Just a quick CPU benchmark with Phoronix test suite, comparing -cpu qemu64 and -cpu host (on Xeon E3-1241v3, 4vCPU/4GB virtuals).
Note: single run (fire & forget), virtual machines on the same physical hardware and benchmarks run simultaneously. YMMV.
| Benchmark | qemu64 | host | Higher/Lower better? |
|---|---|---|---|
| pts/stream-1.2.0 [Type: Copy] | 14166.98 MB/s | 14171.50 MB/s | Higher |
| pts/stream-1.2.0 [Type: Scale] | 13964.65 MB/s | 14007.75 MB/s | Higher |
| pts/stream-1.2.0 [Type: Triad] | 15755.66 MB/s | 15851.89 MB/s | Higher |
| pts/stream-1.2.0 [Type: Add] | 15730.77 MB/s | 15863.64 MB/s | Higher |
| pts/apache-1.6.1 | 25028.87 Requests Per Second | 35859.45 Requests Per Second | Higher |
| pts/john-the-ripper-1.5.1 [Traditional DES] | 5849000 Real C/S | 7179500 Real C/S | Higher |
| pts/john-the-ripper-1.5.1 [Blowfish] | 3170 Real C/S | 3249 Real C/S | Higher |
| pts/ttsiod-renderer-1.5.0 | 102.00 FPS | 93.75 FPS | Higher |
| pts/x264-1.9.0 | 86.56 FPS | 94.52 FPS | Higher |
| pts/graphics-magick-1.6.1 [HWB Color Space] | 173 Iterations Per Minute | 170 Iterations Per Minute | Higher |
| pts/graphics-magick-1.6.1 [Local Adaptive Thresholding] | 92 Iterations Per Minute | 88 Iterations Per Minute | Higher |
| pts/graphics-magick-1.6.1 [Sharpen] | 95 Iterations Per Minute | 102 Iterations Per Minute | Higher |
| pts/graphics-magick-1.6.1 [Resizing] | 159 Iterations Per Minute | 156 Iterations Per Minute | Higher |
| pts/himeno-1.1.0 | 1722.79 MFLOPS | 1840.71 MFLOPS | Higher |
| pts/compress-7zip-1.6.0 | 10173 MIPS | 10291 MIPS | Higher |
| pts/c-ray-1.1.0 | 44.54 Seconds | 39.76 Seconds | Higher |
| pts/compress-pbzip2-1.4.0 | 11.99 Seconds | 13.95 Seconds | Lower |
| pts/smallpt-1.0.1 | 153 Seconds | 153 Seconds | Lower |
| pts/crafty-1.3.0 | 71.60 Seconds | 71.48 Seconds | Lower |
| pts/encode-flac-1.5.0 | 7.38 Seconds | 6.12 Seconds | Lower |
| pts/encode-mp3-1.4.0 | 11.71 Seconds | 11.21 Seconds | Lower |
| pts/ffmpeg-2.4.0 | 18.99 Seconds | 14.37 Seconds | Lower |
| pts/povray-1.1.2 | 310.35 Seconds | 248.59 Seconds | Lower |
| pts/tachyon-1.1.1 | 26.57 Seconds | 17.10 Seconds | Lower |
| pts/openssl-1.9.0 | 286.50 Signs Per Second | 543.67 Signs Per Second | Lower |
| pts/mafft-1.4.0 | 7.40 Seconds | 7.24 Seconds | Lower |
| pts/gcrypt-1.0.3 | 1793 Microseconds | 1647 Microseconds | Lower |
No wonder why UpCloud changed their parameters, -host usually wins…