Q: Why is macOS CPU-perfomance massively below of Windows and Linux?

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penzelan

New Member
Jul 7, 2024
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Hi everybody

I am observing a strange behavior on a freshly installed PVE 8.2.2 (Intel i5-7600K/4 cores, 64 GB RAM), which I have never noticed before.

Two VMs are installed: macOS Sonoma (via luchina-gabriel/OSX-PROXMOX) and Windows 11. In both cases, the processor type is set to "Host" and all 4 cores are passed through to the host.

If I run a CPU-only Geekbench immediately after installing the operating systems, I get 1000 Single Core / 2600 Multicore on macOS - and 1400 SC and 4000 MC on Windows 11. As a test, I also tried Ubuntu 24.04, where I achieved the same values in Geekbench as under Windows.

What can have such a big influence on Geekbench under macOS that the performance is so massively below that of Windows and Linux?

Any hints?

Thanks, Andreas
 
Hello _gabriel

If I understand correctly, this affects all VMs on the host and would not have different effects on individual VMs.

In fact, I had already tried this - and it does indeed make a difference whether mitigations are activated or not. And these differences can also be seen in all VMs (macOS, Windows, Linux) in a comparable way.

Perhaps another very specific question for users who run macOS Sonoma on Proxmox: What does the CPU specification in the VM configuration file look like? Mine looks like this:

Code: 
-cpu host,vendor=GenuineIntel,+invtsc,+hypervisor,kvm=on,vmware-cpuid-freq=on

Thanks & Greetings, Andreas
 
Last edited:
Hello Kingneutron

Your comment is completely true and correct, and my question has been answered conclusively.

Users who want to run macOS on non-Apple hardware may want to compensate for the performance losses of pre-virtualization by using more powerful processors.

It remains interesting to see how macOS on Proxmox behaves on Apple hardware. However, I'll leave that to others - my curiosity in this regard is not great enough to "repurpose" my Apple hardware ;-).

Greetings, Andreas
 
@penzelan First, thanks for pointing me in the direction of this script, made setting up a new Sequoia install much easier!

Second, I thought I'd let you know, I just did a setup with this repo. While it's convenient and quick, it's definitely slow overall with crappy boot times and sluggishness overall. My host is a dual proc Z8 G4. A few things I did that helped a lot:

1. Switched CPU type from kvm64 to Haswell
2. Pinned cores from CPU1 (second processor) with 4 "physical cores" and 4 corresponding "logical cores"
3. Switched to Nick Sherlock's OpenCore-v21.img for boot

Done! Generally much faster boot and more responsive overall. Haven't bothered with benchmarks but give it a shot and let me know! Just found out my GT710 stopped being supported ages ago, so I'm gonna go scouring eBay for GPU deals xD
 
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