VT-x: does it work on OS X? It does on Win XP!

davidlee010 · Post by **davidlee010** » 10. Jun 2008, 23:58

My guest machine ran very sloooooow on both Win XP and OS X hosts. I never bothered to turn on VT-x setting since the documentation states:

Normally, you should leave this setting disabled as VirtualBox employs sophisticated software techniques which normally yield superior performance compared to hardware virtualization.

But, on a suggestion from my boss, I tried it anyway. It made a HUGH difference on Win XP. My Solaris 10 guest machine runs very fast and I'm happy with the results.

So, I tried the same guest machine on my Mac Pro (8-core, 4 GB RAM). I don't see much help on OS X. The same guest machine seems to run slow than on my Win XP (toshiba tecra 2-core 2.33 Ghz, 3 GB RAM).

How can I improve the performance on my OS X host? Does VT-x setting work for the Mac?

Post by **sandervl** » 11. Jun 2008, 10:10

VT-x for the Mac is work in progress. Solaris suffers badly, because it does things that are very inefficient in a software virtualization environment. Improvements have already been made in OpenSolaris.

davidlee010 · Post by **davidlee010** » 12. Jun 2008, 10:29

Thanks for the reply. Are you saying that VT-x works on OpenSolaris2008.5 for VB 1.6.2 on the Mac OSX?

Post by **sandervl** » 12. Jun 2008, 10:34

No, I said VT-x on Mac hosts is being worked on.

OpenSolaris (as opposed to Solaris 10Ux) performs better as a guest, because changes were made to reduce overhead in the software virtualization case.

davidlee010 · Post by **davidlee010** » 16. Jun 2008, 05:54

Typo... I meant that it is in the works.... Thanks.