To start off - I do not want to use this setup for gaming. I have my desktop running Windows 10 on metal for that and it’s doing that fine. Now onto my laptop:
I’m trying to virtualize my existing Windows installation so I don’t have to reboot into Windows all the time. I used VirtualBox for a while, which worked great but then stopped working and complained about not recognizing my raw drives. I then tried virt-manager/qemu which was somewhat okay, but now I’m using qemu and launch it through a file to keep control over my stuff. I also disliked Spice, so here I am.
The host concerns a Debian Unstable on a 4.1.0-2-amd64 kernel. It’s a laptop, so I don’t expect stellar performance, but it’s been kinda wonky.
- i5-3210M (Dual core, HT @ 2.5GHz)
- Intel HD4000
- 8GB DDR3 RAM
- GT630M
- Windows on an SSD and its accompanying data partition on a partition
It starts all well and stuff and it works, but the graphics are somewhat choppy/laggy despite the guest running the latest qxl-dod driver. CPU usage seems to be higher than it was while using VirtualBox and of course 3D acceleration is nonexistent. Here are my launch parameters:
#!/bin/bash
# qemu launch file to launch Windows 10 from raw drive
# /dev/sda contains Windows 10 and its boot files
# /dev/sdb1 is the Data partition
# /dev/sdb2 is /, do not touch!!!
sudo QEMU_AUDIO_DRV=alsa
QEMU_AUDIO_TIMER_PERIOD=0
QEMU_AUDIO_DAC_FIXED_FREQ=48000
QEMU_AUDIO_ADC_FIXED_FREQ=48000
QEMU_ALSA_DAC_BUFFER_SIZE=16384
exec kvm \
-machine type=pc,accel=kvm \
-name windows \
-cpu host \
-smp 4,cores=2,threads=2 \
-m 3G \
-vga qxl \
-soundhw hda,ac97 \
-drive id=sda,file=/dev/sda,cache=none,if=none,format=raw \
-drive id=sdb1,file=/dev/sdb1,cache=none,if=none,format=raw \
-device ich9-ahci,id=ahci \
-device ide-drive,drive=sda,bus=ahci.0 \
-device ide-drive,drive=sdb1,bus=ahci.1 \
-net nic \
-net user,hostname=windowsvm \
-usbdevice tablet \
"$@"
Could anybody give some pointers as how to improve/stabilize performance? The framerate seems to fluctuate a lot. I don’t need or expect good graphics acceleration to ever work, but a less jagging experience would be much appreciated. Since the system runs nVidia Optimus, GPU passthrough is impossible so I’ll just deal with it.