Video performance of Windows 7 guest very poor

[gupta58]

I just installed VirtualBox 4.2.4 on MacBook Pro Retina display with i& Quad core, 16GB RAM and Intel 4000 graphics. Installed Windows 7 64-bit as guest and guest additions. The video performance is very poor, dragging windows on desktop is so sluggish. I ran performance assessment and Windows Experience Index (WEI) for Graphics and Gaming Graphics are worst possible 1.0 while CPU, Memory and Disk scores are near maximum (7.0 to 7.. Device Manager tells the display adapter is VirtualBoxGraphics Adapter with Oracle driver 4.2.1.0 of 9/21/2012. VM settings: 2 CPUs, 4 GB memory, 256 MB Video RAM, 2D/3D video acceleration enabled.

For comparison, I installed VMware Fusion 5 and all WEI scores are near-max, Graphics scores are 6.0 - not near-max but much better than 1.0.

I can't believe VB video performance is so bad, I must be missing something

Thanks for help,
Vinod

[stefan.becker]

Three problems:

Old VBOX Version, poor host graphic, VM.

Forget VMs for gaming. Better use boot camp for better graphic.

[gupta58]

Three problems:

Old VBOX Version, poor host graphic, VM.

Forget VMs for gaming. Better use boot camp for better graphic.

Disagree.
My VB version 4.2.4 is the latest as per VirtualBox.org.
The host MacBookPro Retina Display has the best graphics I have seen so far.
I am not talking of VM for games. WEI of 1.0 is the worst score you can get and I can feel even for simple windows moving around on the desktop. VMware scores 6.0 on the same I don't believe VBox is that bad. I must be doing something wrong. Help me, if you can.

[loukingjr]

you could try using only one cpu.

[gupta58]

you could try using only one cpu.

I did not expect this to make any difference and it didn't.

[loukingjr]

you could try using only one cpu.

I did not expect this to make any difference and it didn't.

you might have to install it with only one cpu.

[loukingjr]

I just ran the WEI tests on Windows 8 and I get 5.9 for graphics and 3.0 for gaming graphics. This is on a 2011 iMac with a Sandy Bridge cpu. I have no issue moving windows. If I remember correctly, on a 2007 iMac with an Intel dual core I had a graphics index of 4.6 with Windows 7.

[gupta58]

Well, I just reinstalled from scratch:
Closed all programs.
Removed previous installation from Applications.
Rebooted Mac
Downloaded http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualb ... 84-OSX.dmg
Created new VM with all the default settings. Installed Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit with SP1 using genuine DVD provided by our University.
Installed Guest Additions from within Windows 7 guest OS.
Rebooted guest OS
Ran Windows Experience Index and still got the minimum possible score of 1.0 for Graphics.

I do not see any possibility of doing anything stupid in above steps which are as basic and simple as one can imagine.
I have installed VMware Fusion 5 on and Windows 7 on the same Mac and get near-max WEI scores.
I think developers need to take a note of the feedback from users who are trying to migrate from VMware to VirtualBox.

[loukingjr]

Well, I just reinstalled from scratch:
Closed all programs.
Removed previous installation from Applications.
Rebooted Mac
Downloaded http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualb ... 84-OSX.dmg
Created new VM with all the default settings. Installed Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit with SP1 using genuine DVD provided by our University.
Installed Guest Additions from within Windows 7 guest OS.
Rebooted guest OS
Ran Windows Experience Index and still got the minimum possible score of 1.0 for Graphics.

I do not see any possibility of doing anything stupid in above steps which are as basic and simple as one can imagine.
I have installed VMware Fusion 5 on and Windows 7 on the same Mac and get near-max WEI scores.
I think developers need to take a note of the feedback from users who are trying to migrate from VMware to VirtualBox.

As a guess I'm thinking VB does not like the Intel Graphics Chip. I'm sure it will get resolved one day.

[Perryg]

Question: When you installed the guest additions did you select 3D and install the wddm drivers? Read carefully as the first question is about installing the basic 3D and not what you want.

[gupta58]

Question: When you installed the guest additions did you select 3D and install the wddm drivers? Read carefully as the first question is about installing the basic 3D and not what you want.

No, I had chosen all defaults.

I just uninstalled Guest Additions, rebooted guest OS in safe mode, installed Guest Additions with 3D box checked. I still see sluggishness even in simple windows movements on the desktop, but now, when I run Windows Experience Index assessment, it crashes the Windows 7 guest OS!!

[Perryg]

I said nothing about safe mode and even pointed out that you did not want the basic 3D drivers. You should say no and the option to install the wddm drivers is then active. Read carefully as the first question is about installing the basic 3D and not what you want.

I would boot in safe mode and remove the guest settings and then boot into normal mode and install them again with the wddm drivers

[gupta58]

I had to boot into safe mode because when I tried to install Guest Additions with 3D box checked, it failed to install giving the error "Windows is currently not running in safe mode so Direct3D support cannot be installed."

Can you explain what you mean by "the first question is about installing the basic 3D and not what you want."

[Guppie1970]

I can fully acknowledge to this problem.

I have switched from Windows as my primary OS to OSX. I used to boot primarily in Windows7 X64 on my Macbook PRO 17" (mid 2010 model) using Bootcamp.
Performance of my Win2003 guest in Windows7 was excellent. On OSX it is extremely poor. Dragging windows in the virtual machine is very very slow and seems to lag behind. Almost similar to running the VM in "seamless" mode - which I always prevent because of the slow windows performance. Not only video performance seems slow - also disk access has deteriorated to an "almost unacceptable" level.
In my case, nothing changed except for the host OS.
Have searched hours on the internet trying to find a solution of this issue, but found nothing concrete.
It is good to hear I am not the only one suffering from this issue.

Below info on my hardware:
Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro6,1
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 8 GB
Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s
Boot ROM Version: MBP61.0057.B0F

And on OSX:
System Version: OS X 10.8.2 (12C60)
Kernel Version: Darwin 12.2.0

I have been a happy Virtual Box user for years and do not want to give it up....

Anybody any tips???

[rjr12]

VirtualBox is great, but it could benefit from enhanced video support. I have compared VirtualBox 4.2.12 with Parallels Desktop 8.0 using a Mac host (2010 Mac mini core2duo 8 GB RAM) and linux (Linux Mint 13 64-bit) and Windows 7 (64-bit) guests. I allotted 2 GB RAM to the guest machines and maxed out the video settings on each VM. Note that Parallels enables 1 GB VRAM and DirectX 10 VBsupport, whereas VB can only allot 256 MB VRAM for Windows and 128 MB VRAM for linux.

For the Windows VMs, the Windows Experience Index was 1.0 for VirtualBox and 4.5 for Parallels; the low WEI score for VB was due to poor graphics performance. In addition, my "acid test" for graphics performance is to see if a VM can open and run YASARA, which is a graphics-intensive molecular modeling program. With VirtualBox (both linux and Windows guests), YASARA would not even open; it indicated that an essential extension, "GL_BRGA" was lacking. In constrast, the Parallels VM was able to open and run YASARA acceptably well, in both linux and Windows guests.

Despite the relatively poor graphics performance of Windows and Linux VMs in VirtualBox, I still use it for routine applications on Mac, Windows, and Linux hosts. However, I would very much welcome enhanced graphics support in VirtualBox, which would enable me to run graphics-intensive applications in VMs as well.