virtualbox.org

I'm trying to run old 16-bit applications/DOS on the machine and everything runs really slow. For instance I tried Doom 2 as a test which shouldn't require Direct 3D or anything, and it runs really slow, plus the audio stutters a lot (I think that's the word) also I don't want to switch to Win98. Besides I encountered the same problem with that as well.

I tried different ram allocations (1-2-4 Gb) still same thing, Direct 3D and 2D are enabled and I installed guest additions on safe mode.

I'm also running on a laptop it's not top of the line or anything but I would think it shouldn't have problems running simple things like that. It's a dell inspiron 3542 Intel Core i5-4210u 8Gb-DDR3 and an nvidia 820m.

Host machine is running Win 7 64-bit.

Guest Win XP Home SP1 32-bit.

Here's the log file

Could be a couple of things:

First, New XP installs always run slow. Graphics apps are definitely going to run slow, but it may help if you changed the graphics chipset back to VBoxVGA.

Oh, and I'd reduce the VM RAM to 1GB, which is way more than enough for XP-32bit.

I tried both VBoxVGA and VBoxSVGA and it's the same problem.

frenn wrote:I'm trying to run old 16-bit applications/DOS on the machine and everything runs really slow. For instance I tried Doom 2 as a test

Games are not good "data points". A game was expecting access to the full-blown-hardware assets, it was taking over the computer! Just ask the folks that had to port Doom II to other, multi-tasking OSes, what they had to go through to make sure that the multi-tasking, shared resources setup was actually working.

Programs like these tend to push the physical hardware to their limit hence the strict requirements for the graphics card (GPU) specifications. Virtual machines will never be as powerful as the host, especially on the video side. They use after all a virtual graphics card, not your host's real graphics card. The virtual GPU itself is from around 1995-2000 in terms of capabilities. Applications that have high requirements on the GPU (drawing, 3D, games, video) are expected to not work as good as on the real hardware, if they work at all.

You only option is to pretty much wait for improved graphics support. I have no clue when this will happen, or if it will happen at all.

The new option for the VBoxSVGA in the graphics controller is supposed to be the new and improved graphics support that became a reality with 6.0.0. But, since it's the very first "run" of that option, I expect it to be buggy at the beginning. I guesstimate that by 6.1.0 both the performance and the quality will have improved dramatically.

Games are not good "data points".

Well I thought doom 2 was a good test since it uses software rendering meaning it would rely on the CPU, and the one I have supports virtualization.
I'm not knowledgeable enough about these sorts things, so thanks for the help I'll just have to wait for the next updates.

frenn wrote:I'll just have to wait for the next updates.

I wouldn't hold my breath... gaming is not really a priority. If you're looking for 16-bit gaming, DOS gaming, I would look to something like DOSBox if I were you...