My first attempt to try Gnome 3 was to try it inside Virtualbox, that was somewhat of a disaster since Gnome 3 could not get out of fallback mode. Upgrading to later versions of virtualbox 4.0.8 or later resolve the issue, but the emulated 3D isn't working properly. 25% of the virtual cpu is tied up rendering the 3D.

On the other hand, I tried it out on several different machines and the Gnome 3D appears to work or at least it didn't fall into fallback mode:

HP DV5-1150US Intel 945 video
Dell e1505 ATI x1300
Acer 3680 Intel 950 video
Frankinstein AMD Athlon 2600+ Nvidia GeForce Fx5200

All of the machine used the standard 3D mode. The last machine was a surprise since it's like 10 years old.

I am not sold on the Gnome 3 interface, but at least it appears that it will run on most of the machines people are using.

Paul

That sounds about right...

Trying to emulate a GPU in software is going to very taxing, and won't perform as well as an actual GPU (even if it is old).