virtualbox.org

I have following problem:

I got a Dell Precision M6600 with a Nvidia Quadro 3000M graphics card. Ubuntu (both 10.10 64-bit as well as 11.04 64-bit) guest on Virtualbox (v4.1 r73009, on Windows 7 64-bit host, with guest additions, 3D acceleration enabled) only works with some minor 3D acceleration of the internal graphics card; concretely, ~1200 fps for glxgears. In comparison:
1) with 3D acceleration disabled in Virtualbox, glxgears has 600 fps in the Ubuntu guest on this machine
2) Ubuntu 10.10 installed as dualboot OS with Nvidia driver (and Optimus deactivated in the Bios to make the driver run) gets ~12000 fps, i.e., 10x more than the onboard 3D graphics under Virtualbox

So far, so fine. These are numbers that are to be expected. The strange thing happens when I (try to) use the Nvidia card for 3D acceleration of the linux-guest. Then the 3D acceleration completely breaks down and glxgears has about 60 fps, i.e., only 1/50 of the performance of the onboard graphics. I tried two different ways to use the Nvidia card, both with the same effect of 3D "acceleration" becoming tremendously slow, i.e., 60 fps glxgears:

3) use the Nvidia control panel to generate a profile for Virtualbox to ensure that the Nvidia card is used for this program: Nvidia control panel -> Manage 3D settings -> Program settings -> 1. Select a program to customize: "Virtualbox.exe", 2. Select the preferred graphics processor for this program: "High performance NVIDIA processor"

4) switch off Optimus in the BIOS, i.e., ensure that the Nvidia card is the one and only graphics used on the machine under Win 7

Both methods to force Virtualbox to use the Nvidia card are obviously mutually exclusive and have been tried seperately. As mentioned, they both lead to poor 3D performance. My suspicion is hence that virtualbox/guest-additions 4.1 do not support the Nvidia Quadro 3000M graphics card.

Any ideas or comments (maybe other experiences with this/similar cards or different Linux distributions as guest)?

I had a similar problem and figured out the solution, so posting a reply to this old thread for anyone else that arrives looking for answers.
It seems that you've got vsync turned on in the host, which caps the FPS to the refresh rate of the screen i.e. 60 FPS. In this particular case, the 'low' FPS ironically means you're actually using the host GPU (the high FPS you get with acceleration disabled is produced because you're using the software renderer on a fast CPU).
Disabling vsync in the host solved it for me. In this case, an nvidia card, just go to nvidia-settings X Screen 0 / OpenGL Settings / Sync to VBlank. Try glxgears on the guest and you should be seeing the expected high FPS.