Using NVIDIA geforce drivers on Guest OS?

[deucejmp]

Hi,

I am running Workstation 6.5 on a host system with a NVIDIA 9600GT graphics card. Can I use the NVIDIA drivers in the guest OS? When I tried installing the 32-bit driver I got an error saying that the setup could not find any drivers that are compatible with my current hardware.

Host: Windows Server 2008 x64

Graphics: GeForce 9600GT

Guest: Windows Vista x32

Thanks,

Mike

[wila]

Hi,

Welcome to the VMware community forums!

I am running Workstation 6.5 on a host system with a NVIDIA 9600GT graphics card. Can I use the NVIDIA drivers in the guest OS? When I tried installing the 32-bit driver I got an error saying that the setup could not find any drivers that are compatible with my current hardware.

Sorry for nitpicking but that would be "could not find any devices that are compatible"... at least that is what it should have said.

The answer to this question is NO, you cannot install your NVidia drivers as the graphical card is not exposed to the virtual guest.

The guest only sees a virtual display device. If you have installed VMware Tools then your virtual display driver should already be installed with the best you can get.

If you are running a windows guest, you can enable directX in order to make it use some hardware accelerated features "directly" from your nvidia card.

For a more detailed explanation, see the paragraph "Virtual Hardware" in , this is from VMware Fusion, but the same story counts for VMware Workstation.

--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

Visit the VMware developers wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

[deucejmp]

"could not find any devices that are compatible"[http://www.vi-toolkit.com]

Correct--drivers was a typo. I meant devices.

I see the toolbar for installing VMware tools. I'll try that as soon as the guest is finished installing some updates.

I will probably be installing some graphic intensive software on the windows guest, such as Pro/ENGINEER, which I think requires OpenGL. Will this be a problem?

Thanks,

Mike

[wila]

I will probably be installing some graphic intensive software on the windows guest, such as Pro/ENGINEER, which I think requires OpenGL. Will this be a problem?

Yes I'm afraid that it will not work as well as you are hoping for as OpenGL is not supported (yet?), only DirectX is supported.

VMware policy is that they do not talk about possible future features in their products.

However you might want to add your voice for an OpenGL implementation here:

You might be able to run the mesa software OpenGL implementation, but IIRC that is only available for linux.

--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

Visit the VMware developers wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

[deucejmp]

Ok thanks.

An unrelated question: if I choose the two processor option, is that in reference to the host physically having two processors, or is that in reference to the number of "viurtual" processors for the guest? I'm asking because I have a core i7 (threaded quad core) and I can see that vmware is only using one thread from one core.

Thanks

[wila]

Hi,

That's in reference to how many virtual processors the guest will see. So if you set it to 2 then it will use two cores on your host.

The guest will then see them as two virtual CPUs.

--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

Visit the VMware developers wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com