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?

[derickso]

I just use windows media player built in to windows media center, but I've seen it work fine inside Firefox/Chrome for playing flash/silverlight content.

[sjnobles]

ok, gotcha.  I think mine might be working using dxva there, just not MKV's with x264.

[mozzie]

What is the best ATI Gfx card to get guys that has been tested with passthrough under 5.0/5.1 running Windows/OSX/Linux guests?

Cheers!

[mindless728]

I have a 7970 in passthrough and it works wonderfully (I use 5.0)

[vintagedon]

I'm successfully passing through a 7970, a low profile 6670, a 7950, and 7850.  I've also used a couple of 5xxx series cards.  My son's VM uses the 7970 and he games on two 24" monitors passing HDMI over CAT6 and then displayport to VGA over CAT6.  Works perfectly.

[mozzie]

great, sounds like I have a choice. I might go for the passively cooled asus 7750. I want the system to be as quiet as possible.

[sjnobles]

What are you using for keyboard/mouse on the passthrough VMs?  Also are you running 5.0 or 5.1?

[vintagedon]

What I'm doing is using USB over CAT5 adapters (keyboard/mouse don't need to be USB 2.0, so you can get away with the cheaper adapters).  So, for example, I pass my video over CAT6 using a HDMI-->CAT6 adapter, and then I've run another line of CAT6 that I pass USB over and terminate it in a powered USB hub.  Off that hub, I can run the mouse, keyboard, USB drives, and whatever else I need.  At the moment, I have 4 VMs running like this: my son's computer (full on gaming, and I also run a second monitor dropping displayport to VGA and then passing the VGA over CAT6), my wife's computer (general use and light gaming), and two XBMC VMs.  It takes a minimum of 2 nodes to do this, as you need a PCI-e slot, obviously, for each video card.

Currently, I'm running 5.0 as there are some proven issues with passthrough with 5.1.  As a test, I made a clone of my USB stick for a node and then upgraded that node to 5.1, and the VMs using passthrough on that node no longer worked.  Just plugged in the clone of the USB stick and went back to normal.

This month has seen some fairly large changes to the lab (just added a homemade standalone 32TB SAN for the lab, for example), which I'll be updating the site soon (been SO busy), but this basic setup has remained the same.  I'm sure there are other ways to do it, but I've found this works wonderfully for my needs.

[sjnobles]

I wonder if it's my card cards (6450 and 5450) that are the reason DXVA isn't working.  Passthrough seems to be working fine otherwise (5.1 U1) but ofcourse I can't passthough USB controllers or HID devices.

Sounds like you have a pretty nice setup.  Do you pass the hub to the VM or the individual devices 1 by 1?  Also, what motherboard are you using?

[GBowman]

I have tried 3xxx, 5xxx and 6xxx cards without DXVA success but I have never tried a 7xxx card.  I have a GA-X58A UD3R mobo and have had it running 5 graphics cards at once without issue, 1 was in an x1 slot.  With this number of cards though I ran out of USB controllers to pass through even with the USB3, I never tried USB passthrough only PCI passthrough of the physical USB controller.  This was with Version 5.0.

[vintagedon]

SJNobles,

I've done both: passing through the individual devices, and passing through an entire USB card to the machine, the latter of which I've found more reliable.  With the XBMC VMs, I've had some issues with wireless keyboards going offline, most likely from them sleeping, and ESXi disconnecting them (this is only conjecture, I haven't investigated much further).

My go-to motherboard has been the ASRock 970 Extreme3 or the Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3.  You can see my lab, and full information on my builds at http://thehomeserverblog.com

[dd3]

Hi,

i have build a new haswell pc (asrock z87 extreme 4 + i5-4570 non-K), installed 5.1 u1 esxi. Succesfully passed thru amd 7790 and motherboard sound controler to win8 vm but cant get the last piece - mice+keyboard.

On 5.1 usb passthrough is broken (usb controler disapears after reboot) and i cant install any version prior 5.1 u1. Even 5.1 201303001 or 5.0 u2 doesnt work, installator comes to disc selection, but nothing there, no hdds, ssds (pluged to mb sata controler and asmedia additional controler) or usb thumbdrive. Any ideas?

[Krede]

I'm using VMdirectPath with Raden HD 5450 - all youtube videos are just showing a green screen until I untick "Hardware Acceleration" - is there a fix for that?

Im running Windows 8.1 in the VM thats has the problem.

[ciuly]

I managed to get my setup working. After failing with the BOXDQ67OWB3 last year, I ordered a MSI Z77A-GD65 at that time and I only recently managed to get around and test the GPU passthrough. And after setting the pciHole and msiEnabled= false, it worked.(CPU is Intel i7-2600 @ 3.4Ghz)

I'm curious to see if anyone with the BOXDQ67OWB3 who failed before is able to get it working with the msiEnabled= false solution. Don't forget to try different pcie slots.

[blipszyc99]

Krede - Are you using 5.0U2 or 5.1U1?  Also, what am I missing?  I'm trying this with a 5450 - card is passed through, Windows 7 see's it and I've loaded the drivers (13.6 I believe).  In the Screen Resolution settings, I get "Unknown non-PNP monitor" and "display on VGA" both seem to be the VMWare console.

[blipszyc99]

My second question - as I only plan on streaming MKVs from a NAS, do I need DXDA features?

[Krede]

I´m using 5.1U1 with latest patched. My monitor (TV) is found - but hardware acceleration doesn't Work.

[KiwiDave]

Anybody tried 5.5 yet?

[dd3]

yes i tried 5.5 with amd 7790 card and its working. also onboard audio and usb passthru is working for usb pcie cards and onboard usb ports (need EFI instead of BIOS for VM). For EFI VM and gpu passthru pciHole start and end parameters was needed.

For usb passthru read recent posts in this thread: https://communities.vmware.com/message/2292344#2292344

[The_Dave]

Awesome...that's great news!