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Poor performance

KVM
#1

I’m new to Linux and of course KVM and Whonix. I’m not sure what to expect for performance. I have a lot of lag when watching videos over 480p (choppy) and most importantly, with common tasks. Just clicking on buttons and using scroll bars causes quite a bit of lag in the browser and in apps. I’m not trying to watch 4k vids but I would think 720 should be doable.

I realize Tor dramatically decreases bandwidth but I have zero issues with the Tor browser on Windows bare metal boxes and even with VMs in VMWare Workstation on a Windows host.

I’m guessing this is a hardware acceleration/pass-through issue. I have installed Debian-KVM-Whonix on an old machine and a newer, more powerful machine and they both perform the same. I’m using the Virtio driver with 3D Acceleration checked in Virtual Machine Manager.

I came across a couple of forum posts but some of the included links are dead and I see in the Wiki that hardware acceleration may not be achievable in Debian and could be a security risk??? I’d even consider switching to Qubes-Whonix if it performs better but I’ve read conflicting info on that subject.

Can someone point me in the right direction? I also need to know if having a GPU card is mandatory or if the on-board VGA is acceptable on newer or even older boxes. Ideally, I’d like to use one of my older boxes (HP 8300, Dell 7010) but I am considering purchasing a newer HP or Dell Tiny or micro PC for the final Debian-KVM-Whonix install but of course I would not be able to add a GPU. Specs are i7-9700T, 16GB RAM, SSD.

#2

Thats mean not yet supported thus shouldnt be enabled.

More performance according to KVM wiki:

I dont know what are your hardware parts/specs that you are currently now using, But know that since whonix run inside a VM it need medium to high resources in order to make it work properly.

#3

Thanks for the response. I tried with and without having the Virtio driver with 3D Acceleration checked in Virtual Machine Manager. It didn’t seem to make any difference.

The current box specs:
Intel(R) Core™ i7-3770 CPU © 3.40GHz 3.39 GHz
16.0 GB RAM

Something just is not right. It sometimes takes 5-10 seconds for button click actions to complete and for the changes to be shown on the screen. I’ve installed three times now, on three different boxes and get the same results. I’ve tried all manor of vCPU and RAM settings.

I’m stumped. If it works for others, it must be something simple that I’m overlooking.

I’ve thought about switching to Qubes-Whonix. Does it perform any better?

#4

There was a bug in V3 versions which give poor performance/laggy but sadly cant find these reports (long time ago…)

Highly unlikely, im afraid to tell you that you need newer PC/CPU version.

#5

Thank again but what a bummer :frowning:

I have an identical box with Win10 as the host OS with VMWare Workstation and it runs any Windows or Linux VM very smoothly and fast with no lag ¯_(ツ)_/¯ I haven’t tried running Whonix on it because that kinda defeats the purpose.

I did not find a minimum hardware requirement for KVM-Whonix. I have to keep this project on the cheap. What’s the oldest gen Intel CPU that’s proven to work well with KVM-Whonix? I’d like to get an inexpensive micro/tiny PC but I need to make sure it will work before I purchase.

#6
#7

BINGO! Thanks to TNT_BOM_BOM, I can confirm that 3rd generation Intel CPUs are not compatible. Got same poor result on two different 3rd gen boxes.

I purchased a used Dell with a 7th generation Intel CPU and it works like a champ now. Very snappy, no lag and even 1080p YouTube vids play smoothly with the Intel integrated graphics.

Maybe 4th, 5th and 6th generation CPUs will work as well. Would be nice to know and maybe a mod can post a blurb in the Wiki so others don’t spend time trying to get Whonix-KVM to work on unsupported hardware.

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to respond.

2 Likes
#8

Done:

2 Likes
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