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I have a Windows 10 laptop, where I need to run a Linux 16.04 inside Oracle VirtualBox. The issue is that the resolution of my laptop is 3000x1500 and having such a high resolution is causing my Linux to use 50% of the CPU even when doing nothing else than running System Monitor. When running simple programs, the system will lag, which is annoying.

The Linux guest system has:

  • 2/4 CPU's
  • 4/16 GB RAM
  • 256 mb video memory
  • No 2D/3D acceleration (didn't seem to help to turn it on)
  • Nested Paging and VT-x/AMD-v enabled
  • Newest Guest Additions drivers installed

I've tried turning down the resolution to 800x600, which makes the CPU usage drop to 10%. However, that's not a feasible solution as it's only displaying on a tiny portion of the screen. I've also tried using a resolution around 1440x900 with a scaling factor of 2 through VirtualBox's interface, but it does not seem to help (I'm assuming the scaling is done on the guest side). I've also played with the Windows power settings, setting the minimum CPU usage to 80%.

My machine has a decent GPU so it would of course be nice to utilize that, but that seems too difficult (see https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=69732). How can I get a decent resolution (ideally 3000x1500 or at least around 1500x1000) that's scaled to the entire screen without my Linux system lagging?

Edit: The process in Linux clogging the CPU is compiz.

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  • Did you install properly VirtualBox Guest Additions for linux os's ? what display adapter your system is detecting in properties ? What GPU you have in the host ? Intel iGPU ? Latest drivers ?
    – Neil
    Mar 23, 2017 at 16:42
  • I installed the GuestAdditions if that's what you mean?
    – pir
    Mar 23, 2017 at 16:45
  • What about the other stuff I asked ?
    – Neil
    Mar 23, 2017 at 16:50
  • I've checked that the Guest Additions are working with the latest version. I have Intel HD Graphics HD 520 / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M in host with respectively driver version 20.19.15.4463 and 21.21.13.6961 from Intel both detected properly in host Properties menu. I've not updated the graphics drivers since I got the laptop 2 months ago as I was worried it would affect some of the functionality (detachable monitor), but I can try that if you think it would help :)
    – pir
    Mar 23, 2017 at 16:59
  • The drivers are supposedly from October 2016.
    – pir
    Mar 23, 2017 at 17:01

1 Answer 1

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I had a similar problem with a vboxclient process on the guest OS running very hot. I looked around and saw that disabling drag and drop between the guest OS and host OS could help. That worked for me very well, and clipboard copying is still on.

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