2D Graphics Performance

Hello -- I am trying to optimize 2D video graphics performance for a 32 bit Winxp guest running on Ubuntu 9.04. I have done some preliminary benchmarking and have found that vga "std" outperforms "cirrus" on most tests by about 20%-40%. However the std option is still (depending on the test) about 3 to 20 times slower than native 2D performance I get using low-end on-board Intel graphics. I haven't run the benchmark in VMWare workstation yet, but I can tell by looking that KVM is much slower -- which has surprised me because it has performed very well in my cpu and disk i/o tests.

I have attempted to try the "vmware" option by installing the vmware SVGA II driver in the Winxp guest, but all I ever get with this option is a blank screen. In reading an earlier thread in this mailing list, somebody said that the "-vga vmware" option was only for Linux/Unix based guests. Can anyone confirm this?

My machine has 2 quad-core 2.7Ghz AMD opterons, 16 GB RAM, and an nVidia 285 GLX card. Here is the command line I am using:

kvm -hda kvm2dperf.qcow2 -m 2G -smp 2 -k en-us -name "KVM 2D Perf" -vga std -net nic -net user -soundhw all -cpu qemu64

Is there any other command line options or approaches for amping up graphics performance? I am open to any/all ideas!

Thanks,
Dave

No, it works on windows too, it is just (quite) a bit of a pain to find and setup the
correct driver. But once that is done, it should work. No idea how much faster it would be though.

Pantelis

I have version 11.06.00.0013 installed. I snatched it from the c:\program files\vmware\drivers folder before I uninstalled vmware tools
and converted the drive image to qcow2. Nonetheless, whether it is
installed or not, all I get when booting is the Windows boot screen for a few seconds then everything goes blank/black. This happens even if I boot in safe mode.

Do you have any tips/techniques for getting it to work?

Any pointers where to look for them?

SR