Guest OS: Windows 2003 Server Standard, Latest XenTools (v6.2.83713) installed. [root@xenserver-jamesc ~]# rpm -qa | grep xen..
Multi- OS gaming w/o dual- booting: Excelent graphics performance in a VM with VGA passthrough. Note: This articles is a technology/technique outline, not a detailed guide and not a how- to. It explains what is VGA passthrough, why you might be interested in it, and where to start. Even with the current abundance of Linux native games (both indies and AAAs), with WINE reliably running almost any not- so- new software, many gamers who use Linux on a daily basis tend to switch to Windows for playing games. Regardless of one’s attitude towards non- free software, it has to be admitted that if you wish to try out some of the newest titles, you have no other choice than running them on a Windows installation. This is why so many gamers dual- boot: having installed two operating systems on the same machine and using Windows for playing games and Linux for virtually anything else, they limit their usage of Microsoft’s OS for gaming only.
This popular technique seems handy – you get the luxury of using a Linux, and the gaming performance of Windows. But dual- booting is annoying because of the need of reboot to switch your context. Need to IM your friend while playing? Save your game, shut down Windows, reboot to Linux, launch IM, reboot to Windows, load your game. Switching takes a long time, is inconvenient, and therefore the player may feel discouraged to do so. What if you could run both operating systems at once? That’s nothing new, run a virtual machine in your Linux, install Windows within it, and voilà!
But a virtual machine is no good for gaming, the performance will be utter cr terrible. Playing chess might work, but any 3. D graphics won’t do because of the lack of hardware acceleration. The VM emulates a simple graphics adapter to display it’s output in a window of the host OS.
And that is where VGA passthrough comes in, and solves this issue. The idea. The key to getting neat graphics in a VM is to grant the virtual machine a full access to your graphics card.
![Xen Windows Guest Gaming Xen Windows Guest Gaming](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--aGIoVJX3GY/T9tj6EwpBPI/AAAAAAAABSM/r3t4ethnlgc/s1600/IMG_20120615_183158.jpg)
In Xen systems the Xen hypervisor is the lowest and most privileged software layer. This layer supports one or more guest operating systems, scheduled on the physical CPUs. User domains may either be unmodified copies of open-source or proprietary operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows, if. Guest. http:// Pingback: xen vps(). Pingback: Gaming () Pingback: windows and doors(). Популярное Хостинг сайтов на Linux Хостинг сайтов на Windows Конструктор сайтов REG.RU Серверы VPS на OpenVZ Серверы VPS на Xen Серверы VPS на Windows Облачный хостинг Бесплатная почта Администрирование сервера.
This means that your host OS will not touch this piece of hardware at all, and the guest OS will be able to use it as any other (emulated) hardware. The guest OS (presumably Windows) will load it’s own drivers for the graphics adapter, and will communicate with it natively! Therefore it will have full access to hardware acceleration and any other goodies that gear might provide (eg. HDMI audio). The idea of passing a VGA adapter to a virtual machine is usually named VGA passthrough.
Sounds crazy? Let me tease you: my setup is capable of smoothly running Watch_Dogs, Tomb Raider (2. Ultra settings at 6. FPS within that virtual machine, using NVIDIA’s GTX 7. And I get the luxury of running both OS at once – so I can switch between them in just a glimpse, without shutting down either one! This is astonishingly convenient. Because the dedicated graphics hardware will be reserved for the guest system, the host will need another graphics adapter to display anything.
Install Windows 7 or 8 in a virtual machine with full graphics acceleration for games, etc. Install and configure Linux Mint running on a Xen hypervisor. 2. vm passthru passthrough windows vga graphics gpu domu dom0.
So there comes the first hardware requirement: you need at least two graphic adapters. However, it is not uncommon – many new Intel processors have a build- in GMA – and if you are a gamer, chances are you have invested in a dedicated graphics card – so that makes two graphics adapters already. Let the host system use integrated graphics, and the guest will get the powerful dedicated graphics for games.
Because both graphic adapters will work independently and there is no way to compose their video output¹, you will need two separate displays, one for each system. This means either a set of two monitors, or a monitor with two video inputs (so that you can switch between them). You might also experiment with a KVM switch. Also keep in mind that it is not an easy thing to set up. While some claim they have succeeded on their first try, many others have struggled a lot. Personally, I spend about two weeks tuning things up to get my VGA passthrough running – and if we count hardware searching and preparations, then it took me two months. But it was completely worth it!
My current setup contains of: Intel i. K (4 x 2 x 4. 0. GHz)ASRock Z9. Extreme. 6NVIDIA GTX 7. GBand some 1. 6 gigs of RAMalso, a monitor with multiple video inputs (I switch video source using buttons on the monitor)Ubuntu 1. As I have mentioned, this set is capable of running very demanding games at maxed settings with amazing results.
How does it work in practice? It feels as if I was running both systems at once.
For example, while playing a game under Windows, my Linux has an IM client running. Because I mix the sound from both systems, I can hear the notification when I get a message. So I pause the game, switch monitor video source with a hotkey shortcut, respond to the message, and switch the video back. If only I had two monitors, I would play on one of them, with the host system using the other one – so I wouldn’t even need to touch the monitor to switch the OS, I would just need to rotate my head a little bit ; -)Getting here was a lot of work, but a lot of fun too!
The first step is to meet the…2. Hardware requirements. Yeah. Not every machine will be able to do this trick. As already mentioned, you need two graphics adapters. However, it is not possible to passthrough the graphics integrated in your CPU! This is because passthrough works by separating a PCI device from the host system, and attaching it to the guest OS.
Therefore you can only pass a dedicated graphics hardware. Not much of a problem, probably, but it’s probably an important note. You also need to ensure that your CPU and mainboard support IOMMU – extensions for I/O visualisation, which are necessary for passing through a PCI device. Intel calls their IOMMU technology “VT- d“, while AMD refers to it as “AMD- V“. This is an absolute must, so if you are buying new hardware, make sure both your processor and the chipset will support IOMMU²!
Also, if you plan to use a CPU integrated graphics adapter for the host system, make sure that the mainboard supports it, and that it has a video output! You will get best results if you use a multi- core CPU. Demanding games will require not only powerful graphics hardware, but a decent CPU as well! It is possible to reserve some of CPU’s cores for the VM – this way you can ensure that the guest OS will be granted enough computational power. For example, in my setup, the host OS uses 2 cores, while other 6 are at Windows’ disposal. Also, as explained, you need a monitor with several inputs, or a set of two.
I am not aware of any way to get this working on a laptop, as most of laptops I know have just one monitor, and you cannot manually switch between video sources¹. So the full list of requirements is: IOMMU compatible CPU and mainboard. A dedicated PCI graphics adapter (for passing through)Graphics hardware for the host OS (can be integrated in CPU)Monitor with multiple video inputs (recommended two monitors)(Recommended: multi- core CPU). Warning: Note that you DO NOT NEED a multi- OS graphics card! Contrary to popular belief, non- Quatro NVIDIA cards will work well, with no hardware modifications of any kind! Methods. There are two popular passthrough techniques – one involves Xen virtualization, and one using Qemu and VFIO. Having played around with both, I am personally a fan of the Qemu way – it seems it is much easier to set up, I get more control over my VM, customizations are easier, and, most importantly, it works with virtually any PCI graphics adapter!
There is a lot of confusion on the Internet concerning what results each method may yield. Some say that Qemu method can never grant any decent performance, they claim that only Xen can perform primary VGA passthrough, while Qemu’s secondary VGA passthrough will be very inefficient. However, numerous people (including me) confirm that they have awesome performance with Qemu. On the other hand, it is clear that passthrough with Xen will only work with multi- OS graphic cards. This is not a problem for Radeon users, as probably all new Radeons will do just fine with Xen. However, if your NVIDIA card is not an NVIDIA Quadro, you have no chances with Xen!
Quadro… I do not recommend such hardware modifications to anyone, even if you trust the Internet too much, the risk of rendering your precious hardware useless is far too high to make it work the effort. Qemu, on the other hand, should work well with absolutely any PCI card. Given these reasons, as well as customization options, I have decided to stick with Qemu.
For the rest of this article, I will be describing this particular method. There is one particular comprehensive guide on how to setup everything using the Qemu method here – at the time of writing this forums thread has more than 2. I can highly recommend that guide, but if you want to learn about the general idea first, stay with me before you jump there! The software. Obviously things won’t work out of the box. There are also necessary preparations on the software side.
First, you will need to patch your kernel a bit, and compile it with several options enabled. At the time of writing, ASC override patches and VGA arbiter fixes need to be applied manually, as they are not (yet?) included in the kernel. You can find details in that guide I linked. You will need to configure your kernel a bit. The key is not only to ensure it activates appropriate IOMMU modules, but also to forbid it from loading any drivers to the card you will want to pass through. Most likely it will be also necessary to use the git development version of Qemu – some necessary features are not yet available in stable releases. Also, when playing with qemu, it is worth to try KVM – chances are that hardware virtualization might significantly improve virtual machine’s CPU performance.
You may want to write a bit of scripts that set up few other details (binding the PCI card to vfio module) before you start qemu to run the virtual machine. Also, it may be tricky to get the right order of installing drivers in the guest OS.