Guests Performance

[Alojz]

Hi. I'm wondering what's your typical performance of Win XP as a guest os. If i run just one machine and lef it idle, then everything is fine - 1-3% of processor usage on my host. But when i for example open "my computer" and will move this window around the screen my host CPU usage spikes to 40-50%. Is it normal for Virtualbox with my CPU? I thought that moving a window around shouldn't use so much CPU power.

My specs:
Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ 2Ghz
4GB ram
SSD OCZ Agility 3
Geforce 7600GS
Win 7 64 bit edition

Guest os:
Win XP SP3 32 bit

Guest os settings:
1gb ram
IO Apic OFF
1 CPU
execution cap 100%
PAE/NX off
vt-x amd-v off
video 32mb
acceleration 2d and 3d ON

I'm able to run max 2 VM's with my CPU. It's 20 times slower than i7 2600. So if i will get i7 2600 and use vt-x with it...will i be able to run 20 VM's without any slow downs?
I need as many VM's as i can so i can run there firefox with autohotkey running and moving mouse, writing and checking Imagesearch all the time.

[vbox4me2]

Try IO Apic ON, if that works better your using the wrong HAL inside the Guest.

[Alojz]

When changed IO APIC on it was working a bit faster but no huge change in CPU usage...still ca.50%.
So you want to tell me that it's higher than normal?
I've tried installing fresh Win XP as a guest with IO APIC turned on by default. It was the same. Will it help if i will use Linux on my host? Or win98 as my guest?

I've installed win98 as a quest a moment ago. I have constant 50-51% of cpu on idle.
I've also tried Puppy Linux as a guest...the same 50-52% but at least 2% when idle.
how do i change HAL on guest? I've found something on:
viewtopic.php?t=8669
on question "Q: I got my dual boot Windows XP running in VirtualBox using RAW Disk access, but I keep getting one core fully loaded. How do I solve this?" i see as a answer something being done with HAL. Is it what i'm looking for?