Jump to content

Looking for Laptop for Virtualization and light gaming

I am currently a college student and want to practice virtualization and my current Dell Laptop does not run virtual box well. The specs are i7 1260p, GeForce MX550, with 16gb of ram and 512gb of storage. I am looking into buying a laptop that will hopefully last me well a while, however, I am not rich and hopefully looking into something on sale under $1000. I saw a few for pickup at a Micro Center near me. Any recommendations? (Preferably not the HP Victus since the brightness seemed a little low for my taste). There was also someone I know selling an LOQ for $800 that has a Ryzen 7435HS and a 4060 with 8gb and 512gb storage with 16gb ram. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

15 minutes ago, thwipp said:

May I ask your reasoning, I'm not questioning you. I just want to learn.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

What do you mean by doesn't run virtual box well? What issues are you having? 

 

Typically ram is the most important for running vms.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

54 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What do you mean by doesn't run virtual box well? What issues are you having? 

 

Typically ram is the most important for running vms.

It's very laggy and crappy, the mouse teleports across the screen. Whenever I boot it up, it shows only a quarter of the screen, no matter what resolution I set it to. There have been times where I fixed it, then when i boot it back up, its back to the quarter screen. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

24 minutes ago, Courage the Cowardly Dog said:

It's very laggy and crappy, the mouse teleports across the screen. Whenever I boot it up, it shows only a quarter of the screen, no matter what resolution I set it to. There have been times where I fixed it, then when i boot it back up, its back to the quarter screen. 

The graphics performance may be a limit fo virtual box and faster hardware won't help really. What are your gpu settings for the VM? Did you install the drivers in the VM?

 

What is usage on the host? Task manager showing high usage anywhere?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

The graphics performance may be a limit fo virtual box and faster hardware won't help really. What are your gpu settings for the VM? Did you install the drivers in the VM?

 

What is usage on the host? Task manager showing high usage anywhere?

I am trying to run Kali Linux, the video memory is set to 101Mb of the max of 128Mb, 12cores from my cpu, I believe I gave it 20gb of storage, with base memory of 4096mb. I did not install any drivers within the VM. CPU usage is 1% and Memory at 27%. Should also note that Im trying to run Kali Linux.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, Courage the Cowardly Dog said:

I am trying to run Kali Linux, the video memory is set to 101Mb of the max of 128Mb, 12cores from my cpu, I believe I gave it 20gb of storage, with base memory of 4096mb. I did not install any drivers within the VM. CPU usage is 1% and Memory at 27%. Should also note that Im trying to run Kali Linux.

You gotta install the drives or guest tools in the VM. athts likely your problem here. I'd turn down cores a bit as you probably don't need all 12

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Back before they sold off/out, I bought a Dell Precision 7520 to run the latest ESXi bare metal.  The Xeon E3 1505M meets the requirements and the NIC is broadly supported.  Wouldn't make a good gaming system though.  The nice thing was that I bought it on eBay with 32GB of ram for less than $250 and it was not an outlier.  Came with a good battery and power brick, just needed an SSD and good to go.  Did run ESXi on it for a few months before the whole selling off of VMware mess.  Something to consider when you are looking for a solid VM host on a budget.

But I'm just talking out my ass.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, aggie113 said:

Back before they sold off/out, I bought a Dell Precision 7520 to run the latest ESXi bare metal.  The Xeon E3 1505M meets the requirements and the NIC is broadly supported.  Wouldn't make a good gaming system though.  The nice thing was that I bought it on eBay with 32GB of ram for less than $250 and it was not an outlier.  Came with a good battery and power brick, just needed an SSD and good to go.  Did run ESXi on it for a few months before the whole selling off of VMware mess.  Something to consider when you are looking for a solid VM host on a budget.

Thank you, even if not for gaming, mostly just need it to practice using linux and running vms. I have a seperate gaming desktop for that. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

41 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You gotta install the drives or guest tools in the VM. athts likely your problem here. I'd turn down cores a bit as you probably don't need all 12

Guest tools will run the drivers based on the actual computer? What would you recommend the cores to be set at?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Courage the Cowardly Dog said:

Guest tools will run the drivers based on the actual computer? What would you recommend the cores to be set at?

Guest tools installs the drivers needed for the VM. I think the current issue is the VM can't correctly used the hardware given to it.

 

I'd probably set cores to 2 or 4 as you don't have many p cores here.

 

This seems to be realted to graphics performance, not CPU, and just adding more cores doesn't make it faster for most uses.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Guest tools installs the drivers needed for the VM. I think the current issue is the VM can't correctly used the hardware given to it.

 

I'd probably set cores to 2 or 4 as you don't have many p cores here.

 

This seems to be realted to graphics performance, not CPU, and just adding more cores doesn't make it faster for most uses.

I did it; the screen resized to its full display, and we finally made a breakthrough. Thank you. Based on my current specs, I can't run multiple VMs, can I?

I also lowered the cores. However, the VM is still laggy. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Courage the Cowardly Dog said:

I did it; the screen resized to its full display, and we finally made a breakthrough. Thank you. Based on my current specs, I can't run multiple VMs, can I?

I also lowered the cores. However, the VM is still laggy. 

Yea you have enough ram for multiple vms.

 

Have you tried other VM programs like hyper-v or vmware workstation on there

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Yea you have enough ram for multiple vms.

 

Have you tried other VM programs like hyper-v or vmware workstation on there

No I have not, do you think it's just the program, Virtual Box, that isn't working properly?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Courage the Cowardly Dog said:

No I have not, do you think it's just the program, Virtual Box, that isn't working properly?

This is kinda normal for vms using virtual GPUs, you don't really get great performance. 

 

But vmware is probably better here, and they have a free version to use here.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

This is kinda normal for vms using virtual GPUs, you don't really get great performance. 

 

But vmware is probably better here, and they have a free version to use here.

I will test this out and let you know how it goes as soon as I have that up and running. Thank you again for the advice and insight. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×