EVGA GeForce GT 710 2GB DDR3 video card is allowed only 128MB video memory

[bgwallace]

Team,

In ESXi 6.5, if I try to set the video memory of this card to anything higher than 128MB on my macOS Sierra VM, the following configuration error is thrown.

Failed to reconfigure virtual machine Brad-Mac-Server. Invalid configuration for device '0'.

Any ideas?  I would like to set it as high as possible hopefully even the full 2GB if supported.

Thanks!

Brad

[bgwallace]

bump

[TechMassey]

Sorry but you are mixing virtual video memory with physical video memory.

Unless you are directly presenting the video card to the VM, such as DGA (Direct Graphics Acceleration). The "Video Memory" you are configuring is just normal memory provided to a virtual video card inside the VM.

Interestingly enough, vSphere 6.5 supports exactly 2GB of video memory. However, that means that your host has 2GB to give in addition to the normal memory it is providing to your VMs.

[bgwallace]

Thanks for the reply TechMassey.  I didn't realize the "Total video memory" setting on the VM configuration was referring to how much system memory is allocated for video as opposed to the video card's memory.

How can I configure things so that instead of the VM using the system memory for video it uses the 2GB of video card memory?  I've enabled Passthrough for my video card in the ESXi web client but the macOS VM still only sees the 128MB virtual memory so I'm not sure what I'm missing.

Regards,

Brad

[TechMassey · Accepted solution]

I wish I had some good news but you have run up against the very large and nearly impregnable compatibility wall. While VMware lets you do passthrough for PCI devices if your motherboard/cpu supports VT-D. The hardware you are presenting must also be compatible with the vSphere technology being utilized.

In this case, you have entered vSPhere vDGA (Virtual Direct Graphics Acceleration) land and that has its own compatibility list. Which your card is not on the list unfortunately.

Here is a link: VMware Compatibility Guide - vdga