Virtualbox 3.0 is very slow, any way to fix it?

I upgraded to Virtualbox 3.0 and then 3.0.2.

I use Vista as a host and Ubuntu as the guest. In Virtualbox 2.0 I was able to run Ubuntu with standard desktop effects. After upgrading I noticed that it can no longer run the standard effects. The effects are slow, menus and windows stay around after you've closed them, menus don't get selected when you mouse over, etc.

I've seen people complain about the performance of 3.0 before but the only solution I've seen is to uninstall 3.0 and use 2.x.

Is that the only option?

FWIW,

I tried desktop effect with 3D enabled and 64MB of Video memory, and found it tearing and leaving artifacts on 3.0.2. Once I disable all the effect stuff video performance is pretty slick even in seamless mode.

I have no experience with 3.0 so can not compare.

My solution has been to currently live without desktop effects while they sort out bugs. I would be very reluctant to downgrade as I would lose out on all the bug fixes.

Have you made sure to install all the appropriate Guest Additions inside your guest OS (Ubuntu)? ... I am not sure how this may affect Ubuntu, but I know that to get Windows to work well in VirtualBox under Linux you pretty much have to install the additions first.

My Ubuntu running in a VirtualBox VM in Windows is extremely slow. But it is the graphics that is extremely slow (NVIDIA outside).

The statistical software package R-2.11.1 runs at the same speed in Ubuntu as on the host OS (when not producing plots anyway).