Hello All, I can reproduce this on two different systems with Ivy-Bridge CPUs: Xeon E5 2667v2 / X9SRA running Fedora 28, with Windows 10 1803 as KVM guest Xeon E3 1270v2 / X9SCM running Archlinux, with Windows 10 1803 as KVM guest
The performance degradation doesn't occur when the Windows 10 guest disables the spectre mitigation using "InSpectre.exe", or when the spec- ctrl flag is disabled in libvirt, or when the cpu-microcode isn't updated in the host. I followed the latest suggestion, and enabled "--enable-debug" in qemu-3.0 and also compiled kernel-4.17.19 with CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO=y. However I cannot see any differences while running "perf top" in the host between the affected/unaffected version of windows. CPU usage seems to be the same. Any hints would be greatly appreciated. Best, George -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of qemu- devel-ml, which is subscribed to QEMU. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1788665 Title: Low 2D graphics performance with Windows 10 (1803) VGA passthrough VM using "Spectre" protection Status in QEMU: New Bug description: Windows 10 (1803) VM using VGA passthrough via qemu script. After upgrading Windows 10 Pro VM to version 1803, or possibly after applying the March/April security updates from Microsoft, the VM would show low 2D graphics performance (sluggishness in 2D applications and low Passmark results). Turning off Spectre vulnerability protection in Windows remedies the issue. Expected behavior: qemu/kvm hypervisor to expose firmware capabilities of host to guest OS - see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/hyper-v-on-windows/CVE-2017-5715-and-hyper-v-vms Background: Starting in March or April Microsoft began to push driver updates in their updates / security updates. See https://support.microsoft.com /en-us/help/4073757/protect-your-windows-devices-against-spectre- meltdown One update concerns the Intel microcode - see https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4100347. It is activated by default within Windows. Once the updates are applied within the Windows guest, 2D graphics performance drops significantly. Other performance benchmarks are not affected. A bare metal Windows installation does not display a performance loss after the update. See https://heiko-sieger.info/low-2d-graphics- benchmark-with-windows-10-1803-kvm-vm/ Similar reports can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/comments/97unx4/passmark_lousy_2d_graphics_performance_on_windows/ Hardware: 6 core Intel Core i7-3930K (-MT-MCP-) Host OS: Linux Mint 19/Ubuntu 18.04 Kernel: 4.15.0-32-generic x86_64 Qemu: QEMU emulator version 2.11.1 Intel microcode (host): 0x714 dmesg | grep microcode [ 0.000000] microcode: microcode updated early to revision 0x714, date = 2018-05-08 [ 2.810683] microcode: sig=0x206d7, pf=0x4, revision=0x714 [ 2.813340] microcode: Microcode Update Driver: v2.2. Note: I manually updated the Intel microcode on the host from 0x713 to 0x714. However, both microcode versions produce the same result in the Windows guest. Guest OS: Windows 10 Pro 64 bit, release 1803 To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/+bug/1788665/+subscriptions