Discuss VirtualBox 3.0.10 release

[Sasquatch]

There is a tool similar to Linux's glxgears, called winglgears or something. http://lab.bachem-it.com/opengl/qtgears/ should do the trick. Though the one I had was different and needed to be run from command prompt to see the FPS after you closed it.

[AntiMatter]

Copy / Paste from Host to Guest not working?

Using latest VirtualBox 3.0.10, Host XP, Guest Win 2003 x32. Copy Paste from Guest to Host = OK. But not the other way around. Can anyone confirm?

Answer to myself and correction. On the same host/guest, the cop /paste issue I got yesterday had disappeared. May be it was the laptop that has been rebooted today? There was may be a stress point yesterday somewhere in the host that I have avoided today. So it seems like the clipboard issue is not systematic.

[Etepetete]

There is a tool similar to Linux's glxgears, called winglgears or something. http://lab.bachem-it.com/opengl/qtgears/ should do the trick...

Thanks Sasquatch, My VM is running QtGears at 60 fps. I guess that means it is working. So I'm not having problems with 3D acceleration and didn't install GuestAdditions in safe mode. By the way, this version of QtGears shows the results in a command window in real time. I also noticed no difference in Performance between running QtGears in my Host and in my Guest.

...Windows file protection replaces the files back to original when you install them in normal mode.

My VM is using the following drivers:

• VBoxDisp.dll
  VBoxGuest.sys
  VBoxMouse.sys
  VBoxSF.sys
  VBoxVideo.sys

Are any missing?

[Sasquatch]

There is a tool similar to Linux's glxgears, called winglgears or something. http://lab.bachem-it.com/opengl/qtgears/ should do the trick...

Thanks Sasquatch, My VM is running QtGears at 60 fps. I guess that means it is working. So I'm not having problems with 3D acceleration and didn't install GuestAdditions in safe mode. By the way, this version of QtGears shows the results in a command window in real time. I also noticed no difference in Performance between running QtGears in my Host and in my Guest.

With 60 FPS, it usually means that you have vSync on in the Host video card configuration. I get more than that with 3D on. And you will see a clear difference with and without 3D in performance, because it's run in software mode if you don't have 3D.

...Windows file protection replaces the files back to original when you install them in normal mode.

My VM is using the following drivers:

• VBoxDisp.dll
  VBoxGuest.sys
  VBoxMouse.sys
  VBoxSF.sys
  VBoxVideo.sys

Are any missing?

That's not the problem. The whole point is the Windows system files. Noting files does not say anything, it's the version that's important. No matter what you list, note or otherwise check, if the GA are installed through normal mode, 3D is not available. Period.

[Etepetete]

...No matter what you list, note or otherwise check, if the GA are installed through normal mode, 3D is not available. Period.

I respect you as a knowledgeable member of this forum and yet I will not accept this as an answer. (Yes, I read in the help file of version 3.0.10 that GA has to be installed in safe mode. The reason I didn't install originally in safe mode is because it wasn't in the PDF manual that I downloaded from the official website as a primer to inform myself before even installing VirtualBox. This was just before the transition from 3.0.6 to 3.0.8.) The following tests are what incline me to kindly ask you for a revision of your answer.

I disabled V-Sync on my host video card as you suggested. Now QtGears is spitting out ca. 1260 FPS in my VM! I did not install GA in safe mode so tell me please what the results of this are telling me. I executed QtGears in yet another windows Guest. There I installed GA in safe mode to see if it makes a difference. I get ca. 1280 FPS.

Other observations:
When running QtGears in both Host and VM at the same time, the host will run at ca. 1170 FPS and in the first VM it slows down to ca.131 FPS. When running QtGears in both Host and the second VM at the same time, the host will run at ca. 1176 FPS and in the VM it slows down to ca. 125 FPS. If I run QtGears in both VMs at the same time, they both return ca. 640-645 FPS. If I add running QtGears in the host to the two VMs, the Host runs at ca. 990 FPS and both VMs run at ca. 159. (In all of these scenarios, there was a fluctuation of output on the host as well as the VMs of up to ca. 40 FPS at random intervals.)

VM1 has 128 MB video RAM allocated, VM2 has 12 MB video RAM allocated. This difference in Video RAM doesn't seem to make much of a difference, if any at all. Host and Guests are all XP SP3 with all current updates installed.

[Entity]

Oh man, how many 3.0.x releases this time.
I hope 3.1 has something cool new for all this waiting

[rleisler]

Along these similar lines, I am running a Windows XP host (SP2) 2.8Ghz P4, 2GB from 2004 vintage and an NVida GeForece4 MX 440 ... old ... ( with VirtualBox 3.0.10 r54097 and have experienced the following with glxgears in a number of Linux guests:

All numbers below are for glxgears over 5 seconds (not FPS)

Kubuntu 9.10 Release XOrg 1.6.4, 3D accel. enabled (this is the desired target VM'ed system)
480 - without VBox Guest Additions
300 - with VBox Guest Additions
630 after disabling the XP host video card acceleration

Mepis 8.0.10 Xorg 1.4.2, 3D accel enabled, no Guest Additions installed
860
Watching the XP processor loading in Task Manager and top in Linux, kded seems to causing a problem. Killed it.
Now 1260

Ok, repeat that last Mepis test, 3D accel enabled installed GA's
660 with kded running
900 after killing kded
800 after disabling the XP host video card acceleration

Comparison to VMWare 6.5.3
Mepis 8.0 3b Bagside precanned version, Xorg 1.4.2 ]
1840
1900 after killing kded (no apparent problems with kded in this distro before killing it), so inproved just a bit
1700 after disabling the XP host video card acceleration

Debian Sarge - in-house version, kernel 2.6.8.2, XFree 4.3.0.1
1540 (have actually seen as much as 2000 on different days/test runs, but 1500+ typical)
1540 after killing kded
1300 after disabling the XP host video card acceleration

The VmWare sessions have very noticably better window dragging. Mepis 8.0 can drag windows as fast as the host with no lag/blur. So the hardware can respond effectively.

What seems to stick out is XOrg 1.4.2 is ok under VMWare and XOrg 1.6.4 is terrible under VBox I guess I need a 1.6.4 test under VMWare to isolate this issue. Additionally the Guest Additions slowed down the tests and disabling the host acceleration improved performance in the first case. Something seems backwards here.

[Sasquatch]

...No matter what you list, note or otherwise check, if the GA are installed through normal mode, 3D is not available. Period.

I respect you as a knowledgeable member of this forum and yet I will not accept this as an answer. (Yes, I read in the help file of version 3.0.10 that GA has to be installed in safe mode. The reason I didn't install originally in safe mode is because it wasn't in the PDF manual that I downloaded from the official website as a primer to inform myself before even installing VirtualBox. This was just before the transition from 3.0.6 to 3.0.8.) The following tests are what incline me to kindly ask you for a revision of your answer.

I disabled V-Sync on my host video card as you suggested. Now QtGears is spitting out ca. 1260 FPS in my VM! I did not install GA in safe mode so tell me please what the results of this are telling me. I executed QtGears in yet another windows Guest. There I installed GA in safe mode to see if it makes a difference. I get ca. 1280 FPS.

Other observations:
When running QtGears in both Host and VM at the same time, the host will run at ca. 1170 FPS and in the first VM it slows down to ca.131 FPS. When running QtGears in both Host and the second VM at the same time, the host will run at ca. 1176 FPS and in the VM it slows down to ca. 125 FPS. If I run QtGears in both VMs at the same time, they both return ca. 640-645 FPS. If I add running QtGears in the host to the two VMs, the Host runs at ca. 990 FPS and both VMs run at ca. 159. (In all of these scenarios, there was a fluctuation of output on the host as well as the VMs of up to ca. 40 FPS at random intervals.)

VM1 has 128 MB video RAM allocated, VM2 has 12 MB video RAM allocated. This difference in Video RAM doesn't seem to make much of a difference, if any at all. Host and Guests are all XP SP3 with all current updates installed.

Maybe you installed them in safe mode once and never updated the GA and you forgot about it. Or you have a modified version of Windows (either a downloaded one or you changed it manually) so the system file protection didn't kick in. Either way, on a normal, default installation it should not work with those performance display. You're just one that got lucky.

Along these similar lines, I am running a Windows XP host (SP2) 2.8Ghz P4, 2GB from 2004 vintage and an NVida GeForece4 MX 440 ... old ... ( with VirtualBox 3.0.10 r54097 and have experienced the following with glxgears in a number of Linux guests:

All numbers below are for glxgears over 5 seconds (not FPS)

Kubuntu 9.10 Release XOrg 1.6.4, 3D accel. enabled (this is the desired target VM'ed system)
480 - without VBox Guest Additions
300 - with VBox Guest Additions
630 after disabling the XP host video card acceleration

Mepis 8.0.10 Xorg 1.4.2, 3D accel enabled, no Guest Additions installed
860
Watching the XP processor loading in Task Manager and top in Linux, kded seems to causing a problem. Killed it.
Now 1260

Ok, repeat that last Mepis test, 3D accel enabled installed GA's
660 with kded running
900 after killing kded
800 after disabling the XP host video card acceleration

Comparison to VMWare 6.5.3
Mepis 8.0 3b Bagside precanned version, Xorg 1.4.2 ]
1840
1900 after killing kded (no apparent problems with kded in this distro before killing it), so inproved just a bit
1700 after disabling the XP host video card acceleration

Debian Sarge - in-house version, kernel 2.6.8.2, XFree 4.3.0.1
1540 (have actually seen as much as 2000 on different days/test runs, but 1500+ typical)
1540 after killing kded
1300 after disabling the XP host video card acceleration

The VmWare sessions have very noticably better window dragging. Mepis 8.0 can drag windows as fast as the host with no lag/blur. So the hardware can respond effectively.

What seems to stick out is XOrg 1.4.2 is ok under VMWare and XOrg 1.6.4 is terrible under VBox I guess I need a 1.6.4 test under VMWare to isolate this issue. Additionally the Guest Additions slowed down the tests and disabling the host acceleration improved performance in the first case. Something seems backwards here.

In the first case, it appears that the Host video hardware is noticeably slower than the CPU, which explains the difference. Hardware mode is done through the GPU, which is slow. Software mode does things through the CPU, which is faster. Something really is different with the different Xorg versions.

[rleisler]

Ok, I made a VM with KUbuntu 9.10 Release, XOrg 1.6.4 and VMWare 6.5.3
660
660 after killing kded
660 after disabling the XP host video card acceleration

So this is certainly quicker than VBox, but shows that XOrg 1.42 is seriously better (so is XFree, but obsolete), so the combination of VBox and XOrg 1.6.4 makes for a very mundane 3D performer unless someone can show me otherwise.

On item I forgot to include in the last post was that I also tried a real time kernel with KUbuntu 9.10/VBox and it made no difference.

[Sasquatch]

Are you sure that the Guest Additions are installed on the guest, and that you have the packages libgl1-mesa-dri and libgl1-mesa-glx installed? Those should provide you with decent 3D performance. Do note that it all depends on the Host too, the driver must support a great deal of OpenGL.

[rleisler]

According to the matrix in the original post, indeed the guest additions are installed. It gets worse with them in.
It is not possible to run glxgears without installing libgl1-mesa-dri and libgl1-mesa-glx with apt-get.
With VMWare, Debian Sarge and XFree, I can get as much as 2000 frames/5 sec, so the hardware is quite capable of it.

The object of the test was to determine where the 3D performance issues exist and hopefully a target performace level for the VirtualBox developers to shoot for. Having isolated a few issues makes for them lets them get off the ground faster. The hardware and the host system are capable. Various Linux distributions are capable. It comes down to 3 items: VirtualBox, VBox Guest Additions and XOrg 1.6.4.

[jacklikevx]

Maybe you installed them in safe mode once and never updated the GA and you forgot about it. Or you have a modified version of Windows (either a downloaded one or you changed it manually) so the system file protection didn't kick in. Either way, on a normal, default installation it should not work with those performance display. You're just one that got lucky.

I can not get same fps of guest as host's.

My XP pro geust was in 500 fps and XP Home Host in 1200 fps. After reinstall GA in save mode, got same result. During installation, there was no "system file overriding" warning from Guest OS.

The guest fps dropped to 110fps by turning off 3D option. So I confirmed the 3D acceleration was working, but the speed only reached half of the host's.

Could be something I missed ?

[SSCBrian]

During installation, there was no "system file overriding" warning from Guest OS.

It might override without giving you a warning.

[Sasquatch]

Maybe you installed them in safe mode once and never updated the GA and you forgot about it. Or you have a modified version of Windows (either a downloaded one or you changed it manually) so the system file protection didn't kick in. Either way, on a normal, default installation it should not work with those performance display. You're just one that got lucky.

I can not get same fps of guest as host's.

My XP pro geust was in 500 fps and XP Home Host in 1200 fps. After reinstall GA in save mode, got same result. During installation, there was no "system file overriding" warning from Guest OS.

The guest fps dropped to 110fps by turning off 3D option. So I confirmed the 3D acceleration was working, but the speed only reached half of the host's.

Could be something I missed ?

Your not missing anything. When I run glxgears on my Host, I get about 5000 FPS, but the Guest gets around 1200 FPS. When I disable 3D, it's down to 300-400 FPS. So, just the virtualization layer that is the performance hit here.

[Graham Norris]

Finally, a release after 2.1.4 which works well enough to live with! See, fixing bugs instead of adding features all the time really does pay off.