Noob help - PCI passthrough

Xa3phod

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 19, 2012
Messages
170
Hey folks. I have Ubuntu on an X58 system. I would like to run Windows in a virtual machine and be able to access my GTX 1060 instead of using the virtualized graphics system which you cannot game on. I know a lot of games work in Linux, mine does not unfortunately.

For the uninitiated, how do you set it up so you can pass through the GPU to the virtual machine?

Thanks for the help.
 
Hey folks. I have Ubuntu on an X58 system. I would like to run Windows in a virtual machine and be able to access my GTX 1060 instead of using the virtualized graphics system which you cannot game on. I know a lot of games work in Linux, mine does not unfortunately.

For the uninitiated, how do you set it up so you can pass through the GPU to the virtual machine?

Thanks for the help.

If I'm not mistaken, I believe you'd need to run a bare-metal OS hyper-visor like ESXi to get pass-through PCI-E up and running. Perhaps someone else can correct me on that.

I'm interested in learning about this as well for MacOS virtualization (with hardware acceleration enabled). Wish I could be more help.
 
Are you sure your board supports IOMMU? I don't believe all X58 motherboards did

This is fairly straightforward guide: https://blog.zerosector.io/2018/07/28/kvm-qemu-windows-10-gpu-passthrough/

I run a passthrough setup with my Threadripper 1950X build, if you have any specific questions I'll try to answer. Figuring out if your board supports IOMMU is key though, since that's crucial to getting it working. Nearly all modern boards support it now, but it wasn't as standard back then.
 
If it's going to work on x58, you need a Xeon cpu, with Vt-d, and not all x58 boards will work.
I've tried it on a Gigabyte x58-udr3 with no luck.
 
Passthrough for graphics isn't as easy as normal PCI Passthrough. ESXi needs Quadro for this to work so unless something changed that I'm not aware of, it won't work without some hackory. You'll have better luck with KVM/qEMU, which is currently in your ballpark with Ubuntu.
 
I been doing this for years via ESXi. It is picky as hell however about esxi build, bios ver, driver revisions. Check the signature
 
I been doing this for years via ESXi. It is picky as hell however about esxi build, bios ver, driver revisions. Check the signature
AMD was easier, also with ESXi; problem th the "green" side of the GPU world has limitation coded in their driving detecting running in the virtual instance and don't support that. KVM has the VM in a strealth mode.
here my last attempt: https://hardforum.com/threads/kvm-two-os-and-two-nvidia-gpu.1895172/#post-1042286478
my hardware was limiting me eventually; and that didn't changed much.
 
As others have stated, make sure your board supports the required virtualization technologies. KVM will absolutely do it if the hardware supports it, I did this myself using debian as a base OS.

A few things I learned:
it's easiest if your integrated graphics and your discreet graphics use different drivers. Blacklist the driver of the discreet gpu so it doesn't do anything funky when it initializes that gpu on boot up. This probably isn't necessary anymore but when I started out it was a critical step that wasn't really commonly discussed.

Once you get your VM to boot, the gpu drivers to install, and everything working... back that image up immediately. It's way too big of a pain to re-do.
 
Thanks for all the help. It is Xeon, but I think I may use a Hypervisor with my Ryzen.
 
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