I have this Gigabyte motherboard G31M that came with a E7500 dual core processor. I have been using Virtualbox(Version 5.2.6 r120293 (Qt5.6.1)) for some time now. However, I found the guest to be quite sluggish. Being a newbie to VMs, I thought it was the norm and never questioned the performance. Then the other day, I happened to check a similar config on a mini pc which happens to have a quad core and VT. There I found the guest performing almost as good as on bare metal.
That got me asking what could be different. Narrowed it down to the E7500 processor being from the batch which did not have VT. I looked for processors that would fit the same motherboard on the LGA775 socket. Got the choice narrowed down to the Q6600 which was available locally as a pulled out one. So, I took a chance and replaced the processor, enabled virtual threading in the bios and changed the VM settings to use multiple processors.
Now, I get the same near bare metal performance of the guest on my G31M machine with a Q6600 processor.
One thing which is troubling me is no matter what I do, Direct3D does not work. I suspect it has to do with the VB display adapter driver on my guest. Glxgears runs fine on LM18, so opengl seems functional. DXdiags in Win shows all files are okay, display says No direct3d device available. Not a show stopper for me, but is there something I can do to get a direct3d device working on the guest?
FYI : I have installed guest additions in safe mode with Direct3D option. Still no luck.
for your info, inxi -Fxz shows this
System: Host: jerson-G31M-ES2L Kernel: 4.4.0-112-generic x86_64 (64 bit gcc: 5.4.0)
Desktop: Cinnamon 3.0.7 (Gtk 3.18.9-1ubuntu3.3) Distro: Linux Mint 18 Sarah
Machine: System: Gigabyte product: G31M-ES2L
Mobo: Gigabyte model: G31M-S2L Bios: Award v: F10 date: 09/29/2009
CPU: Quad core Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 (-MCP-) cache: 4096 KB
flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 19198
clock speeds: max: 2400 MHz 1: 1600 MHz 2: 1600 MHz 3: 1600 MHz 4: 1600 MHz
Graphics: Card: Intel 82G33/G31 Express Integrated Graphics Controller bus-ID: 00:02.0
Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 driver: intel Resolution: 1360x768@60.02hz
GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel G33 GLX Version: 1.4 Mesa 11.2.0 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio: Card Intel NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.4.0-112-generic
Network: Card: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller
driver: r8169 v: 2.3LK-NAPI port: be00 bus-ID: 02:00.0
IF: enp2s0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Drives: HDD Total Size: 1500.3GB (11.4% used) ID-1: /dev/sda model: ST3500413AS size: 500.1GB
ID-2: /dev/sdb model: WDC_WD10EZEX size: 1000.2GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 92G used: 13G (15%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sdb5
ID-2: /home size: 92G used: 7.2G (9%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sdb6
ID-3: swap-1 size: 10.00GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sdb1
RAID: No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 62.0C mobo: N/A
Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info: Processes: 171 Uptime: 2:30 Memory: 1070.7/3941.3MB Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 5.4.0
Client: Shell (bash 4.3.481) inxi: 2.2.35