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?

[ciuly]

you can use the short url http://is.gd/esxgpu it is probably easier to remember

[spoonuk]

More problems, this time with Radeon HD6450 which supposed to work... Windows 7 x64 BSOD's after drivers installation during reboot:

I can successfully pass-through my Startech USB3.0 card so pass-through is working fine for non GPU peripherals.

Before drivers are installed Radeon HD6450 shows up with error 10 i.e. device failed to start etc.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

[technobro1]

Hi spoonuk

What hardware, what version of esxi

Did you pass the pcihole .... 1200 , 2200 ?

EFI bios ?

how much ram in the VM, try first whit 1.5GB

did you install vmtools first ?.

You can try whit only the gpu not usb

reboot the server ..

Also in my case i had to disable audio onboard , and put primary GPU =pci in my bios

Good luck you are close.

Take snapshot of your vm before attemting to pass...

[heatvent]

What version of ESXi?  For 5.5u2 I did not have to pass through pcihole but did get errors in past versions about this.

I would check the following:

• Did you dedicate the memory for the VM.  You have to do this in the VMWare client, resources, memory settings.  There is a tickbox to dedicate the memory.  My understanding if you don't do this you will likely get BSOD or PSOD.
• If that is set, I would try starting over and remove the card from the VM and even passthrough and then reboot and resetup.
  • Add VMWare tools to VM
  • Shutdown VM
  • Add card as passthrough device in ESXi
  • Reboot host
  • Add card to VM as pci device
  • Make sure memory is dedicated
  • Start VM
  • If OK, install ATI/AMD drivers

I would also add, I found that sometimes when you first.setup passthrough you have some issues but it seems to clear up / stabalize over time.

[ZanZel]

Has anyone managed to install catalyst control center?

I have managed to hook up my TV via HDMI to the passthroughed GFX card, a Radeon R7 250.

The picture presentet suffers from underscan, and I need the CCC to be able to correct this problem.

I tried installing the 11.14 drivers from amd.

EDIT: I have gotten everything to work perfect now. I have a working virtual media-pc with passthrough for amd R7 250, onboard sound and a usb3.0 card.

I had to install some old drivers to get CCC installed (14-4-win7-win8-win8.1-64-dd-ccc-whql)

Running on esxi 5.5, 2302651

Message was edited by: ZanZel

[worthlutz]

Has anyone gotten pass-thru working with Ubuntu 14.04?  I've got ESXI 5.5 installed and have passed thru a Radeon HD6450 to Windows but when I try to pass it to Ubuntu I get the following error:

     *ERROR* Unable to locate a BIOS ROM

Any ideas?

[garrettc134]

I have the same issue with 14 and an Radeon Card. I believe there is a semi complicated method that involves extracting the rom from the video card and including it into the OS. Sorry I don't have the link, maybe someone else does. When XBMC used to use 12.x for XBMCbuntu, the pass-through worked fine for me. Solution, use outdated OS?

[worthlutz]

I had the same problem with Ubuntu 12.04.  I sure would like to figure this out.

Any one else got any ideas? 

HD6450 and Ubuntu 14.04  and *ERROR* Unable to locate a BIOS ROM

[garrettc134]

My Xbmcbuntu is based on 12.10 ubuntu so maybe try that. Problem is that version is not an LTS.

[_z3r0]

Hi. I have a R7 240 with ESXi 5.5 Update 2. When install the drivers, the drivers not recognized the graphic card. What version of ESXi  did you install? Thanks.

[derickso]

Out of curiosity, has anyone been brave and tried ESXi 6 yet?

[mixback]

Hello,

Running ESXI 6.0

System:

ASUS P8H77M PRO / i3770s

32G Ram

XFX R9 280

What works:

PCI passthrough works for R9 280..

What works differently:

NTP needed to be manually "fixed"

DirectX for older software now causes flickering.. I copied over a VM from 5.5 to 6.0 and without changing any settings the direct 3d causes artifacts/flickering.

R/s

[d0c5i5]

I am so frustrated that I can't get this working properly with my setup. Granted, this was not my primary purpose, but I was fully expecting to be able to stick in any of my pcie video cards and pass it through, navigating whatever issues that arise (I expected to run into issues with two dispalys (one virtual, one hardware), however I wanted a quick and easy way to make a gaming PC out the back of my ESXi server(s).

In short, I think I have just gotten very unlucky with my graphics card selection. The only graphics card that I purchased was a w7000, in order to test out vsga. that, itself, works, but it isn't suitable for gaming (I hadn't intended it to). I first tried to switch the w7000 to dedicated it to one vm, but it never displays anything.

I have also tried a few other ATI and Nvidia cards, but none seem to work (similar issue). I AM able to setup other PCI cards and pass them through fine, so I know at least the underlying hardware is fine.

When I get home I'll come back and post a few specifics on my hardware, but I think I have resolved to spend a few more bucks and get a video card that is known to work (by the community, since I do not think this is a supported configuration from VMware).

Is there a list of known working video cards, preferably one that has the fewest issues? I would like to go with whatever is the latest generation that works (but I am by no means looking for a top of the line card, unless it just happens to be the most compatible).

As a side note, depending on the answer, and how much it costs I may swap out w7000 for it, since my testing is done and I may not find a good use for it ongoing.    

[ciuly]

not exactly waht you want, but you can use the information in our community spreadsheet to see which card appears the most with success: http://is.gd/esxgpu

Of course, if any card appears with failure that doesn't mean it is the cards fault, just keep that in mind, it may just be the configuration of MB+CPU that doesn't cut it, or the users inability to properly configure it. But it's a good start

[jhusen]

fwiw, I'm currently passing through a Radeon HD 7850 on ESXi 5.5. I tried upgrading to the new 14.x Omega drivers, and that caused my vm to fail to start.

I've also tried the v4900 and was able to pass that through as well. It's not completely analogous to your setup, but it's still a workstation card with the FirePro driver.

[bbryson]

Trying to get a dual monitor passthrough setup working on ESXi 6.0 using two Radeon R7 250s. They work perfectly individually. Windows 8.1 installs the drivers automatically, and USB passthrough even works.

But when I pass both Radeons through simultaneously, the VM boots and one monitor shows a login screen while the other monitor is off. Waiting less than a minute, the second monitor appears to try and power on, but then the VM crashes and turns off.

Log entry at crash time:

2015-04-22T01:03:26.776Z| vmx| I120: [msg.log.error.unrecoverable] VMware ESX unrecoverable error: (vmx)

2015-04-22T01:03:26.776Z| vmx| I120+ PCI passthru device 0000:01:00.0 caused an IOMMU fault type 2 at address 0xd0000000.  Powering off the virtual machine.  If the problem persists please contact the device's vendor.

• Guest memory is reserved
• Have tried 1, 2, 4, and 8GB RAM
• Experimented with pciHole start/stop: 1200/2200, 1200/3200, 1200/4200 but makes no difference
• Tried both SCSI and IDE virtual device nodes for HDD
• Installed OS with EFI bios
• Installed VMWare tools prior to enabling passthrough
• Onboard sound disabled in BIOS

Do I need to start looking at alternative graphics cards? Anyone out there running a dual monitor passthrough without issues?

[d0c5i5]

bbryson: I have no solution for fixing that (I myself can't even get one working), however, depending on what kind of workload/flow you want to have, you could use your working setup with something like synergy. Both would be running with full/native graphics, and you could retain the same keyboard/mouse as well as some features like clipboard. You wouldn't be able to drag windows between them (or multi-screen apps/games), but that may or may not affect you.

Sorry and I hope you find a solution. I am stuck at getting ANY of the 6 or 7 cards I have to pass through to even one PC, and would be very happy if i could just manage that. 4 of them are ATI, but I can't seem to figure out how to avoid that _THREADS_ bluescreen.

[ciuly]

you have dual monitor support on the cards themselves. any particular reason you want them both in the VM just to be able to use 2 monitors?

[bbryson]

d0c5i5, ideas appreciated. Unfortunately I need two screens tied to the same OS/instance. I agree this stuff can be frustrating, but the light at the end of the tunnel looks incredible, as we all can imagine. Unfortunately it seems I spoke too soon. After reverting back to a single monitor passthrough I'm experiencing intermittent audio issues. It's related to mouse activity over the USB passthrough (sounds like a robot in an echo chamber). Either my settings changed, or I didn't run enough initial testing.

ciuly, good question. I'm limited to HDMI because the screens are 40 feet from the PC, hence one HDMI port per card. Honestly I hadn't considered the dual-output DVI option these cards have, although I'd like to avoid an active DVI extender due to my current investment in HDMI cabling. Maybe I could try a dual-port HDMI card, like the R7 240.

It seems accepted that this is still very experimental, which is understandable. Do many of these issues disappear when using a server-grade mainboard, or do the complications reside elsewhere?

[ciuly]

I use a DVI to HDMI adapter myself for my primary monitor. It was one of those cheap adapters. It works well, but I'm still on 5.1 and not planning to upgrade any time soon. If it works, don't break it