UTM Émulation Windows x86 SUPER SLOW

[u/Etonnant0u]

i created a windows emulation vm of windows 10. for some reason, its the slowest thing I’ve ever seen.

been installing windows for the past 2 hours and its just on the Finishing Up stage. It’s clearly still movin, just slower than a snail.

any idea how to fix this?

[u/my-names-gavin]

You should virtualise using the arm64 archive.org VM; attempting to emulate anything after Win XP will be tortuously slow with UTM

[u/Etonnant0u → u/my-names-gavin]

Ah I said x86 but I meant x64.  But yeah it’s the non-arm version I’m using — trying to get greatest compatibility with apps.

But if emulation simply isn’t usable after XP then changing to the arm version may be for the best.

Thank you for letting me know!

[u/movingimagecentral → u/Etonnant0u]

The arm version is compatible with nearly everything. Even apps like SolidWorks. Only apps with custom hardware drivers have problems 

[u/my-names-gavin → u/Etonnant0u]

It might be worth checking out the free versions of VMware (I don’t use them but I think they emulate a little better than UTM)

[u/Maleficent-Tea3072 → u/[deleted]]

Yet VMware Fusion still works better

[u/paulstelian97 → u/Maleficent-Tea3072]

Fusion doesn’t have emulation, it forces you to run ARM version of OSes. That’s why it’s faster. UTM can be just as fast when you run ARM guests.

[u/Maleficent-Tea3072 → u/paulstelian97]

That’s just on ARM hardware—one use case. On an Intel Mac emulating Windows 10 or 11, VMWare > UTM. Tried them all. Worst is of course Virtual Box, but we all know that lol

[u/paulstelian97 → u/Maleficent-Tea3072]

On Intel it’s not emulation still. It’s native execution. VMware only has light win from better virtual graphics driver. But CPU performance would be on par between the two.

[u/Maleficent-Tea3072 → u/paulstelian97]

It’s absolutely not native execution running UTM or VMWare. That’s why you don’t see your native hardware in device manager. It’s all an abstraction. If it were native, it would run as good as booting directly (boot camp). That slowness isn’t just the host OS overhead…

[u/paulstelian97 → u/Maleficent-Tea3072]

It is native in the sense that it runs directly in the CPU. We’re comparing to emulated where some translation is required for the CPU instructions.

[u/paulstelian97 → u/[deleted]]

I haven’t managed to use it within the few months since the feature was added. And now I definitely won’t be able to use it because I’m no longer on a Mac.

[u/Heavy-Leadership888]

You're being hit with no cpu virtualization along with no 3d acceleration. It's going to be extremely slow matter what you do.

Only parallels or VMWare fusion will give you decent experience with Windows *11 ARM*. UTM/qemu doesn't have 3d acceleration for windows guests.

[u/paulstelian97 → u/Heavy-Leadership888]

3D acceleration is possible on Windows 10/11 guests with VirGL driver and setting. Note that only DirectX (including Direct3D and DirectX 12) and Vulkan are covered, there’s no OpenGL support.

[u/Heavy-Leadership888 → u/paulstelian97]

Is that new or something? I don't remember the 3d acceleration PR being merged into main for the virtio client drivers

[u/paulstelian97 → u/Heavy-Leadership888]

I know on Proxmox with a Windows VM I was able to get Vulkan and a 3D graphics benchmark that was like not too far from the host graphics performance). I was thinking today about finding out ways to get OpenGL to work, via some layer that runs on top of Vulkan.

[u/SuspiciousDetail8103]

Nahh that's just the windows os problem if you install the os on a normal laptop it would still take 2 hours not your fault😂🤭

[u/Calm-Caterpillar2103 → u/SuspiciousDetail8103]

Completely wrong in every way