Slow Win10 guest performance on Win10 host - XPS 15 9570

[Morse]

Hello everyone!

First time posting to this forum so please be gentle if I don't explain myself correctly

I've been trying to make a Win10 guest for a while now, but the graphics performance is really slow. By this I mean sluggish response times to clicking the start menu, opening windows etc. It's as if the animation speed is reduced and the result is a choppy and nauseating experience. The performance of the VM seems fine when using applications like notepad to test for input lag, keyboard and mouse movement is fine it's only when objects are moving on the screen that I find the system unresponsive. The laptop itself has good specs so I find it confusing that resources would be an issue.

I have tried almost everything I can find, reducing/increasing RAM, reducing/increasing CPU count, enabling disabling 2D and 3D acceleration, installing GAs in safe mode and not in safe mode, changed graphics controllers, enables/disabled I/O caching etc. I run the VM in windowed mode at lowest resolution possible but the issue persists. I have let it update fully so the disk usage is reduced and yet no fix. What makes it worse is that Ubuntu and Win7 work flawlessly, just Win10 that I'm having issues with.

If anyone could check my log file for something obvious that I have missed or any suggestions that would be great!

Thanks a lot guys I appreciate any advice that's given to me

[scottgus1]

Everything seems configured correctly, 2 guest cores out of 6 host cores, 2018 host CPU (up to 4.10GHz, sweet!), memory within host available amounts (though the host has 11GB available, guest is 2GB, you could let the guest have a couple more GB), VboxSVGA video card, 3D acceleration on, 128MB video memory, matching Guest Additions installed. Everything looks good, nothing egregiously out of place.

Only thing I could suggest is turning off transparency effects in the guest OS. This is supposed to help with 3D rendering issues in Windows 10 guests, might help your issue.

[Morse]

Thank you for the reply!

I increased the memory to 4gb and allocated 4 cores to it, no luck.

Only thing I could suggest is turning off transparency effects in the guest OS.

I turned off transparency effects and while it is running smoother, the issue still persists. Opening and navigating the start menu or windows is still unresponsive and stuttering, almost as if it is dropping frames.

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

[Derailed Dash]

I've got exactly the same issue. Windows 10 guest on a Windows 10 host. I've given it 2 of my 8 cores, 5GB of RAM. 256MB to the graphics adapter, using VBoxSVGA. I found the redraw intolerably slow. I was only able to fix it by turning off the 3D Acceleration in the guest.

[scottgus1]

I was only able to fix it by turning off the 3D Acceleration in the guest.

This is interesting. 3D acceleration ties into the host video. Maybe a host driver update?

[beniamin.chojak]

Hello everyone!

First time posting to this forum so please be gentle if I don't explain myself correctly

I've been trying to make a Win10 guest for a while now, but the graphics performance is really slow. By this I mean sluggish response times to clicking the start menu, opening windows etc. It's as if the animation speed is reduced and the result is a choppy and nauseating experience. The performance of the VM seems fine when using applications like notepad to test for input lag, keyboard and mouse movement is fine it's only when objects are moving on the screen that I find the system unresponsive. The laptop itself has good specs so I find it confusing that resources would be an issue.

I have tried almost everything I can find, reducing/increasing RAM, reducing/increasing CPU count, enabling disabling 2D and 3D acceleration, installing GAs in safe mode and not in safe mode, changed graphics controllers, enables/disabled I/O caching etc. I run the VM in windowed mode at lowest resolution possible but the issue persists. I have let it update fully so the disk usage is reduced and yet no fix. What makes it worse is that Ubuntu and Win7 work flawlessly, just Win10 that I'm having issues with.

If anyone could check my log file for something obvious that I have missed or any suggestions that would be great!

Thanks a lot guys I appreciate any advice that's given to me

Hello !

Seemingly I got the same problem as you. I am running A Windows 10 Pro as guest and Mx Linux 19.2 / Debian 10 as host on an Intel Core i3 3220 CPU, I have Hyper Threading permanently enabled in the physical machine BIOS as well, 8 GB of DDR3 ram.

Just as you did I tried everything with no success, until I forced virtualbox to use Hyper V as paravirtualisation interface for the guest (Windows supports Hyper V and automatically recognises this interface), and set 2 CPUs in the settings instead of one.

I think the issue here was that since Hyper Threading is a way of emulating a second processor to process more threads simultaneously, for some reason virtual box hypervisor does not sort this by itself (physically I have only one processor). Maybe I am wrong, but neverthless the vm is running now close to a bare metal performance. No graphics errors whatsoever, windows interface drawing is smooth, no problems similiar to those experienced previously.

Oh, and I tried to enable back 3D acceleration and it is running reasonably smooth, though windows interface transparency engine is not working properly making the system unusable overall. With 3D acceleration disabled everything runs perfectly smooth and fine, perfectly usable. Please let me know if this solved the issue for you as well.

[fth0]

FWIW, if System > Acceleration > Paravirtualization Interface is set to Default, VirtualBox automatically chooses the paravirtualization interface depending on the guest OS version (General > Basic > Version) configured. What settings did you use?

[tigerlun]

Hello !

Seemingly I got the same problem as you. I am running A Windows 10 Pro as guest and Mx Linux 19.2 / Debian 10 as host on an Intel Core i3 3220 CPU, I have Hyper Threading permanently enabled in the physical machine BIOS as well, 8 GB of DDR3 ram.

Just as you did I tried everything with no success, until I forced virtualbox to use Hyper V as paravirtualisation interface for the guest (Windows supports Hyper V and automatically recognises this interface), and set 2 CPUs in the settings instead of one.

I think the issue here was that since Hyper Threading is a way of emulating a second processor to process more threads simultaneously, for some reason virtual box hypervisor does not sort this by itself (physically I have only one processor). Maybe I am wrong, but neverthless the vm is running now close to a bare metal performance. No graphics errors whatsoever, windows interface drawing is smooth, no problems similiar to those experienced previously.

Oh, and I tried to enable back 3D acceleration and it is running reasonably smooth, though windows interface transparency engine is not working properly making the system unusable overall. With 3D acceleration disabled everything runs perfectly smooth and fine, perfectly usable. Please let me know if this solved the issue for you as well.

I can confirm that manually set Hyper-V as paravirtualization interface give me performance boost of rendering.
Linux Host with VB 6.1.12 and Win10 Guest with 3D acceleration enabled.

Thanks.