virtualbox.org

Hi.
I'm using my VM to play online poker and the guest CPU is always 100%.
When I run the same program of poker on the host CPU never reaches 40%.
Is it normal to happen? How I can improve the performance of the guest CPU?

(My problem is not consumption of RAM, but guest CPU consumption)

OS Host: Vista / Host RAM: 2 Gb
OS Guest: XP-SP3 / RAM: 512 Mb

Thank you.

Can somebody help me with this, Please?

Well more RAM will help even if you don't think it will. Vista and 2 GB of RAM are pretty much what it needs. Taking 512 MB away from it is asking for problems. (yes I have used Vista) Other than that you need to look at what the game site requirements are. I have no idea so this will be up to you to find out. The guest XP-SP3 with only 512 MB ram may not be enough depending on the requirements off the game and what is actually going on in the VM. Swapping sounds like you main problem though. Usually I suggest that this kind of game be run in the host because will that is the way they were designed.

You don't mention how many Cores are in your host computer and in your Guest VM.
If the host has 2 cores (or has 1 which is hyperthreaded, simulating 2) and the guest has only 1 core, then a program which uses 50% of the host will use 100% of the guest.

XP does need more than 512MB. 1GB should be OK, depending on the programs you run.

I had a similar problem. Constant CPU load of 33 to 99% with no applications running in the Virtual Machine or the Host.

I played with the System settings. My problem went away when I increased the Video RAM to 64MB. I think the default video RAM is probably inadequate and should probably be increased.

I'm running VBox 3.2.8 on Windows 7/64 Professional (DELL pre-installed) host with 8GB RAM i7 CPU.
The guest with the problem was Windows 7/32 Enterprise.

I've been using VBox for 6 months; and this was the first problem for me. For me, the problem was this simple video RAM setting. I've seen other forums describe other settings as affecting the CPU utilization issue; so try various settings changes - and you'll probably get it working better.

Good Luck!

Keep in mind that if something uses about 40% on the Host, it can very well use 100% on the Guest due to virtualisation overhead, and having only one core as noted above. I'm also guessing that the game uses flash and that can be quite CPU intensive.