SSL Offload performance in F5 LTM Virtual Edition

Yes, performance still scales with the VM and hypervisor specs. That said, the SSL handshake is an expensive operation and you will only get so far without dedicated SSL hardware to offload that operation. Other than provisioning the maximum number of CPUs for the VE, you'll want to configure the SSL profile to permit as much session re-use as possible. In most cases the cipher doesn't have an enormous impact, but preferring faster ciphers can only help. The biggest performance improvement would come from using 1K keys over 2K keys, however there are obvious security implications with that approach.