Rocket01666

Hello LTT community I have some interesting new to share with the tech community and what better place to share it than here. I have been doing a lot of research on hypervisors and specifically GPU pass through to virtual machines, in my research i have found a number of skeptical and contradictory articles and posts. I plan to discuss and share my findings, first off ill list my system specs, installation of esxi 6.0.0 (aka vsphere), the creation of my windows vm, pci passthrough and finally gaming and benchmarks ( graphs to come in the future) The System: Bequiet Silent Base 800 Asus x99 deluxe Intel I7 5930K (OC'd to 4.1GHz) esxi stability is important so im not pushing it. Kingston fury x 16gb 4x4 2133mhz kit (upgrading to 32gb 4gbx8 2666 gskill kit) Bequiet Dark Rock Pro 2 Cpu cooler ( minor case mod to fit, one of the tabs on the side panel fan cover had to be cut down) EVGA GTX 970 SSC (for pass thru) PNY GTX 750ti (for esxi since the x99 platform has no igpu) Corsair HX 850i 850w platinum powersupply samsung ssd's; 256gb 950 pro for VM's and 250gb 850 evo for storage and a few other drives not configured in vmware yet Other components include an APC 1500va UPS for good measure ok now on to the installation, I started by downloading the free version of esxi the fired up vmware workstation to create a USB image of esxi so i didnt eat up my valuable drives instructions i followed are here http://www.vladan.fr/install-esxi-6-to-usb-as-destination-or-have-it-as-source/ once that was create i installed the usb in an nzxt internal usb extension that also has 2 usb "A" ports fire up the PC and mash F8 to get boot devices and pick the esxi usb next go to the address esxi gives you as there is no gui so your gonna need a laptop or a second computer to configure esxi from the web gui is how you configure esxi for pci pass thru and create your vm First you have to create a data store, i called mine VM's and Games as the evo would be attached to the vm as a secondary vdisk just for games click on storage, click create new data store and follow the steps and add the drives you want now click on virtual machines, click create virtual machine, the nice part about creating a vm with esxi is you have the ability to use the client machine as the CD/DVD drive so you can mount and install images from a laptop remotely my vm is using 8gb of ram and running on 4 virtual cores and as a side note use vmxnet3 for your network as e1000 and e1000e have issues getting to the internet once your virtual machine is up and running with Windows 10, (im using build 1607 for my vm) shut down your vm now we will add pci devices click on manage right under host then click the hardware tab, note that not all devices can be passed thru, on the devices that say disabled you can check the box and click toggle passthrough and that device will be unavailable to the host and now be available to add to your virtual machines. once youve toggled all the devices you want you will have to reboot the host before the devices will be passed through Once the host is back up and before you start your vm, click on virtual machines and click on your vm, click edit and add other device, select the pci devies you wish to add to your vm the click save now before you boot up you vm and this is IMPORTANT if you OWN an NVIDIA Consumer GPU (GEFORCE CARDS) you will have to edit the config file and add 2 lines. to get to the config click virtual machines, click the machine you want to edit, click edit settings, click the VM options tab, click advanced and scroll down and click edit configuration now that the config is open click add parameter and in the KEY: hypervisior.cpuid.v0 Value: FALSE and the second parameter is KEY: pciHole.start Value: 2048 not that in the first parameter that is a ZERO after the "v" Now your ready to start your VM fingers crossed you have an output on your display and your gpu passthrough is working correctly once your back into your vm you will need to download and install nvidia drivers and in device manager uninstall and delete the SVGA adapter. Now running games is to my eye showing now loss, i have yet to notice any frame rate dips Playing the Division i was getting between 35 and 45 fps on ultra @ 1440P and on a base windows install i was getting the same, i will however post some benchmarks of my vm and try to get some benchmarks of the pc running these games on windows on the baremetal if you have any questions dont hesitate to comment or PM me Thanks

there are videos out comparing ram frequency and its affect on games when using an I3, check out digital foundry they have lots of informational videos, the difference between 2133 ddr4 and 2400 ddr4 can be as much as 15% higher frame rate depending on the game. the same can be said for ddr3 memory

if you don't already have a motherboard (consider skylake) and are building new only recycling graphics card I would go for an i3 just for the fact that games are not picky about 4 cores they only need to see 4 threads. the Pentium g3258 is a great cpu but not for gaming now that ubisoft and others require 4 core cpus or at least 4 threads

I'm right there with you bro, Can't wait to see how this turns out

thats easy DOOM Duke Nukem 3D Starcraft Diablo 1 and 2 what changed gaming for me was Tom Clancy and his Rainbow Six, im gonna call it a Saga cuz ive played everyone of them religiously Sadly to say I am a COD player just until the DIVISION is released.

Nvidia driver related issues have been solved, i made a post earlier suggesting vsync off, go to nvidia control panel, manage 3d settings, go to program settings find cod aw single player and multiplayer and change from multiple display to single display performance. Solves all nvidia related issues with cod

Thanks for the input guys I found a solution. in Nvidia Control panel for some reason vsync was set to adaptive. If you turn Vsync off it seems to drastically increase the amount of time between crashes. also i did set my gpu power limit to 90% that seemed to help alot. @D2ultima I didnt change my ram clock but with the settings i changed i just finished playing the game for a solid hour. thank you i didnt even think of ram till you mentioned it. I will experiment with ram clock speed, in the past i have had to set up multiple ram profiles depending on what game i was playing, but it doesnt seem to be the issue with the 780ti.

taking a swing at downclocking my gpu by 50mhz and setting power limit to 90% to see if that works. recommended by someone on the nvidia geforce forum

I'm running stock clocks on my cpu and gpu which are both water cooled, i had the same problem with ghosts but could never find a solution. im running latest nvidia drivers and latest geforce experience, i dont know what else to do

Hello everyone, I keep running into this issue with cod crashing randomly. I've changed multi display to single display with no luck. keeps crashing Please help

Corsairs H100i coolers pump is not very reliable, mine failed after 3 months had to replace it with a cooler master seidon 240m which i love, i never hear any pump noise and its constantly running @ 1400 rpm Pretty tubing means nothing if it cant perform

lg's 34" ultrawide is only 2/3 of surround but you have no bezels even though its only like having 2x21.5" monitors

Linus has review videos of all these monitors including lg's new curved 34" ultra wide.

http://www.ncixus.com/products/?sku=94835&vpn=29UM65-P&manufacture=LG%20Electronics&promoid=1353 29" http://www.ncixus.com/products/?sku=98413&promoid=1353 34" 1080p http://www.ncixus.com/products/?sku=97392&promoid=1353 34" 1440p

have you considered an Ultra Wide monitor from lg, they have a 29" and 34" would be an alternative to surround, still giving tons of viewing real estate