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virtualbox - Performance considerations for a Windows 7 guest on a Ubuntu Natty x64 host: bitness (32-bit vs. 64-bit), guest settings and file access


I want to setup a virtual machine running Windows 7, for compilation and development of a native C++ application using Visual Studio. I have 8 GB RAM on the host with an Intel T9600 Dual-Core CPU, running Ubuntu Natty x64. I wish I had a more recent i7, but I don't -- so I need to get the best out of my hardware.


The main bottleneck is the compilation of my C++ application. I am switching from a real Windows 7 installation, the compilation just got slower by about an order of magnitude.


1) Would it improve the compilation times if I used a 64-bit Windows as guest -- at the obvious expense of increased RAM usage? Can anyone point me to a performance evaluation?


2) Are there any settings in the guest that can affect CPU performance?


3) What is faster -- local disk I/O in the guest or networked to the host via Samba?


These three questions are related, but don't answer my question.



Answer




  1. Simply installing a 64-bit W7 will not use more RAM. Also if your app is 32-bits, installing a 64-bit OS would require you to be confident with cross-compiling.

  2. You should definitely assign both cores to the VM if you haven't done so. Also activating the CPU virtualization options, as well as nested pagination should yield better results. Activating 2D/3D video acceleration, too.

  3. Local disk I/O obviously, you don't need to go through networking stacks/layers


What will really improve your VM performance is disabling any useless processes on the guest OS (like Aero for example) and assigning the VM more RAM (which will make the host slower).


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