qemu too slow ?

[Mayuresh <mayuresh%acm.org@localhost>]

I find emulators/qemu (1.1 which is fairly recent) to be too slow on
NetBSD 6.0 BETA 2 on i386 with virtualization support enabled in the BIOS.

I am trying microcore linux as guest, which is the only system I am able
to boot with among 3/4 distros attempted. (Gentoo booted as well though
was too slow to be useful.)

The command I run is something like this:

qemu-system-i386 -m 1024 -hda <img> -cdrom <microcore iso>

Sometimes it starts fast though slows down slowly, to such an extent that
a typed key takes 3/4 or more seconds to appear in guest OS terminal.

What could be the reasons? Are there any aspects that can be examined?

Is qemu being used reliably with NetBSD as host by anyone? If yes, what
guest OS is it?


Mayuresh