Performance settings - less possible virtualization overhead

[bernroth]

Hello all!

I'm using VB since quite a while now and from time to time I am creating new VM images running on my Workstation.
Up to now I was not able to find complete informations about the performance impact of the available hardware options.
I am wondering which options can be used to achieve best overall VM performance (apart from options required to make the guest run correctly with the features required)
This should be independet from the Host OS used.

For the network it's quite clear: Paravirtualized Network adapter will deliver best performance with fewest virtualization overhead.

Storage: There is not yet a paravirtualized storage adapter. IDE has a lot of virtualization overhead so now I wonder wether SATA or SAS is better.
This concerns not only virtualization overhead in VB, but the drivers of the guest, too.
Example: SATA/AHCI Driver for Windows XP from Intel or LSI MPT SAS Driver from LSI.

Chipset: PIIX3 or ICH9 ?
I noticed new features like Suspend/Resume does work when using ICH9. But which of the chipset options has less overhead?

Sound: Well, this is less important but I'm interested if AC97, SB16 or Intel HD have less possible overhead, not to forget the OS drivers.

IO APIC: AFAIK it's better to have it disabled for Windows XP but it's required for Windows 7

Have I forgot anything?

Best regards,

Bernhard

[kidault]

There have been a lot of debates over the best network driver.

http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35864
http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=34895

And to my opinion, we have not come to a final conclusion.