Arch Linux

860lacov

Member

Registered: 2020-05-02

Posts: 497

qemu optimization help needed (Arch host, Windows guest)

I want to get rid of my Windows partition, but I need to have Windows for Affinity photo.
My hardware is:

Acer Spin 5 SP513-55N
CPU: 11th Gen Intel i7-1165G7
GPU: Intel TigerLake-LP GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics]

I was able to get nie performance with:

qemu-system-x86_64      \
-drive file=~/qemu/Windows10.cow,format=qcow2   \
-m 8G                   \
-enable-kvm             \
-machine q35            \
-device intel-iommu     \
-device virtio-vga-gl   \
-display sdl,gl=on      \
-usb -device usb-tablet \
-cpu host,hv_relaxed,hv_spinlocks=0x1fff,hv_vapic,hv_time -smp 4

Affinity photo is working quite nice but Windows menu isn't super fluid.

My CPU has 4 cores with 8 threads.
With -smp 4 inside Windows, I can see 4 cores but without any threads. Not sure if this is normal. I know that I can use cores, sockets and threads parameter but not sure how set it up properly.

In guest, I've installed win-guest-tools, but I can't even find the source (I wasn't shady one). It was some fedora related site, I believe.

How Can I make guest performance better?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,259

Re: qemu optimization help needed (Arch host, Windows guest)

You're probably stuck with the emulated gpu perf, unless you want to install some in development and experimental stuff to enable intel gpu virtualisation: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/QEMU/G … ion#SR-IOV

Last edited by V1del (2023-01-03 11:08:05)

860lacov

Member

Registered: 2020-05-02

Posts: 497

Re: qemu optimization help needed (Arch host, Windows guest)

You're probably stuck with the emulated gpu perf, unless you want to install some in development and experimental stuff to enable intel gpu virtualisation: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/QEMU/G … ion#SR-IOV

I gave Intel Tiger Lake

Intel GVT-g currently only works with Intel Broadwell (5th gen) to Comet Lake (10th gen), this is due to a lack of support in the i915 driver for Ice Lake (10th gen mobile processors), Rocket Lake (11th gen desktop) and newer. See this Intel Support Post and this Github Issue for details.

So I can't use this method. Am I right?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,259

Re: qemu optimization help needed (Arch host, Windows guest)

Which is why I linked you to the method you can use but that's currently not in any stable version. You could e.g. test how the vmware driver behaves or so.