Slow Windows performance

[Strupee]

I have troubleshot my lab server for some time now. Hope anyone can direct me in the right direction. The windows GUI is so slow it's unusable. After tweaks, I have managed to use far less memory and CPU. 30% CPU compared to overall node resources after setting CPU to Ivybridge.
I suspect slow I/O or maybe GUI is the reason for the very bad performance? Do you need to have KVM virtualization enabled? I cant start VM because of missing features I think but not sure. Things should be ok in bios.

is not a very powerful computer but runs Windows OS fast with SSD when on bare metal.

4 x Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3217U CPU @ 1.80GHz (1 Socket)
16GB Memory

I have tried installing Win 2019 and tried this:
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Windows_10_guest_best_practices
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Performance_Tweaks

VM config:
agent: 1
boot: order=scsi0;net0
cores: 2
cpu: IvyBridge
kvm: 0
memory: 6880
net0: virtio=96:9B:898:75:C0,bridge=vmbr0,firewall=1
numa: 1
ostype: win10
sata2: PI3:iso/SERV2019.ENU.JUN2020.ISO,media=cdrom,size=4309888K
sata3: PI3:iso/virtio-win-0.1.185.iso,media=cdrom,size=402812K
scsi0: SAMSUNGSSD:vm-101-disk-0,discard=on,size=60G
smbios1: uuid=36f11657-f4f1-4979-8d03-0fdf06b896c4
sockets: 2
tablet: 0
vga: virtio
vmgenid: 536bea89-2408-4b20-9914-c8bcc5091347

 

[bobmc]

Well an i3-3217 is always going to struggle - it's really a dual core cpu with 4 threads and a fairly low clock speed.

In your example you have your VM set to 2 cores and 2 sockets - that really should be only 2 cores/1 socket as a maximum. Also I would leave the cpu type as default kvm rather than host, also disable numa.

But your best bet would be to try and find a better cpu to fit your motherboard

 

[apoc]

Also I would leave the cpu type as default kvm rather than host,

Disagree. This limits the instruction set and hence performance

But your best bet would be to try and find a better cpu to fit your motherboard

Fully agree here. 2C/4T as virtualization platform? Not adequate (at least for Windows guest)

 

[spirit]

Do you need to have KVM virtualization enabled?

you need kvm enabled or you wont have cpu acceleration, and do full software emulation.

you need to enabled vtx extentions in your bios. (generally it's called "enable virtualization technology" in your bios cpu options)

 

[Strupee]

thx

for update. I thought I had already enabled virtualization in the BIOS. When enabled everything was fixed. Got to learn a lot about KVM in the process of troubleshooting, coming from VMware which was nice.

for info. Although the CPU is low spec it's actually really good performance. I'm running 1 Cent OS, 1 Nested ESXi(with 1 Debian server running inside), and 1 Windows Server 2019 and am only using avg 54% of the CPU. Room to run a few Linux servers in addition.
By trimming the Windows Server for services and features for the 2019 version doesn't consume a lot of resources. But I'm not running heavy applications on the servers and most of them are just for infrastructure testing.