Hi Jon, Jon Jermey said: > I'm currently running Windows XP for work in VirtualBox under Mint, and > it is usable but sluggish. I'm in the market for a new PC and one of the > options is to get one with hardware-assisted virtualization. Can anyone > comment from personal experience on whether this will make a) a > spectacular difference; b) a moderate difference; c) no difference at > all to the speed of virtualized XP?
From personal experience, I can say that cannot notice any (perceptible) performance difference whatsoever in VirtualBox whether hardware virtualisation is turned on or off. None at all. That said, VirtualBox is the fastest virtualisation software I have ever used (whether hardware or software). Windows VMs running atop Ubuntu on my Eee 901 (1.6 GHz Intel Atom, 1 GB RAM) are snappy and responsive. I actually remember reading an article in the VirtualBox manual on the subject: <http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch10.html#hwvirt> Contains a lot of great reading material. One thing the manual points out is that you’ll be able to benefit from being able to do emulate 64-bit VMs if you have hardware virtualisation support. > Are there different types or levels > of hardware virtualization available off the shelf, or it is > one-size-fits-all? Well there’s Intel VT-x and there’s AMD-V, which are the duopoly’s equivalents. Both are supported by VirtualBox, VMware, KVM, etc. Personally, I think that if you buy a new PC with hardware virtualisation, the performance benefit you will see will be coming from the faster hardware more than the VT-x/AMD-V support. Just my AU$0.05. Jeremy.
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