Setup:
- ESXi 5.5u3 on Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 motherboard (whitebox setup)
- 32GB unbuffered ECC
- Radeon 5450 GPU, ESXi console output
- Radeon 6450 GPU, passthrough
- Radeon 5450 GPU, passthrough
- USB 3.0 cards, passthrough
I've been using this setup for years. I had a major issue today where the 5450 GPUs no longer are detected by ESXi as passthrough devices in Advanced Settings, so I removed one of the 5450 GPUs.
The only way I can get one of the 5450s detected as passthrough in ESXi is if I make it the first PCIe and that's the primary ESXi console output (via BIOS). If I change primary BIOS output to PCIe2 and have the 6450 there, the 6450 will output the ESXi console to a monitor, but 5450 passthrough disappears. If I set BIOS primary output to PCIe1 which is a 5450, I'll see both the 5450 and 6450 as passthrough options. If I put the 6450 in PCIe1 and the 5450 PCIe2, the 5450 never shows up in passthrough, so the only option I have right now is 5450 in PCIe1 as primary console output, and 6450 in PCIe2 for passthrough.
Now, I use passthrough successfully to a VM with the 6450, and it shows up in Windows 7 (x64 pro) display manager, but no matter what I do, in display settings, it only sees the SVGA as a display output. I've tried different drivers, removing (even deleting drivers) for the 6450 and/or the SVGA, just can't get it to work. Windows sees both, but I cannot output to the 6450. Any ideas?
I would build a whole new system, but I haven't found a nice article on a 6.7 whitebox with new hardware. There's a lot else going on in the system, but when I was diagnosing I was running nothing but this Windows VM and testing with it.
