VirtualBox 6.0 3D/OpenGL Performance With VMSVGA Adapter

[phoronix]

Phoronix: VirtualBox 6.0 3D/OpenGL Performance With VMSVGA Adapter

With yesterday's release of Oracle VM VirtualBox 6.0, one of the most pressing changes for Linux guests is the use of the new VMSVGA 3D graphics device emulation by default. VMSVGA is the SVGA II graphics adapter from virtualization competitor VMware, but allows for the mature SVGA Linux graphics driver stack to be used. Here are some benchmarks looking at the OpenGL performance on VirtualBox 6.0.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=27277

[TumultuousUnicorn]

Coming up next will be reference results compared to VirtIO+KVM VirGL renderer performance to see if it offers any better VM graphics performance than VirtualBox 6.0 with VMSVGA.

Yes please, I am looking forward.

[str8edgedave]

I haven't tried this under VirtualBox 6.0 yet, but VirtualBox 5.x supports up to 256MB of vRAM per VM. It has to be enabled via the command line:

 
 $ VBoxManage modifyvm "Name of VM" --vram 256

[TemplarGR]

Very useful benchmark. Would be interesting to benchmark also a Windows guest. Sadly 3d performance is really bad in Virtualbox, hope they improve it in the future.

[schmidtbag]

Very useful benchmark. Would be interesting to benchmark also a Windows guest. Sadly 3d performance is really bad in Virtualbox, hope they improve it in the future.

They don't really have the resources to make it better. At this rate, they're better off just doing GPU passthrough or implementing something like VirtualGL.

[darkbasic]

VirGL will be way faster than this, the only problem for me is that it doesn't work over remote spice.

[ssokolow]

Additionally, the SVGA graphics performance itself from VMware virtualization products couldn't be compared due to VMware EULA restrictions around public benchmarking.

General rule: When someone forbids publishing an empirical analysis of their product or position, assume it's because they know it won't show them in a good light.

[Xaero_Vincent]

Michael, Does VMSVGA expose Direct3D 10.x on Windows guests like VMware Player? Also now that Virtualbox is using VMware's vGPU tech, does Wayland guests now work like they do in VMware?

VirGL should be interesting as I believe that is what Google plans to use for their Crostini VM in ChromeOS.

I'm in favor of Intel's shared passthrough technology. It makes so the guest can use the native graphics driver and resources can be shared between the host and guest in time slices, without needing two graphics card.

[andre30correia]

Michael, Does VMSVGA expose Direct3D 10.x on Windows guests like VMware Player? Also now that Virtualbox is using VMware's vGPU tech, does Wayland guests now work like they do in VMware?

VirGL should be interesting as I believe that is what Google plans to use for their Crostini VM in ChromeOS.

I'm in favor of Intel's shared passthrough technology. It makes so the guest can use the native graphics driver and resources can be shared between the host and guest in time slices, without needing two graphics card.

no, only 9.0c, if you need 3d windows vmware is much better

[Xaero_Vincent]

no, only 9.0c, if you need 3d windows vmware is much better

So VirtualBox 6 is using VMware's vGPU driver but still doesn't offer the capabilities of that driver? Maybe they are using a really old version of the driver?