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mozzie
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Radeon/Nvidia VMDirectPath

Hi

I am toying with the idea of using my NASA spec'd workstation as a multi-role hypervisor for 3d gaming, media and general stuff.

With this in mind, does anyone know if the AMD Radeon R9 290x is capable of being passed through to a Guest VM using vmdirectpath? Would there be a significant performance drop in DX11 gaming if so?

Also, I am under the impression that to passthrough a Nvidia GTX 780 or equivalent, you need to use Nvidia's grid/k series cards for full virtualization and pass through capabilities, is this true?

Thanks in advance.

-Michael

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mozzie
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Anyone? All i want to achieve is dedicating my nvidia 670 to 1 VM. I am not concerned with GPU sharing.

Thanks

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Linjo
Leadership
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mozzie wrote:

I am toying with the idea of using my NASA spec'd workstation as a multi-role hypervisor for 3d gaming, media and general stuff.

With this in mind, does anyone know if the AMD Radeon R9 290x is capable of being passed through to a Guest VM using vmdirectpath?

Yes that should work fine.

mozzie wrote:

Would there be a significant performance drop in DX11 gaming if so?

There will probably be some performance drop but not much.

mozzie wrote:

Also, I am under the impression that to passthrough a Nvidia GTX 780 or equivalent, you need to use Nvidia's grid/k series cards for full virtualization and pass through capabilities, is this true?

Only a few PCIe-cards are tested and supported but most cards should work, you should not need any GRID/K series card.

But the main question is how you are planning to interact with the virtual machine? If you are thinking of using View/PCoIP then you need a GPU that supports Monteray/NFBC, that would be the GRID/Quadro 2/3/4/5/6K cards.

// 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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mozzie
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Thanks Linjo

I plan to connect my monitor to the radeon/nvidia card, passthrough this card to a windows 8.1 VM guest and use it in the same way as a physical PC. I'm guessing this is OK?

I also heard of some issues that rebooting the VM would lose connection to the gfx card and end up with a blank screen at the logon prompt, can you confirm this?

Cheers

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Linjo
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Hmm, ok. It will not be an easy path.

Start with reading this thread: VMDirectPath and ATI Radeon

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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mozzie
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Yes, i have read that thread a few times, mostly talks about radeon experiences. There is no mention of anyone trying to passthrough an Nvidia 6xx or 7xx series card to a vm under ESXi 5.5.

I don't want to splash out a new nvidia card if there is no way of dedicating it directly to a single VM.

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siruba
Contributor
Contributor

I had this exact same set up planned, but sad to report it does not work with R9 290.

Like you mentioned, it worked for the first time the vm host is boot up, and the first start up of the guest. However, if the guest is restarted, the graphics card just seemed to be locked up. On the next boot the display would be back to the VMware SVGA adapter, and the AMD card shows up with an error in device manager ("Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems").

The only way to get the card to work again is to reboot the esx 5.5 host.


I have another AMD 5770 which worked flawlessly as expected (which made me shell out the cash for the 290...). Hopefully it is just software problem which could be fixed.

mozzie
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

That is not good news. I was going to buy a 290x with aftermarket cooler but if it doesn't like a Guest VM reboot, then I might have to reconsider.

I do have a HD 7750 and this works fine with latest AMD drivers. Did you change BIOS to primary display [PCIExpress], install latest beta drivers from AMD site?

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wenlez
Contributor
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YOu know what, I have ESXi5.0 U3 installed, and I can passthrough a HD7850 and use it to play game flawlessly. But I can not do the same with my R9 290. No matter what I do,  The VM seems not able to use the R9 290. I have the latest beta driver installed, and the R9 is recognize, but with a exclamation mark. I have not try with ESxi5.5 yet because in 5.5, the onboard Intel Storage SATA is broken ( can not passthrough ).

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mozzie
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Enthusiast

Anyone tried a 290x and ESXi 5.1 and/or 5.5?

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wenlez
Contributor
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I can't speak for ESXi5.5, but in ESXi5.0U3,  My R9 290 aren't recognized, and when they are passthrough to the Windows 7 ( 64bit, EFI boot ), the R9 290 couldn't be used.

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siruba
Contributor
Contributor

The R9 290 (basically the same card as 290x) I have used with ESXi 5.5 would not pass through properly in 5.1. After choosing the card+audio (along with some USB controllers) for passthrough and reboot the host, it simply reverts itself - only the USB controller remains in the list and the 290 is back unchecked.

This should be a general bug of the 5.1 line. PCI passthrough had been a mess during that time.

I have finally bought a R9 270x which is just a rebranded last generation chip with improved clock, and it worked perfectly with 5.5. I would imagine the same goes for R9 280x (though I haven't tried one myself), that would be the best card available which work properly with passthrough.

mozzie
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Interesting, I find that 5.1u2 driver rollup works better than 5.5 for passthrough. I have a x79 c600 chipset/board and can passthrough onboard usb3.0, SATA, nvidia k6000, PCIe usb 3.0 card and AMD 7550, with absolutely no issues. I did have problems passing through onboard usb 3.0 and SATA with 5.5.

Did you try a 290x or 290 with 5.5?

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siruba
Contributor
Contributor

I actually have 2 - one R9 290 flashed to 290X, and another one unflashable. Both exhibited the same behavior on ESXi 5.5.

mozzie
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Shame. I have a modded 780ti as Quadro K6000, so I am not too fussed. Thought it would be nice to have the new MSI 290x card running in ESXi though.

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