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taylorjonl
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

VMDirectPath and ATI Radeon

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?

814 Replies
Davewolfs
Contributor
Contributor

How are you folks accessing your guest machines?  Do you display your guest directly off the host hardware or through some other machine?

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derickso
Contributor
Contributor

I have a TV plugged into my 7750 (using it for Windows Media Center functionality), but I also can use remote desktop.

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Davewolfs
Contributor
Contributor

What I am trying to understand is do I have the ability to output directly from my video card on my server?  Or do I have to use VMWare view/Remote Desktop to access everything?  If my video card supports multiple monitors, will I still have this capability?

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derickso
Contributor
Contributor

AFAIK at least one video card (onboard or dedicated) has to go to the VMware console.  If you have additional video card(s), and pass them through to VMs, then they will output whatever is in the VM.  And yes multimonitor should work fine.  You can optionally access them using vSphere client, but I turned off the output from the emulated video card so for remote access I use remote desktop instead.

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Davewolfs
Contributor
Contributor

Cool.  I know that this is an ATI thread, but how difficult is it to get a card to work with passthrough?  I have an Nvidia card.

How have you found performance on ESXI compared to native?

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derickso
Contributor
Contributor

I think as of right now Nvidia is a non-starter in ESX, and *extremely* difficult to get running in Xen.  Performance seems great, although to be fair MCE isn't particularly intense, other than on video decoding.  I do plan to do some gaming at some point, but haven't tried yet.

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GBowman
Contributor
Contributor

You can use the single and only graphics card for the guest machine output, I am doing this.  The console is then unusable it displays all the way through the boot up but then vanishes when the guest starts.  My keyboard is also on the shared USB so this starts connected to the host then gets connected to the guest when the guest boots.  Guests using ther own monitor are not usable through the VSphere remote interface as you dont have any display on the VMWare/VSphere monitor so its a blank screen, it passes keystrokes through though although mouse is not reponsive and darts all over.  I am hoping to get multiple graphics cards working so multiple guests will work on one host all with their own monitors.

As for performance it great.  My machine has been up for 12 months now running as an HTPC using mediaportal.  The wife and kids have no problems and its much more reliable than my previous HTPC although that could be the much more powerfull hardware.  Widnows experience index scores most things at 6-7 but the ram lets it down scoring just 5.5, however if I boost the ram to 4gb it goes up to 7.  I can and do game on it perfectly.  The only let down is I still cant get DXVA video acceleration to work so H.264's require all CPU decoding and neither blu rays nor DVD's will play.  I cant find a Blu Ray player that will work on a virtualised platform (corel actually brings up an error about virtualisation, Cyberlink just closes itself).  And DVD's wont play in Windows or Mediaportal siting regional issues, with a popular 'region free' peice of software running the performance is bad and unwatchable, they play perfectly in VLC however.

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derickso
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks GBowman, I wasn't aware you were using your sole video card.  My DXVA works properly, but I have the similar Blu-ray problems, Cyberlink's software only seems to look at the primary video card which is the VMware SVGA video card and lacks all the needed support, and the only ways I can think of to get a Blu-ray drive in to the Win7 VM would be to buy a SATA card with it attached and pass it through, or get a USB Blu-ray drive.  Alternatively you could use something like AnyDVD HD which I suspect might solve the video card problem if you can get your drive into the VM.

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GBowman
Contributor
Contributor

I have my optical drive on USB as the hub is already passed through it made sense to use it for as many things as possible.  AnyDVDHD can be used to remove HDCP and this makes Cyberlinks Blu Ray Advisor pass the system but Cyberlinks software will not run.  The version that ships with my Blu Ray drive (7 I think) runs but needs an update before it will play back Blu Rays, once this update has been carried out the software auto shuts down whenever it is run.  I have tried all the newer versions aswell and they all refuse to run.  Corel software recognises the virtual platform and pops up an error before shutting itself down.

DVD's is the strangest as they report a region error even though the region is set and correct, with AnyDVD the frame rate is very low which is od considering this machine can play back 1080p files with no issues.

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derickso
Contributor
Contributor

That is surprising behavior, have you tried filing a ticket with Cyberlink?   They should definitely have someone call them on the carpet for not supporting non-primary video cards.

I don't have an external DVD player but I'll ask around and see if anyone has one I could borrow and see if I have any better luck.

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Artwright
Contributor
Contributor

No, I dont know anyone else who has had success with this board with GFX passthrough.  I can passthrough other items fine, just not the GFX card.

I have 2GB assigned to the VM.  Tried the PCI.start and end hole config change.  Yeah you need to have the SVGA vmware adapter installed otherwise it doesnt detect the ATI card properly.  Have tried catalyst version 12.4, 12.6 and 12.7.  Windows BSOD the moment I plug in the monitor or enable it.  Installing drivers etc for it is fine.  Thats why I wanted to see if anyone else could definitely say that trying different GFX definitely helped them or whether it wont work at all.

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GBowman
Contributor
Contributor

In my experience the card makes no difference, I have tried 3 cards from 2 generations and get 100% the same results with all cards and all versions of Catalyst.  My opinion based on my findings is that it is dependant on the main board and also the port on the main board.  On both of my boards only 1 PCIe port works for graphics pass through.

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kthree
Contributor
Contributor

ASRock Z77 Extreme4-M with HD7850 here. Just posting to show that it seems ASRock boards seem to have trouble with passthrough through GPUs, but other devices are fine.

Like Artwright, I get BSOD the moment I plug monitor in. Win 7 x64 bootup also results in the same BSOD if monitor is already plugged in.

I swapped over to a HD4670, slightly different BSOD scenarios but also couldn't get it working.

Would be great if anyone having success with recent generation ASRock intel boards could post with any details.

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DMG210
Contributor
Contributor

I remember a little while back someone had success with a different bios revision. I have to agree its down to the motherboard and bios combination and not the type of gfx card, well providing its an ati. Smiley Happy

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madsheep
Contributor
Contributor

Hey

someone there have managed to pass through a GFX card in ESXI 5.0 with a DQ67SW motherboard and a I2500 cpu?

I have tried with the onboard  Intel HD graphics 3000 with no luck. It would be nice if someone could confirm working GFX card, for my board.

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astro99
Contributor
Contributor

I have the same motherbaord and have been unable to pass through a ATI Radeon 3450 with ESXi 5.  However the board does support vga pass through of this card using open source Xen.  See my previous post #238

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BrandonBBB
Contributor
Contributor

Are there any AMD setups that people have had plug and play or easy GFX passthrough setup experiences on?

Brandon

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terisk
Contributor
Contributor

I got this working on Windows Multipoint Server 2011. I am using a FirePro v5800. The key was this article: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=101170...

The default SVGA drivers don't allow multiple monitors. The OS effectively ignores other GPUs. My AMD showed up in device manager, but was simply not usable.

Once I updated the drivers, I had control again.

I am trying to allow for RemoteFX compression for Remote Sessions (terminal services). While I'm getting close, I still dont think hardware compression is working.

-Tim

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mindless728
Contributor
Contributor

So I have had my ESXi 5.0 install running for about a month or so with VMDirectPath passing through my GPU.

The build has worked for both the 4970 1GB from the previous desktop and also works with the 7970 that I know have

Though you cannot install the AMD Vision Center, results in the VM not being able to load again

Hardware:

AMD FX-8120

Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3

32GB (4x8GB) G.Skill Ares DDR3-1333 CL9

Intel EXPI9301CTBLK

EVGA GeForce 210

Adaptec 1430SA (FreeNAS)

VisionTek Reference 7970 (Windows)

Corsair AX850

OCZ Vertex LE 50GB

2 x WD Cavier Blue

4 x 500GB (Adaptec 1430SA)

VMs:

FreeNAS - Testing iSCSI + ZFS

Ubuntu 12.04 - Software Development

Windows 7 - Gaming and ESXi Management

Windows 7 - Testing

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BrandonBBB
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for replying.

Did you have to use a particular PCI-E slot on your mobo to get it to work?

Brandon

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