Graphics performance on Macbook Pro/Retina

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Mac OS X hosts.
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smithkl42
Posts: 4
Joined: 1. Apr 2009, 05:15
Primary OS: MS Windows Vista
VBox Version: VirtualBox+Oracle ExtPack
Guest OSses: Ubuntu

Graphics performance on Macbook Pro/Retina

Post by smithkl42 »

I'm running a Windows 7 guest on a Macbook Pro with a 15" retina screen. I've got an additional monitor attached, and almost everything is working very well, with great performance. The only exception is graphic intensive applications that are displaying on the Macbook Pro retina display (as opposed to the attached external monitor). Applications of that sort run very, very, very slowly, and almost bring the entire guest OS to a halt. The same applications that run on the external monitor (i.e., I just move their window from the one monitor to the other) run just fine, with no noticeable lag.

Any suggestions as to what's going wrong, or more to the point, what I can do to improve performance?
smithkl42
Posts: 4
Joined: 1. Apr 2009, 05:15
Primary OS: MS Windows Vista
VBox Version: VirtualBox+Oracle ExtPack
Guest OSses: Ubuntu

Re: Graphics performance on Macbook Pro/Retina

Post by smithkl42 »

By the way, it looks as if this is a known bug:

https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/11606

It would be nice if they got it fixed.
Perryg
Site Moderator
Posts: 34369
Joined: 6. Sep 2008, 22:55
Primary OS: Linux other
VBox Version: OSE self-compiled
Guest OSses: *NIX

Re: Graphics performance on Macbook Pro/Retina

Post by Perryg »

As mentioned in the ticket. Retina work is on going. Code contributions are always welcome.
smithkl42
Posts: 4
Joined: 1. Apr 2009, 05:15
Primary OS: MS Windows Vista
VBox Version: VirtualBox+Oracle ExtPack
Guest OSses: Ubuntu

Re: Graphics performance on Macbook Pro/Retina

Post by smithkl42 »

Yeah, unfortunately I'm a pretty weak C/C++ coder, and have precisely zero experience coding on a Mac. I don't think you'd want to let me anywhere near device-level code :-(.
Royce
Posts: 20
Joined: 27. Jun 2013, 09:25

Re: Graphics performance on Macbook Pro/Retina

Post by Royce »

I don't have the exact problem mentioned in the bug report, but when I scroll pages of images (google image search for example), i get a CPU spike from the Virtual Box VM process in OS X. If I watch a video in the VM, OS X almost is unusable and it takes ages before i manage to get out of VBox and kill it. Is this related to the issue?

This is with a Ubuntu Guest.
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