attachments
Centos7-Sandbox-2021-07-07-08-50-32.log
vbox log
(115.46 KiB) Downloaded 5 times
event-monitor.jpg
event-monitor.jpg (124.08 KiB) Viewed 1866 times
top-output.jpg
top-output.jpg (89.17 KiB) Viewed 1866 times
archjeb
Posts: 2
Joined: 7. Jul 2021, 17:27

Re: Macbook Pro Host - Linux Guest (Centos 7) /slow

Post by archjeb »

Hi folks,

So an update. I applied some of the suggestions in other threads about setting vbox to "Open in Low Resolution".
Also, enabled Host I/O cache, set video to 100%.

It did make an improvement in performance. Now I can at least have mouse control and I don't get repeating characters from keyboard use when in terminal. So things are significantly better.

But, there is still lag. A simple Youtube video in firefox is still out of sync with video/audio; although its better, its not so far off in sync as it was before.

Any suggestions based on the attached log?

Thanks.

-J
Post Reply