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?

[wenlez]

For those that is using 5.5 U1, or just upgraded to 5.5 U1. Can you can confirm if the onboard SATA can be passthroughed?   in ESXi5.5, my Onboard H77 SATA ports are not working when in passthrough mode. It can be assigned to a VM, but VM don't see it.

[likeahoss]

5.5 U1 here, cannot confirm pass-through for onboard SATA ports.  Can confirm Raw Device Mapping to local SSD.

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1026256

http://blog.davidwarburton.net/2010/10/25/rdm-mapping-of-local-sata-storage-for-esxi/

[sh0ck-wave]

For the Realtec driver you can just install v5.1.0.U1 (build 1065491) and then upgrade it to v5.5.0 (build 1331820) after the first restart.

I've done this a couple times and the Realtec driver works fine in v5.5 for an Asus Z87M-Plus motherboard and i7-4771.

Yes it makes it a two stage install, but it's very fast anyway.

Actually haven't had any passthrough problems in v5.5 for a Win7 system with a Gigabyte 7750 OC 2GB :

- make sure you configure your Win7 VM as EFI before you install it

- reserve the memory and set it to at least 2GB

- install and configure the Win7 system

- passthrough the GFX card, load up Win7 and install the drivers from the CD

- restart then passthrough the audio and USB

- Configure Win7 to only use the display hooked up to the GFX card (this kills any console view, but since there's now a keyboard and mouse now hooked up directly to the VM running on another screen it doesn't matter)

Haven't needed to turn off the onboard 4600 or audio, or change any other settings.

Other VM's all fire up sweet with the onboard GFX card (Ubuntu 12.4.4, Server 2008 R2, etc) at the same time.

[Linjo]

5.5U1 is not released yet, not sure where you got that from...

// Linjo

[likeahoss]

My mistake.  I think I started the confusion.  I meant 5.5 Patch 1 (build 1474528), not Update 1.

[technobro1]

Hi everyone,

I just want to share my new vtd adventure.

Successfully pass a ati 6850 and usb to OSX 10.9 under Esxi 5.5.

Question1: is anyone tried 2 GPU cards , 2 Os

Question2 : is anyone got gpu vtd pass / esxi on a laptop.

[shawndavis19]

In response to technobro1's second question, this has been my goal all along, to pass the video via PCoIP to thick, thin, or zero client.  I thought many were doing this when reporting success, but I think all the success stories were either high end quardro cards, or people connecting monitors directly to their video card by HDMI, VGA, or DVI.  I was also chasing another method where someone was using a program called emulateEDID to trick the system into thinking a monitor was connected to the video card and they could then get remote passthrough to work, but form me I had no such luck.

Has anyone tried vSGA with VMware View and a more affordable Quadro K600 card?  If so, what was the performance like, could you watch high quality video at high resolution and play any games?

[shawndavis19]

https://communities.vmware.com/message/2291367‎

Link to emulateEDID method

[kevetss]

There is a Microsoft utility that can manage devices. I found that if I let the VM boot with both SVGA and AMD graphics adapters enabled, that I could then disable the SVGA card in windows and have full GPU acceleration in all my RDP sessions. Before rebooting, the SVGA adapter needs to be enabled or else it will boot into a graphics safe mode.

So I created scripts using the utility after I found the command and ID to use to disable and enable the SVGA card. I then added the appropriate scripts to my startup and shutdown script in group policy. That way it reboots reliably and we get the full benefits of the GPU passthrough.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/311272

Devcon is the utility. Link above. Good luck!

[matsca2m2]

My ESXI 5.5 Server reboots when I shutdown or restart in the Windows7 VM.

In bios I have selected the internal graphics as forced so that the ESXI machine uses the internal gfx card. Then I have directpassthrough of the Radeon 6450 card to windows7 and it works great except that if I restart or shutdown the Windows7 VM the whole server reboots.

Anyone else who had this problem or know how to fix it?

ESXi 5.5

Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3H R3.0

AMD A-Series A8-5500 3,2GHz Socket FM2

32Gb PNY Premium DDR3 PC10660/1333MHz CL9

LSI MegaRAID 9211-8i 2.0 SAS/SATA

Asus Radeon EAH6450 Silent/DI/1GD3(LP) 1GB

Thanks in advance!

[afarrugia]

Hi i have a problem, where by vedios play fine for 20-30 seconds and then slow to half frames if not less and tearing the audio. it is a new issue before yesterday every thing was running fine. the video and audio are both through the HDMI cable to the receiver through to the tv i am running the lasted Radeon drivers. i have tried uninstalling and deleting both audio and video drivers restoring and install to no improvements

ever thing else in the vm windows 7 runs fine while this is happing to the video. this does not happen when play games i.e. Diablo 3 i get 120fps on ultra

my system is

mb - Asus Z87-A

intel i5-4670

2 x 125Gb Scandisk SSD

32 gb kingsten DDR3

GPU Radeon R9 260 - passthrough to windows 7

USB3 pcie card - passthrough to windows 7

2 x LSI pcie cards  - passthrough to FreeNAS with 10 HDDs

1 x intel pcie nic

Esxi 5.5

-FreeNAS

     -CPU 1 socket, 1 core

     -22Gb Ram

-Windows 7

     -CPU 2 socket, 2 core - cap unlimited

     - 8Gb RAM

          any advise would be help full

[wton]

I was able to pass through my Radeon 4560 to a Windows 32 x86 VM on ESX 5.5 mostly with success.  Hardware acceleration seemed to be working, but I couldn't get any media center stuff to play.  There was audio, but I would just get a black screen for any recorded tv and live tv.  Was hoping to be consolidate my HTPC also, but looks like I'll just have to settle for just doing the recording on my server.  Has anyone been successful at getting the Microsoft Codecs to work properly with pass through?

[SilverEvoBob]

i would like to report my success and failures.

i got the following to work with xbmcbuntu,

asrock 970 extreme4

amd 8320

16 gb memory

esxi 5.5

hp p410 (had to set the system to boot uefi)

xfx 6670 1 gb for passthrough

nvidia card for console

both onboard usb3 controllers passed through for ir remote and bluetooth keyboard and mouse

my xbmcbuntu 12.2 vm has working 5.1 and dxva

my windows 8 vm i had to manually install the realtek amd 5.1 driver and dxva does not seem to work it just uses cpu to decode no matter what i do.  if i turn on dxva it just gives me a blank screen on playback, i have to use pixel shaders or software to play movies.,  I have tried creating the vm with boot to efi and the vm ran very poorly.  any ideas on how to get dxva to work?  i have tried xbmc 12.3 and 13.0b3.  i tried a windows 7 vm but could not get the usb3 controller to pass through.

Hopefully this will help someone else as it took me a while to figure out.  If i want to try and get my gpu passed through to my windows 8 vm instead of xbmcbuntu i have to reboot the host otherwise windows 8 vm will not work properly.  So you cannot try multiple vms trying to get passthrough to work unless you reboot host in between.  I also had a 4650, 6570, and 56XX card that while i could get the GPU to passthrough the HDMI audio would work for a bit and then the system would have to be rebooted, the 6670 was the only card that would continue to work past 4-5 hours.  I have tried a HIS 6670 and a XFX 6670 and they both worked perfectly.

[ciuly]

I'm thinking of putting up a new ESXi with 64GB RAM, anybody did that successfully with passthrough (VGA + USB at a minimum) ? if so, what's your HW spec?

[kthree]

Hey everyone,

It's been a while. I've finally spent a bit more time on my setup after leaving a working 5.0U1 install alone for a a few years.

Was wondering if anyone came across the problem of not being able to pass through more than 3 (or 4) pci devices to a VM?

Adding a 4th one always prevents the VM from booting up, and the only way I have managed to get around this is changing the virtual disk to IDE (which then ups the limit to 4 devices).

I'm currently on 5.5U2

[ciuly]

there could be a memory limitation. a SCSI drive requires a larger addressable space than the IDE one. You could try mingling with the pciHole see if that helps.

[derickso]

How well does 5.5U2 work?  Did it solve the problems with devices not remaining assigned to the VM through reboots?  Were there any other lingering problems from 5.5 that didn't exist in 5.0?

[kthree]

I played around with the ordering of the passthrough PCI devices and it now works, it required a very specific order. For my case it's: AMD Video card > SATA controller > USB controller > Sound card.

Previously I was adding the SATA controller last and it was no good.

@derickso

Everything that I used it for in 5.0 now works in 5.5U2 (which is the main reason why haven't updated until now). Passthrough configuration retains after reboot, USB works (though I'm using intel onboard controller). Also the PCI devices are better labeled rather than just Unknown Device.

[garrettc134]

Can you give a little more detail on how you went about this. Running into same issue.

Much appreciated.

[bundyboyuk]

Hi Afarrugia,

I have exactly the same thing with the video playback issue appearing after few minutes, have you been able to fix it? I wonder if it is since I upgraded to 5.5u1

Thanks