2 Gamers 1 CPU

[Plasma965]

Hi Guys i was wondering if i need to use unRAID in a 2 gamers one cpu build because i was thinking that maybe you could run a vm on one user and then remotely conect to the vm from another location because the two users wont be in the same physical location. If anyone had any ideas or suggestions that would really help.

Thanks 

[Electronics Wizardy]

You can use any linux disto(well windows server works, but its much more picky, and esxi won't work as a desktop os)

 

You can remote into the vm if you want, just won't be as good of an experience.

 

Id probably just get get the second user a laptop or second other system, its much easier to setup and probably a better solution.

[Eigenvektor]

You don't need unRAID to run a virtual machine. Why would you have two users connect to the same VM though? Wouldn't you want two virtual machines, running on the same physical machine, one for each user?

 

Just be aware that hardware acceleration (GPU) inside a VM takes a bit of work and requires the right kind of host. Plus, if you want more than one VM with hardware acceleration, you need two GPUs.

[Plasma965]

would i be able to have one windows user logged in and then in that user a vm is running and then remote connect from another computer to that vm running in that user

[Plasma965]

i dont want 2 users on one vm i want one on the normal user and then one connected to a vm running in the logged in account

[Eigenvektor]

3 minutes ago, Plasma965 said:

would i be able to have one windows user logged in and then in that user a vm is running and then remote connect from another computer to that vm running in that user

Sure. You can work on your machine, run a virtual machine and then have someone else connect to that machine (might take a bit of fiddling with network settings and/or firewall though).

 

What exactly is your goal here, though? What kind of games are we talking about?

 

The VM won't have the best performance, you won't be able to get GPU support in there (at least not easily) and host and VM will affect each other negatively in terms of performance while gaming.

[Plasma965]

Since my idea doesnt sound very easy what is the best way to have 2 people playing on one pc with one of them being at the physical computer and one being at another location.

[Eigenvektor]

Just now, Plasma965 said:

Since my idea doesnt sound very easy what is the best way to have 2 people playing on one pc with one of them being at the physical computer and one being at another location.

Since the second person already requires a PC to connect to the first one, the easiest way would be to simply install the game on both PCs and then game over the Internet. What game are we talking about that requires both people to be on the same PC?

[Plasma965]

We want to be able to use the same hardware because one of us doesnt have a gaming pc and instead of buying 2 we thought to get one and have both of us use it at the same time

[Eigenvektor]

1 minute ago, Plasma965 said:

We want to be able to use the same hardware because one of us doesnt have a gaming pc and instead of buying 2 we thought to get one and have both of us use it at the same time

To share a PC for gaming, that PC would need (more than) twice the performance of a single machine. For "fairness reasons" you would need two VMs, both restricted to use only half the CPU, you would need two GPUs and you would need to assign each GPU to one VM. You would also need a VM host that supports GPU passthrough.

 

If you have one person on the PC directly and another person inside a VM, you'll affect each other negatively in terms of performance. The person in the VM most likely won't have access to a GPU either, so gaming performance would be very bad.

 

It would be cheaper to just buy two gaming PCs.

[Zando_]

4 minutes ago, Plasma965 said:

We want to be able to use the same hardware because one of us doesnt have a gaming pc and instead of buying 2 we thought to get one and have both of us use it at the same time

On a local network, over ethernet, a Steam Link can be playable for non-fps (or any other games requiring quick reactions) titles. I don't see a way to remote into a VM and have that really be at all playable. Most remote desktop software streams at a very, very low bitrate and has quite a lot of lag. 

If you build a beefy enough PC and use a board with good IOMMU groups, along with two different GPUs so you can passthrough one to the VM, along with a USB PCIe card to passthrough to the VM as well for keyboard and mouse and such, you can get two local users going on the same machine though. That said, IDK how to figure out which boards have good IOMMU groups or how to set up PCIe passthrough lol, I just know that's what you have to do for that kind of setup.