VirtualBox 4.0 OpenGL Gaming Performance

[phoronix]

Phoronix: VirtualBox 4.0 OpenGL Gaming Performance

Put out earlier this morning on Phoronix were Linux virtualization benchmarks comparing the native performance of a high-end Intel Core i7 system to that of the de facto standard Linux KVM virtualization method as well as Oracle VM VirtualBox 3.2.12 and Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0 Beta 2. These tests focused largely upon the disk and CPU performance within Ubuntu Linux virtual machines, since that's often where enterprise users are most concerned with virtualization performance. For desktop users, there's also the matter of 2D/3D acceleration support within virtual machines...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=ODkwNA

[quintesse]

Seems hardly usable. The moment I can reliably play Counter Strike in a VM or in Wine at good frame rates I'll finally be able to confine my Windows usage to 1% a year

And how ablut a comparison between VBox and VMWare with 3D acceleration? Or is VMWare's solution Gallium only? (Which woul make the comparison a bit unfair as long as the open drivers are so far behind the closed ones)

[.CME.]

those number looks strange, atleast 1 year ago the performance was quite good in a xp guest: http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtop...112862#p112862 yeah, fear2 demo was running with 20-30fps in GTA3 i get constant 75 fps (vsync)

@quintesse: vmware currently uses mesa and gallium3d for opengl in windows and linux guests (opengl->g3d->opengl on host), d3d doesn't go through g3d iirc

[leonid]

Quite simple reason, beta2 has an installer bug, so those tests are actually testing software rendering and not VirtualBox 3d acceleration.

Just check glxinfo before running and that's it.

PS. With a working acceleration openarena shows 300+ fps at max settings @1280x1024.

[baryluk]

Somehow disappointing that it is more than 10 times slower. I was expating at most 3 times slower performance.


But good it works at all without any bigger errors.

For simpler games it looks it should be playable.

How about testing also something much more complex, which will be also slower on native machine. (who needs 300 fps ?)

[allquixotic]

VMware Workstation 7.1 is definitely much faster than VBox at virtualized 3d accel, regardless of the guest OS. Need a comparison between the two to show just how much!

[Michael]

Quite simple reason, beta2 has an installer bug, so those tests are actually testing software rendering and not VirtualBox 3d acceleration.

Just check glxinfo before running and that's it.

It was reporting the correct driver. Mesa's software rasterizer would never run that fast any ways.

[evolution]

Strange those results... Maybe:
1- the nVidia blob doesn't like VBox 3D guest acceleration very much?
2- Oracle is already messing up VBox that much? =S

Although I'm not using neither VBox 4 beta (Using VBox 3.2.12) or nVidia's proprietary blob (I'm using Catalyst 10.7), I'm getting very fast FPS in OpenArena (Between 70/90 FPS) and I even can play UT GOTY / Nexuiz games with very acceptable frame rates (significantly above the "30 FPS" limit).
Those results are achievable in a WinXP VM I've installed (With 32Mb of 3D memory) + Arch x86_64 host + Radeon HD2600...

Cheers

[deanjo]

I want to see Linux Host ---> Linux Guest running wine gaming benches. :P