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icecats
Contributor
Contributor

Nvidia graphics card working on VMware workstation 10

Hi everybody,

I am using vmware workstation 10 to have a virtual machine for the games; but i checked that when I am running a game on the virtual machine I have problem with graphic, because the virtual machine is not using physically the graphic card. How can I fix this problem?

thanks in advance

13 Replies
rsicilia
Expert
Expert

Have you enable 3D acceleration in your virtual machine settings?

--

Rocco Sicilia

Rocco Sicilia [aka: BrC] - http://www.roccosicilia.it - VTSP 4-5, VCP 4-5, vExpert 2013/2014
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icecats
Contributor
Contributor

Hi Rocco,

Yes I enabled the 3D acceleration in the virtual machine, but is not possible to let the vmwarw workstation to use my graphics card?

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi icecats

No you cannot assign your graphics card to the virtual machine as your host would no longer have a graphics card to use. The hardware your virtual machine sees is virtual, not actual hardware.

For more on the concepts, have a look at Frequently Asked Questions about VMware Fusion and in particular the paragraph "Virtual Hardware".

Note: even while the article is about VMware Fusion, the concepts discussed are exactly the same for VMware Workstation.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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icecats
Contributor
Contributor

Ok, thanks, now I understand.

But wila, another question:

and is that impossible even if I connect a second viedo card? I mean another one to use only for the virtual machine?

Thanks in advance

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

No you can't do that on VMware Workstation.

VMDirectPath IO / PCI Passthrough is only supported on vSphere.

In this case the host OS needs to have special support for passing through the PCI card and a non specialized OS like Windows or Linux sadly has no support for that.

With ESXi/vSphere it can be gotten to work, but it depends on many factors, see also TinkerTry IT @ home | GPU Passthrough? (VMDirectPath/VT-d/PCI Passthru)

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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Kelnor
Contributor
Contributor

Also, to enable direct access to a GPU (or any PCIe device I think) your processor must support it.

For Intel it's called :Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d)

For example the i7-3770K does not support this: ARK | Intel® Core™ i7-3770K Processor (8M Cache, up to 3.90 GHz)

You can search for you Intel model to see if VT-d is supported. As for AMD, I'm not sure what it's called.

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BillEdwardz
Contributor
Contributor

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Linjo
Leadership
Leadership

That video is not showing passthorugh, its clearly DX9 and the VMware SVGA driver that is being used.

// Linjo

Best regards, Linjo Please follow me on twitter: @viewgeek If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".
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BillEdwardz
Contributor
Contributor

That still a good way to boost graphical performance on a VM? Or is there no benefit? If there is how would I go about setting it up?

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ronlaws86
Contributor
Contributor

"In this case the host OS needs to have special support for passing through the PCI card and a non specialized OS like Windows or Linux sadly has no support for that."


I know this is an ageing thread, but I feel i need to point out for anyone arriving via google. that this is at least no longer true, from personal experience, linux does in fact support PCI Passthrough as long as the board has IOMMU support in the bios (and respective VTx on the processor), the problem is not the Host system, so much as it is software support, At present, qemu is the only apparent solution that gives you the option for pci passthrough devices, though it is a little fiddly to set up, but fairly well documented online.

here is a video of this feature running on bog standard Desktop Linux/Ubuntu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37D2bRsthfI

you are right to point out that the host loses access to the card when it becomes assigned to the virtual machine, but Linux is able to work completely headless, and remains active even if a graphics card is not present. this particular setup in the video also has 2 PCI graphics cards leaving one available to the host system at all times, i've managed to get this working with using the onboard gfx as the boot device, and assigning the disused PCI gfx card to a VM with success.

Magmai_Kai_Holm
Contributor
Contributor

Linux natively supports PCI-pass through with KVM & QEmu.
It's been working for years.

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Hugomor
Contributor
Contributor

This is still issue, because last Vmware 3D driver for Windows XP is 2,5 years old and probably will be never upgraded, so only solution for proper Win XP gaming is not virtualization but physical machine, or Unraid.

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frkca
Contributor
Contributor

Even though this is old thread - there is still an issue with PCI passthrough - even in ESXi 6.0 and the workaround isn't well documented. It's just so simple in the end - you need to add below to the vmx config:

hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = FALSE

And that's all!

Ref [https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/982322/linux/nvidia-smi-reports-unable-to-determine-the-dev...]

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