new box

[Preston Hagar]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 12:48 PM, Verde Denim <tdldev at gmail.com> wrote:
> All
> Just built a new machine...
> AMD quad-core X64 Phenom 2 on a GIGABYTE mobo with an NVIDIA XFX GTS 1GB
> DDR3 graphics card
> flying 16GB of Corsair 1600 DDR RAM.
> (originally a game box for my son but he bought an alien so it's mine)
>
> It seems most of the components will run with Ubuntu, but the dilemma is
> this -
> I want to run Ubuntu as a primary with Win as a virtualbox within it. I've
> had some scary slow performance problems in the past
> running mickysoft in virtual under Ubuntu.
>
> Have others here on the list got an opinion strongly in 1 direction or the
> other (win w/ubuntu as virtual vs ubuntu w/win as virtual?)
> my school uses win, as well as a few things at work, but I try and do
> everything I can under linux as of a few years ago, and, aside
> from the occasional gameplay, I don't miss the dumbed down OS environment at
> all.
>
> Any input is welcome. I'm trying to decide how to kick this monster off
> prior to adding the 3Tb of disk storage in...
>
> Regards,
> Jack
>
I have a AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200 Dual Core with 8 GB of RAM running 64
bit Hardy.  I have Windows XP Pro installed in the newest version of
VirtualBox.  I have given the virtual Windows instance 2GB of Base
Memory and 32 MB of video memory.  I am not using the AMD virtual
extensions, since in my experience, VirtualBox's software
virtualization is equal or faster to using the hardware virtual
extensions through virtualbox.

With all that said, my primary use of my Windows Virtual Machine is to
use Visual Studio to compile an in-house cross platform C++
application for Windows.  It does this with virtually no performance
difference as when I had Windows set up and dual boot and would reboot
into it.  Also, my host Linux machine doesn't seem to suffer
noticeably at all when I am compiling in Windows.

The other major suggestion I would make would be to use a fixed
virtual disk for your OS instead of a dynamic one.  In my experience,
this adds a noticeable performance boost when using disk intensive
apps in your Virtual machine.  The other benefit is that you don't
have to worry about your virtual machine expanding and filling up your
host drive because you forgot how big you set it to expand to.  It
will already take up the full amount of space so you can plan for it.

Anyway, with that machine, I would think if you gave your Windows
Virtual Box 2 or 3 GB of RAM, you should have great performance for
most things.  The only thing I am unsure of is gaming since I have
never really tested the abilities of Virtual Box's 3d acceleration.

Hope this helps,

Preston