I'm wondering if the Xcode simulator (without Xcode running) performs as well, my 2020 Intel MacBook Air has been incapable of running Safari in iOS smoothly for nearly all its life.

> Starting with 4 virtual cores and 8 GB vRAM, where the VM ran perfectly briskly with around 5 GB of memory used

But... if you start applications inside your VM it will want the full 8 Gb you've allocated not the 5 Gb it uses at startup?