Virtual Box Very Slow on Intel Core Ultra 9

[Cibut]

Hello,
I hope you guys can help me out.

I've been using VirtualBox on my PC for years without any issue. My PC is from 2020 (AMD 3700X, 32GB RAM, GTX1080). It's been amazing to be able to separate works and personal use completely.

Now I have a new laptop (Asus Zenbook 14: Intel Core Ultra 9 285H, 32 GB Ram, IGP Intel Arc). I think this is very decent spec, and I hope to have great experience with Virtual Box). However this is not the case. The guest OS is very slow. Even dragging window explorer across the screen is very laggy.

I'm using Virtual Box Version 7.2.4 r170995
The Host and Guest are both Windows 11.

I have googling around and here's what I have tried:

1. Start the Virtual Box as Administrator >> no effect.

2. Disable on Host OS : Hyper-V related options, including Hyper-V, Windows Hypervisor Platform, Virtual Machine Platform, and Windows Sandbox >> no effect.

3. Disable power throtling on Host OS:

Code: Select all

powercfg /powerthrottling disable /path "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxHeadless.exe"
powercfg /powerthrottling disable /path "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VirtualBoxVM.exe"

and confirm it with

Code: Select all

powercfg /powerthrottling list

>> no effect.

4. I look at this thread viewtopic.php?t=108745. It seems VM is not assigned to the performance core. I tried to set the affinity when starting the VM as suggested in the thread.
The processor is 16 cores (with no hyper-threading), consist of 6 Performance core, 8 efficiency core, 2 low power core. Google Gemini told me that the affinity mask is 0x3F to target the 6 performance cores. So I start with the following command using CMD n the virtuakl box folder (also start as administrator):

Code: Select all

start /affinity 0x3F VirtualBoxVM.exe --startvm "MY-VM-NAME"

But this is even worse, The guess VM almost unresponsive at all. I have hard time just to shut it down.
btw, I checked on the Task Manager > Details > Right click on the VM > Set Affinity and I see that the assigned processor is 0 to 5, which should be the 6 performance cores.

I'm running out of idea, maybe I should have picked AMD laptop

Any help is apprecited. Thank you in advance.

[ffabian]

In addition to what was described in the post, what worked for me was using the Device Guard Tool to disable virtualization. Once I did that, the VBOX green turtle disappeared and performance improved.