virtualbox.org

Hi.

First, just let me say VBox is a great blessing

I have:
MBP (2009).
OS X 10.6.4
2.53 GHz
4 GB memory

Wanting to run Windows 7x64. The function and purpose is to run some library software, and use Mac other things: web browsing, word processing, drawing, iTune, blah blah.

Just installed Win 7 few hours ago. Notice significant slowing down on the Mac side of things, even the scrolling of the web pages are clunky, while not doing much anything in the VBox.

Questions:

1. how much base memory do I give to VBox will be a good idea?
2. do I need extra RAM?
2a. say if I have 8GB memory, then how much do I give to VBox, again, will be a good idea?

Thank you very much for your help.

I have a brand new Dell laptop at work with 4 GB of RAM and running Windows 7 with 1 GB of RAM is going fine. No slowness on the Host whatsoever. I do have VT-x enabled and set for the VM. My PC with 3 GB RAM, being 4+ years old, doesn't have special CPU features like the Dell but that too shows no slowness when a W7 VM is running, with 768 MB of RAM for it.
If things slow down for you, I would check what is going on on the host. CPU usage, memory usage, disk usage, they all add up to performance hits. When W7 is idle, it will start indexing which is quite hard on the hard drive. This will subside once it's done and you should have your speed back.

For some strange reason, when I change to 1024MB base memory, it works beautifully.