PVE on Ryzen 3200G and low guest desktop experience

[jacube]

Hello everyone. I'm new to Proxmox and trying to set up new server, my spec:
CPU: Ryzen 3200G 4c4t @3.9GHz
GPU: Vega 8 integrated GPU
MB: Gigabyte B450M DS3H
RAM: Crucial 2x8GB 3400Mhz CL14
SSD: SATA Crucial BX500 512GB (I know..)

I'm using newest version of Proxmox 8.3-1 and at the moment I have 2x VMs on it:

• openSUSE TW, config:

  agent: 1balloon: 6144
  boot: order=scsi0;usb0;net0
  cores: 4
  cpu: host
  machine: q35,viommu=intel
  memory: 12288
  meta: creation-qemu=9.0.2,ctime=1737757255
  name: openSUSE
  net0: virtio=BC:24:11:0E:B3:A4,bridge=vmbr0,firewall=1
  numa: 0
  ostype: l26
  scsi0: local-lvm:vm-100-disk-0,iothread=1,size=80G,ssd=1
  scsihw: virtio-scsi-single
  smbios1: uuid=d9a956af-9554-42f6-809d-13af41602a6f
  sockets: 1
  usb0: host=0781:5597
  vga: virtio,memory=512
  vmgenid: 3256a45b-cf33-4ba8-8734-4b9afe4bb2ae

• Kali Linux, config:

  agent: 1balloon: 6144
  boot: order=virtio0;ide2;net0
  cores: 4
  cpu: host
  ide2: none,media=cdrom
  machine: q35,viommu=intel
  memory: 12288
  meta: creation-qemu=9.0.2,ctime=1737730764
  name: Kali
  net0: virtio=BC:24:11:08:8F:6F,bridge=vmbr0,firewall=1
  numa: 0
  ostype: l26
  scsihw: virtio-scsi-pci
  smbios1: uuid=a856e6d1-1b35-4012-8948-8d5c02d1cc2e
  sockets: 1
  vga: virtio-gl,memory=512
  virtio0: local-lvm:vm-101-disk-1,cache=writeback,iothread=1,size=80G
  vmgenid: 0bdf3de8-a29e-4b4c-b46c-735b1873ec86

I'm connecting from Windows 11 PC (Ryzen 2600, Radeon RX580, 16GB RAM). I was trying different display options and clients but everytime it's not decent, I mean when operating in desktop environment when moving windows around, general experience - it's just laggy. I tried VirtIO, VirtGL, SPICE, default VGA - for now best is VirtGL/VirtIO I think. Clients I tested are Proxmox console, built in Windows RDC (installed xrdp), SPICE (Virt Viewer).
Is it expected performance on this hardware where Proxmox is installed? Or maybe I should install some additional drivers? However from what I did read if I don't install some old Linux distributions or Windows as a guest, guest drivers shouldn't be any problem because they're already included.

 

[leesteken]

You only have 16GB of memory on your Proxmox host. Please tell me you are not running both VMs with 12GB at the same time (==24GB).
You are also giving each VM the same number of virtual cores as the real hardware. Please keep one or two cores for Proxmox and virtualization overhead. Don't count hyper-threads.
In short: run only one VM at a time with only two (or maybe three) virtual cores!
Maybe your network is running a 100Mbps for some reason and it therefore gives slow screen updates?
Your BX500 QLC drive is terrible for VMs, please use enterprise SSDs with PLP to handle multiple VMs at the same time (especially when using ZFS).
Giving a VM a high percentage of the real hardware results in high latency and a bad feeling when using them. Lots of threads about this of this forum.
It's fine that you are experimenting with Proxmox but you'll have to lower your expectations and carefully tune some things on such slow consumer hardware.

 

[jacube]

Thank you for your answer @leesteken. Sorry if I let you undestand in such way, but I really didn't try to run both VMs in the same time yet. I tried alternately openSUSE with KDE Plasma X11 and Kali with XFCE to compare if it might be an issue with Plasma.
In case of cores I thought maybe it's somehow automatically managed between Proxmox and guests depending on needs for CPU power, but yes, I will lower assigned cores.
About network, you're right, I have only 100Mbps internet connection on 150Mbps router, and PC I'm connecting from is using WIFI so speed is even lower. Proxmox host is connected directly to the router with ethernet cable. However, I'm using this connection for my work from my laptop from where I'm connecting remotely to many real machines and I'm not experiencing any lags, so I would say network speed is rather sufficient for this purpose.
For now I will try to connect my client PC with an ethernet cable instead of WIFI and play around with lowerering resources for VMs.