VMDirectPath and ATI Radeon

[taylorjonl]

I am using VMware ESXi and I am trying to setup a guest that is Windows 7 that will have an ATI Radeon video card passed through to it.  I actually had this working on a previous system but I had to reinstall.  Now when I do this the guest fails to start and I get the following:

Error message from localhost.XXXXXXXXXXX:
PCIPassthru 004:00.0: Guest tried to (null)map
32 device pages (with base address of 0xb5d20)
to a range occupied by main memory. This is
outside of the PCI Hole. Add pciHole.start =
"2909" to the configuration file and then power
on the VM.
error
12/23/2010 1:04:36 PM
media
User

When I do as it asks, the guest now starts but gets an immediate BSOD concerning memory management.  Any ideas on why this is occuring and why it worked at one point but now it fails?

[FuNK3Y]

I was also unlucky with nvidia cards. I noticed the same problems with a 8400 and a GT210.

For the WDDM, I did as you did; I installed the tools provided by my ESXi (4.1U1, I haven't done any other updates).

I'd be interested in more details about the configuration working with DXVA (ESX version, driver, ...). I didn't checked if I had VDDM 1 or 1.1 though.

[somedude1234]

Apologies in advance for the huge post...

Here are the details of my current setup:

Motherboard: SuperMicro X8SIA-F

• Intel 3420 chipset (for Lynnfield based Xeons)
• ICH10R SATA controller with 6x ports (Vendor: 8086, Device: 3B34)
  • I have this passed through to my Nexenta NAS VM via VT-d
  • There are 5x Samsung F4 2TB HDDs connected to this SATA controller
• Two intel USB 2.0 controllers (Vendor: 8086, Devices: 3B34 and 3B3C)
  • One of these USB controllers (Device 3B34) is passed through to my Win7 workstation VM via VT-d
  • To the passed through controller, I connect a keyboard, mouse, sound card, and webcam
• IPMI v2.0 via Winbond WPCM450 BMC chip
  • The BMC chip includes a legacy PCI video core that is identified as a Matrox G200eW (Vendor: 102B, Device: 532)
  • This is connected to the on-board VGA port and is also accessable via the remote IPMI console
  • This is the video adapter that ESXi is using for the console

Processor: Intel Xeon X3440

RAM: 16GB total (4x4GB) Registered ECC DDR3 (Kingston KVR1066D3Q8R7S/4G)

Add-on Cards:

• XFX RadeonHD 6850 ZDFC (AMD GPU, Vendor: 1002, Device: 6739)
  • This is a PCIe 2.0x16 device
  • The audio device shows up as (Vendor: 1002, Device: AA88)
  • This card (including the audio device) are passed through to my Win7 workstation VM via VT-d
• Promise SATA300 TX4 PCI (Vendor: 105A, Device: 3D17)
  • There is only a single device connected to this card, an OCZ Vertex2 60GB SSD
  • I installed ESXi onto the SSD and with the left over space I created a datastore which is used for the Nexenta and Win7 VMs

ESXi version: 4.1.0, 260247

Virtual machines:

• NexentaStor [v3.0.4] (NAS - 1x vCPU + 4GB RAM reserved)
  • VT-d devices: On-board Intel ICH10R SATA controller
  • 5x 2TB HDDs used to create a RAIDZ1 Zpool which is exported to ESXi via NFS and the rest of the network via CIFS
  • VM Set to auto-start after ESXi power on
• Windows 7 x64 [v6.1.7601] (Workstation - 4x vCPU+ 2816 MB RAM reserved)
  • VT-d devices: AMD 6850 GPU+audio; Intel USB controller
  • VMware Tools v8.3.2, build-257589
  • Display adapters shown in device manager (Note that both devices are ENABLED😞
    • AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series, Driver v8.850.0.0 dated 4/19/2011
    • VMware SVGA 3D (Microsoft Corporation - WDDM), Driver v7.14.1.40 dated 3/1/2010
  • For initial setup, I left display output enabled for both the VMware adapter (accessed via remote vSphere) as well as the physical displays connected to the AMD 6850
  • After I was confident that the 6850 was working reliably, including after rebootting the Win7 VM as well as the entire ESXi system, I right-clicked on the desktop and selected "Screen Resolution" and simply disabled screen output on the VMware adapter, that eliminates the problem of the mouse disappearing off of the desktop on the physical monitors and onto the virtual VMware display.  If I ever need to access the console via vSphere, I simply re-enable that display output, but this is rarely needed as RDP works most of the time.
  • Note that I am not disabling the VMware SVGA 3D adapter in device manager, simply disabling the display output in "Control Panel\Appearance and Personalization\Display\Screen Resolution".

Suggestions for anyone encountering BSODs when booting a Win7 VM which uses a VT-d GPU:

1. Double check the amount of configured RAM on your VM.  It has been stated by others on this thread that anything over 2GB can cause problems.  I was able to push mine up to 2816 MB thorugh trial and error, this configuration works for me, YMMV.  My suggestion is to start at 1.5GB and get the GPU stable before trying to push the VM's RAM up.
2. Remember to ensure that 100% of your configured VM RAM is reserved for any VM which takes VT-d devices.

Other suggestions:

1. Disable sleep mode in control panel power management, whenever my Win7 VM went to sleep, I couldn't wake it back up via the USB keyboard or mouse (note my USB controller is passed through via VT-d).  The only thing that worked for me was to connect via the remote vSphere console and click on the black screen.  This would wake up the VM so I could log back in via the physical console.  This is something that should be tried if you ever encounter a black screen on your previously working VT-d GPU display.
2. Set cpuid.coresPerSocket per VMware KB1010184 if you're having trouble getting all of your cores to show up in the Win7 VM (not really specific to passing through GPU's, but it is a tweak I had to do for my setup).
3. Don't rely solely on Flash to determine if ESXi+hardware+drivers are playing nicely together.  Flash has a history issues when it comes to GPU acceleration.  My validation steps consisted of many VM reboot cycles to ensure I wasn't going to encounter any more BSODs during startup.  This was followed by full screen video playback in various players (VLC, XBMC, MPC-HC, media player), and then testing with a number of games.
4. Note that you might not see your VM bootup sequence on the VT-d GPU display.  On my system, when the VM is rebooting, the physical screens are black until the Win7 login screen appears.  The actual boot sequence (VM POST, Win7 loading screen) are visible via the vSphere remote console.  I guess the VMware display adapter defaults to being the primary.  There might be a way to change this in the VM BIOS but I haven't bothered to do so.

[sevet]

Thanks for the most elaborating post somedude1234

Some things I learned from your post regarding software (as hardware is obviously different)

1.) Is there a way you can try to see if this setup works with the latest ESXi 4.1u1 which is version: 4.1.0, 348481?

I will try and test on the version you are using, maybe it the GPU passthrough got broken somehow on the newer release...

2.) The WDDM version of your tools is also lower then the lates, I will try that as well.

3.) Did you install the windows 7 with the GPU passthrough or only added it after the OS was installed?

Regarding hardware:

As I did try a PCI video for the ESXi, I still hope I will be luckier with a different combination, so I might search for a Matrox G200 PCI although I could only see G450 available (on ebay). The Radeon 6850 is still pretty expensive for a test purpose I would buy it in a second if I was completly sure it will work, I hate good hardware just dusting up in my pile of unusable good things....

A small tip I can give regarding your storage with Nexentastore, I also tried it first, but currently it doesn't support the vmxnet3s driver for the network which limit the network interface to 1gb which is 128mbytes, which is nice..... but....

I ended up installing OpenIndiana (solaris variant) with napp-it (the gui for the storage), that suppots the vmxnet3s 10gb card (from the vmware tools).

I was pleasently surprised to get on a virtual machine with its HD attached to an NFS storage to the OpenIndiana, I got about 430mbyes read and 270mbytes write speed, I have raidz2 with 6 drives but even with less drives the 1gb ethernet limit would have been reach sooner.

When Nexenta support this driver I will probably move to it as the GUI and CLI are much more impressive.

[somedude1234]

You're welcome!

1) I built the system back in the Dec/Jan timeframe and haven't updated the software since it was put into production.  I've been contemplating an update to ESXi, I might give it a shot over the long holiday weekend.

2) Yes, I'm using the VMware tools version that is included with my slightly down-rev version of ESXi, which likely explains the VMware SVGA 3D driver also being slightly down-rev.  I believe I misstated in an earlier post that you need WDDM 1.1 drivers for all of your mis-matched video cards in order to work correctly in Windows 7.  I based this statement on the WDDM wiki entry, specifically, the following is listed as a "new feature" with WDDM 1.1:

- Support multiple drivers in a multi-adapter and multi-monitor setup

In my case, it appears that my AMD 6850 has a WDDM 1.1 driver, while the VMware SVGA 3D driver is WDDM 1.0.

3) I created the VM, installed Win7, ran windows updates, and then shut the VM down to add the GPU via PCIe passthrough.

Note that I borrowed an old AMD RadeonHD 3450 for my "proof of concept" testing before ordering the 6850.  I was successful with both the 3450 as well as the 6850.  I would expect that any of the ATI/AMD PCIe cards between the 3450 and the current 6800 series should work fine, but you never know unless you test a specific combination of hardware.

Thanks for the tip on OpenIndiana support for VMXnet3.  I was quite disappointed when I realized that I woudln't be able to utilize this driver during my build (all of my other VM's are running with this driver, it's too bad the NAS is the one that doesn't work).  At the time of my build, I considered OpenIndiana + NAPP-IT for the NAS, but I felt like OpenIndiana was a bit "too new" at the time for my data.  You've inspired me to build an OpenIndiana VM and do some A/B testing with the same array to see how much of a difference it makes.  In theory, I can just re-assign the SATA controller from the Nexenta VM over to the OpenIndiana VM.

I'm happy enough with the current performance, but I'm always willing to try out something that will provide an increase.

[FuNK3Y]

Have you tried DXVA with something else than XBMC? My configuration is quite close to yours, and I am pretty sure that it should also be able to run DXVA.

I was unable to get it working with: Flash, FFDSHOW, W7 default WMF codecs.

Here is my configuration:

- ESXi 4.1

- SuperMicro mainboard (can't remember the ref; I'll check tonight)

- HD 5450 (VMDP)

- Highpoint RocketRaid 3520 (VMDP)

- 24gb of RAM

- Hauppauge Nova-T (VMDP, but still testing)

I shall maybe give a try tonight with a fresh VM. Having a VM as a HTPC would be awesome.

[somedude1234]

I tried for a bit using HD youtube clips, but I couldn't be sure whether DXVA was actually being used or not.

After doing a bit more research, it seems that DXVA is a very complicated topic, and whether it is used or not depends on the GPU hardware, GPU driver/software versions, decoding software installed, and the individual video file itself.

There is an in-depth discussion here that revolves around a utility called DXVA-checker, available here.

Here's the output from the tool (DXVAChecker64_2.5.0) when run on my system:

AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series
ModeMPEG2_VLD: DXVA2, 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1920x1080
ModeMPEG2_IDCT: DXVA2, 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1920x1080
ModeMPEG2_A: DXVA1, 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1920x1080
ModeMPEG2_C: DXVA1, 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1920x1080
ModeH264_VLD_NoFGT: DXVA2, 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1920x1080
ModeH264_VLD_NoFGT_Flash: DXVA2, 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1920x1080
6719B6FB-5CAD-4ACB-B00A-F3BFDEC38727: DXVA2, -
ModeH264_VLD_Multiview_Avivo: DXVA2, 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1920x1080
ModeVC1_VLD: DXVA2, 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1920x1080
CA15D19A-2B48-43D6-979E-7A6E9C802FF8: DXVA2, -
ModeMPEG4pt2_VLD_AdvSimple_Avivo: DXVA2, 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1920x1080
5B23D46D-FA5F-4FDC-B78A-7EB2787942EC: DXVA2, 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1920x1080

If you click on the big "Check for DirectShow / MediaFoundation Decoders..." button along the bottom of the dialog, you can browse for a test clip.  The program should then analyze the clip and present a list of possible decoders to use.  If you don't see anything come up in red, then the clip will likely not play using DXVA acceleration.  If you do se a decoder that is listed in red, click on the arrow to the left and choose either "play" or "benchmark".

I'd be happy to try some other applications on my system, but I might need some help getting the specific decoder / application chain set up on my system.

Message was edited by: somedude1234 (added missing html link)

[BAM279]

Hi somedude1234,

your postings on this topic are greatly appreciated.

Can you confirm that the Radeon HD 3450 also had fully working hardware acceleration when passed through, as you only mentioned gaming, dvxa etc.. with the 6850 card?  Im just looking for a card that would work with basic 2d/3d directdraw/direct3d hw acceleration and the 3450 would be a nice and cheap way of achieving this.

Would you also be able to advise of which ATI driver version you used, in case that turns out to be important, or have you used multiple driver versions successfully?

Many thanks in advance.

Regards,

BAM

[streetsofopo]

Hello all,

I have a Dell Optiplex 780 which supports VT-D, and I'm trying to get my Sapphire Radeon HD5450 to work with vmdirectpath.

As far as I can tell, there are no issues passing the device through to the (Windows) VM guest. With no drivers installed the guest boots fine and can see the device, the ATI setup program and windows itself recognise the PNP IDs, and match the 5400 series driver accordingly.

However, once the drivers are installed,  I get a BSOD with an ATI DLL "driver in infinite loop" on restarting.

No errors within ESXi/VI client.  I have the memory reservation matching the allocated memory, and it's <2GB.   The ESXi console video signal drops on VM boot as expected.

What is the best strategy for me here - should I shop around for other video cards to try?  is there any merit in trying a radeon 4550?

Or are there any other ways I can work around the ATI driver issue with some other drivers perhaps?

thanks for any ideas

[BAM279]

The closest I got to it working was with an nVidia GeForce 7200GS but that also gave the "Driver stuck in an infinite loop" BSOD with nv4_disp.dll.  Tried it both on an xp 32bit and win7 x64 vm but same regardless.

The driver used had an impact.  I tried various ForceWare versions, but the only that was closest to working was the 181.22 version - this installed, card was listed in device manager with "this device is working properly" status, and I could see it in the display control panel, but as soon as I enabled the monitor connected to it to extend my desktop onto it, the VM hangs.  I also tried disabling the vmware svga virtual adapter and this made no difference.

I also tried an ATI FireGL V3100 and it gave various BSODs too.  I have just bought an ATI Radeon HD3450 on eBay and am also borrowing a friends ATI Radeon 2400HD so im really hoping I find some success with one of these.  I will report back and let you know.

BAM.

[BAM279]

OK, just spent the last couple of days experimenting with my friends ATI Radeon HD 2400 Pro and Im happy to say it works very, very well.  I have been able to get vga passthrough working with this with zero issues, no BSODs, no crashes, no hanging, pleasantly solid and reliable.  Direct3d acceleration, DirectDraw, movie playback, youtube hd via flash (with and without hardware acceleration enabled) all works first time.

On another note, I thought I would share my reasoning behind looking for vga passthrough, as it will certainly not be the same as anyone elses, I suspect

My experiment was to see if I could virtualize a windows pc for the sole purpose of running retro oldskool emulators (such as zsnes, kega fusion, MAME etc..) at native sub-vga resolutions out to an old CRT television via a VGA-to-RGB scart cable.  To achieve this on a normal physical pc is complex enough, as it requires very accurate display timing software configuration via the use of an application called PowerStrip.  To have all of my existing PowerStrip interlaced and sub-vga progressive resolutions working within the vm via vga passthrough, im seriously surprised and amazed it works, given how sensitive the video output is to very small frequency variations.

I have just received my Radeon HD 3450 today (£12 via eBay!) so I will test that next and let you know what my findings were on that, but for the meantime I think the HD 2400 Pro is a no-brainer for anyone wishing to experiment with vga passthrough as its such a cheap card.

For reference, my config is as follows:

Host

ESXi 4.1u1 + all latest available patches

Asus KCMA-D8 Motherboard

2x AMD Opteron 4180 cpus

32GB DDR3 RAM

VM

Windows 7 x64 (fully patched)

2 vCPUs

2GB RAM

VMDP Devices:

1. ATI Radeon HD 2400 Pro PCIe 16x (works great)

2. Creative Audigy 2 ZS PCI (analog audio output is shrill / crackly, but digital SPDIF out is fine)

3. NetMos / MosChip RS232 (1x DB25 2x DB9) PCI Card (works great)

4. VIA 4-Port USB 2.0 PCI Card

Video Driver Catalyst 11.6 video drivers (as of this posting, the latest available).

Regards,

BAM.

Update: 21/07/2011

Just an update to say ive tested the ATI Radeon HD 3450 and it works every bit as well as the 2400 Pro card.  Looks like ATI is the choice to make when it comes to vga passthrough.  I also added a VIA 4-port USB PCI card - this is detected as three individual PCI devices, 2x usb 1.1 and 1x usb 2.0.  Unless all three are passed through, the vm fails to boot.  Only the usb 1.1 ports work in the vm (tested ok with a usb mouse and usb keyboard attached), the driver fails to start for the usb 2.0 controller with an Error Code 10 in Device Manager.

[sevet]

Hi BAM279 Glad to see it worked for you,

I too have some sleepless nights trying to get this to work.... I got from ebay a matrox g200 PCI as I saw the somedude had that built in in his motherboard.

Since I installed the Matrox PCI for the Host VGA, I don't get bluescreens and all my dirvers after install work: nVidia 6200 and 8400GS and ATI HD 4670

(work... they show ok on the device manager)

But I never got it fully working, best I got on one reboot, was to have on Linux the physical screen showing a console (text) and working 100% (text) but not graphics.... never managed to do the same ever again... it works best on XP 32 with my ATI 4670 I see the two external screens of the card on display but as soon as I enable them I the VM freezes!!

With nVIdia cards I sometimes manage to enable the external screen, I can see the mouse going over to it but if I move a window to it it will freeze...

It's so close......

Can you please tell me what is the exact brand and model of your ATI 3450?

[BAM279]

Hi,

my specific brand 3450 was one of these: http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/?cid=1&gid=3&sgid=307&pid=164&psn=&lid=1&leg=1 .

This card also has onboard HDMI audio which is passed through the DVI port and this is indivudlaly listed as a passthrough device in ESXi.  I have not tried it as I dont have an HDMI tv, and im passing through my Audigy 2ZS for audio already anyway, but it might be of interest to you if you do...  I have also just passed the ATI card and not passed this HDMI audio device and thankfully the card still works perfectly on its own, which means you wont be forced into having to pass this extra device through in case you are tight on free passthrough device assignments (max of six).

Similarly, the Audigy2ZS has three passthrough devices separately listed, the audio card, the gameport and the firewire port - and thankfully once again you can pass just the audio card device through on its own without the others and it still works perfectly (altough as previously mentioned, analog output is horribly distorted, you must use digital out, which is perfect)..

I have been continually using my new vm with vga passthrough without issue over the past few days so it looks like its fully stable   I just wish I had been able to get my nVidia 7200GS to work, as it is a bit better for custom resolution output than the ATI, especially with sub vga modes.  Maybe with a bit of luck, someone will find a cheap nVidia card that does work

Regards,

BAM.

[FuNK3Y]

Sadly, there are still some drawbacks with those old cards.

- You cannot get True HD audio passthrough

- DXVA is older and not as complete as in the new one

From what I understood from this thread, AMD series 2,3 and 6 seems to work with DXVA where the serie 5 don't.

I will manage to buy a HD6450 to see if my guess is correct, if it works it may be an excellent and inexpensive card.

According to the patchnote, some good is also to be expected from the upcoming version 5 of vsphere.

[jsnow201110141]

Hi,

I'd like to thank everyone who experiments with vga/gpu passthrough and posts the according system specs! this encouraged me to try it on my system too. here are my specs and results so far:

Motherboard: Asus P8B WS

- Chipset: Intel Cougar Point C206

CPU: Intel i7 2600 w/ iGPU Intel HD 2000

RAM: 8GB (2x 4096MB) Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1333 DIMM CL9-9-9-24 Dual Kit (non-ECC)

SSD: Corsair Force 3 120GB

(off topic: I'm still looking for a HD Tune bench with the same SDD model and the C206 as it doesn't perform as well as it should. Any hint is greatly appreciated!)

ESXi version: 4.1.0.update1-348481.x86_64

VM:

• OS: Windows 7      Ultimate 64bit

• RAM: 1024MB

• vCPUs: 1

GPUs tested:

iGPU Intel HD 2000

• worked neither as primary nor secondary (device could not be      started)

Zotac Nvidia GeForce 9500

• worked neither as primary nor secondary (device could not be      started)

ATI Radeon HD 4850

• worked neither as primary nor secondary (BSOD atikmdag.sys)

I tried different driver versions and always used a fresh install. I'm also curious and just ordered a 6450 (Sapphire Radeon HD 6450 512MB PCI-E (11190-00-20G) w/ DisplayPort). I'll post whether it works or not as soon as I get my hands on it ^^

cheers

Jason

[BAM279]

Hi Jsnow,

Regarding this:

ATI Radeon HD 4850

• worked neither as primary nor secondary (BSOD atikmdag.sys)

  
  

I had this happen once upon initial passthrough of my ATI HD 3450.  Try the following:

1.     if your ATI card also has the HDMI audio, pass it through as well, just until you get the catalyst driver installed - it can then be removed again

2.     Remove any other passed through devices to the vm temporarily

3.     This BSOD is a known issue with the 11.6 driver in general (from what ive read online, so its not necessarly being caused by passthrough)

4.     Boot into safe mode, disable the ATI card in device manager, reboot normally, re-enable the card, then try installing the catalyst driver again

Good luck!

BAM.

[exion84]

Hi,

nice idea jsnow.

My Hardware:

Motherboard: Intel DQ67OW

Chipset: Intel® Q67 Express Chipset (Intel Cougar Point)

CPU: Intel i5 2500T w/ iGPU Intel HD 3000

RAM: 6GB (2x 2048MB + 2x 1024MB)

ESXi version: 4.1.0.update1-348481

VGA: Intel HD 3000 + ATI RadeonHD 5450 512MB Silent Edition PCIe (1x Sub-D, 1x HDMI, 1x DVI) with HDMI Audio

VM Details:

OS: Windows XP 32-Bit

vCPU: 2

vRAM: 1800MB RAM (memsize = "1800", sched.mem.minsize = "1800")

VMDP1: ATI Technologies Inc Cedar Pro [Radeon HD 5450]

VMDP2: ATI Technologies Inc Manhattan HDMI Audio [Mobility Radeon HD 5000 Series]

ATI-Driver: 11.5

VMwaretools: VMware-tools-windows-8.3.7-381511

Well...

Windows installed and fully pached. Lastest VMware-Tools installed. ATI-Software installed (without problems).

After restart the Windows-Display-Settings shows 3 Display's (vmware display + 2 from Radeon). If I try to activate one of the Radeon displays the VM stops working vor 1Min and shows an BSOD (ati2dvag.sys 0x000000ea).

I've tried different VMware-Tools versions and a range of ATI-Drivers from 9.1 till 11.6 but always the same damn BSOD.

A suggestion anybody?

exion

[jsnow201110141]

Hi,

thanks BAM but unfortunately nothing worked. here's a little protocol of what I did:

fresh install - nothing passed through
installed vmware tools - rebooted, all good -> shut down (created snapshot)

configured both, gpu and hd-audio devices for passthrough:

01:00.0 | ATI Technologies Inc RV770 [Radeon HD 4850]
01:00.1 | ATI Technologies Inc HD48x0 audio

1st try:
windows boot logo, login screen - 2s later BSOD atikmdag.sys (no driver installed yet, Windows used the WDDM 1.1 driver dated 24.04.2009, v8.56.1.15)
booted into safe mode, disabled ATI 4850 card, booted to normal mode
started catalyst setup, during installation: BSOD atikmpag.sys

2nd try:
restored snapshot
booted into safe mode, started catalyst setup => Failed to load detection driver => aborted

3rd try:
restored snapshot
booted into safe mode, disabled VMware SVGA 3D
booted into normal mode, ATI 4850 shows as "This device is working properly" with WDDM 1.1 driver
started catalyst setup, finished successfully => reboot to normal mode
received popup "No AMD graphics driver is installed, or the AMD driver is not functioning properly. Please install the AMD driver appropriate for your AMD hardware."

activated VMware SVGA 3D => computer needs to be rebooted... done
boot into normal mode, windows logo and BSOD atikmpag.sys

4th try:

restored pre-vmware tools snapshot
booted into normal mode, ATI 4850 shows as "This device is working properly" with WDDM 1.1 driver, VMware SVGA 3D is not yet installed
started catalyst setup, finished successfully => reboot to normal mode
received  popup "No AMD graphics driver is installed, or the AMD driver is not  functioning properly. Please install the AMD driver appropriate for your  AMD hardware."

installed VMware Tools => reboot

boot into normal mode, windows logo and BSOD atikmpag.sys

for now I give up and wait for the 6450 to arrive...

something weird though, after each start or reboot, the vga cooler  goes full speed 4-6 times in ~1s intervals, on shutdown just 2 times
1s on, 1s off, 1s on, 1s off ... and so on - nothing serious, just thought I'd mention it

cheers

Jason

edit: ok, added one last try and a remark

[kelyiu3000]

I do want to know does anybody can VMDp the Intel integrated GPU as primary or secondary output?

I feel interest in it.

[jsnow201110141]

Hi,

at least not on my machine

jsnow wrote:

GPUs tested:

iGPU Intel HD 2000

• worked neither as primary nor secondary (device could not be      started)

maybe someone can try an HD 3000 but I have a feeling that it won't make a difference. Still waiting for my 6450 though...

cheers

Jason

[exion84]

GPUs tested:

iGPU Intel HD 3000 @ Win7-64 and WinXP-32

• worked neither as primary nor secondary (device started, 2 extra displays listed but cant be activated -> display return to disabled status after accept)

Waiting for yout 6450 report jason i have ordered one too

exion