Very poor performance Mac OS host

[socratis]

All Linux VMs I've tried have exhibited this behavior (Kubuntu 14,16,18 and Fedora 2x)

<Image uuid="{afddceae-24e8-4f9a-962c-9aa48a932535}"
        location="/Users/yan/Downloads/Fedora-KDE-Live-x86_64-29-1.2.iso"/>

Are all your VMs KDE based? That's pretty much the only difference I could see between your VM and mine. That, and the "Host I/O Cache" being enabled in mine, but that shouldn't matter too much, if any.

I'm going to try and I can replicate your "experience" with the KDE DVD. In the mean time, can you try a Gnome one and see what you get?

[clouddev]

Yes - all the VMs I've tried have been KDE based. I'll try a Gnome distribution and report back. Thanks

[moosepuggle]

This finally worked for me after weeks of trouble shooting! Apparently, you need to turn off Beam Synchronization for running Yosemite or later on the guest. The sole purpose of the app BeamOff is to turn off Beam Synchronization to make a VirtualBox running Yosemite or later work better.

Download the beamoff app (this is my first post, so apparently I'm not allowed to post links, sorry!) in the VM, then run it in the VM. You want it to load on login, so go to System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Items > then hit + and browse for where beamoff is located. On start up, the icon will appear in the dock, bounce a few times while it turns off beam sync, then close itself.


Host: Macbook Pro 2015 running Catalina
Guest: Mac Yosemite 10.10
Guest Setup: 1 vCPU, 4096 base memory, 25G storage, video mem 128Mb, EFI enabled, boot order: optical, hard disk, acceleration default, display scale 200%, VboxVGA, 3D acceleration.
Guest Additions 6.04 installed, then .dmg ejected

Note that I'm only running Circus Ponies Notebook as a lab notebook (why won't someone make a new electronic lab notebook that works this well?) on my VM, so not very intensive. My scrolling is still laggy, but mouse and display generally run much better!

[VBoxUser96]

So normally I'd hate to pile on this thread, but I'm experiencing a very similar issue and have tried to recreate the steps the user used to mitigate some of the issues without success. My situation is a little different, but since so many of the parameters are similar this seems like a good spot to lay things out.

Host Environment

iMac 27 2017
Mojave 10.14.6
4.2Ghz Quad Core
40GB RAM
Radeon Pro 580 8GB
Version 6.0.18 r136238 (Qt5.6.3)
VBox Extensions Version 6.0.18 r136238
VM on an external 2.5" SATA SSD with USB3.1 UASP interface

Guest Environment

Ubuntu 18.04.4 with latest GA CD installed
4 vCPUs allocated (I normally run 3/8 but thought this might help)
16GB RAM allocated
128MB Video Mem
1024x768 REs with 3X scalefactor (for testing)
VMSVGA w/3D Accel on (Tried other two as well)
I've tried both Gnome and Unity within Ubuntu with little impact

Everything ran really well under VBox 5.X but I needed to upgrade to Mojave and upgraded to VBox 6.0. I'm getting very slow performance < 5fps. The machine seems to run 25% to 150% CPU utilization in Activity monitor just sitting on the desktop. It doesn't seem to just be the UI, the entire system seems sluggish, to a point where it's almost unusable. On a side note the ejecting the GA iso from my VM causes virtualbox to quit about 25% of the time with 6.0. I tried the beamoff approach with no luck.

I've included my dump in the hope that it will be useful.

[byte64]

Hi,
I see that there are some reports of sluggish performance of Mac OS 10.14 running on the same OS, I attach a zip containing my iMac system report and VB's log of the last boot.
Hopefully someone can point me to the cause of the problem. The problem worsens when the window is switched to 200% unscaled output, the mouse pointer jerks around. I also tried to disable all the whistles and bells (transparencies and so on) without visible improvements.

Thank you
Flavio

[WishingIHadVMware]

Jumping in to give a huge +1 on this issue. I think the problem is how Virtualbox deals with the active display's resolution. On my 1080p monitor, my Linux VM runs perfectly. On my hi-res monitor, it runs ok, but shows inhibitive signs of lag that is especially bad when scrolling through a file in Intellij. On my laptop's retina display, the VM is nearly unusable.