Poor performance in VirtualBox when Intel-VT active

[mgol]

I have Dell Latitude E6500 with P8600 CPU. When I run my Windows XP guest on VirtualBox OSE without virtualization VT-x option inactive it runs much faster than in the case I turn it on. It is really visible - with VT-x on I even see how screen flickers during the boot process.

I did Peacekeeper tests in Firefox and I got these results:
1) VT-x off, 3D support off - 1596
2) VT-x off, 3D support on - 1679
3) VT-x on, 3D support off - 900
4) VT-x on, 3D support on - 1314

Google Chrome behaves even more strange - with VT-x off it runs faster than Firefox while with VT-x on it runs *VERY* slow but looses no frames in graphic tests and it finally gets sth like 8800 points.

What could be wrong with my settings? I bought this machine to gain with using VT-x, not to decrease performace this way. ;/

I use 64-bit Karmic.

EDIT: I filed a bug report:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/455112

[kaboyish]

I have Dell Latitude E6500 with P8600 CPU. When I run my Windows XP guest on VirtualBox OSE without virtualization VT-x option inactive it runs much faster than in the case I turn it on. It is really visible - with VT-x on I even see how screen flickers during the boot process.

I did Peacekeeper tests in Firefox and I got these results:
1) VT-x off, 3D support off - 1596
2) VT-x off, 3D support on - 1679
3) VT-x on, 3D support off - 900
4) VT-x on, 3D support on - 1314

Google Chrome behaves even more strange - with VT-x off it runs faster than Firefox while with VT-x on it runs *VERY* slow but looses no frames in graphic tests and it finally gets sth like 8800 points.

What could be wrong with my settings? I bought this machine to gain with using VT-x, not to decrease performace this way. ;/

I use 64-bit Karmic.

EDIT: I filed a bug report:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/455112

my problems are quite similar to yours. and to make matters even worse, the sound sounds like an old record player skipping!! lets hope that someone will come to our rescue

[mgol]

my problems are quite similar to yours. and to make matters even worse, the sound sounds like an old record player skipping!! lets hope that someone will come to our rescue

For me sound is so bad not only when VT-x is enabled... Do You share my experiences? I filed a bug report about this:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...se/+bug/451688
You can subscribe and/or comment if You have a Launchpad account.

[bodhi.zazen]

Just a reminder, Karmic is still in Beta

[mgol]

Just a reminder, Karmic is still in Beta

Yeah, I know, but in 2 days it will go RC, so it's getting hotter and hotter now.

[mgol]

and to make matters even worse, the sound sounds like an old record player skipping!!

As for the sound issue (which is different from this one), see:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...688/comments/2

It seems very common, at least recently. A lot of apps have sound problems because they default to alsa instead of pulse...

[garba]

same here, running windows 7 on a karmic host, performance is horrible

[Fale]

I can confirm that I have same problem. Karmic 64-bit is host on my laptop and I run Windows XP 32bit as a guest on VirtualBoX 3.0.8.

Performance is S L O W with Intel-VT activated. Didn't had problems with 9.04.

[mgol]

Performance is S L O W with Intel-VT activated. Didn't had problems with 9.04.

Oh, that is interesting. Could You comment about that on the bug I mentioned at the beginning?

[Fale]

Oh, that is interesting. Could You comment about that on the bug I mentioned at the beginning?

I have not enough knowledge to comment that one... but clearly seems that many has performance issues when running VirtualBox under Karmic with Intel-VT enabled.