2 gamers, 2 GPUs

[Sawtaytoes]

I'm building a two-VM single-machine gaming rig. So far, I've wasted hours and hours getting nowhere.

 

To save myself on time, I'm curious if anyone else has a setup like this or if you guys know of a good solution that fulfills my goals.

 

Edit

I ended up going with Aster.

 

History

I downsized to 3 gaming machines for LAN gaming and decided I wanted less machines to maintain. It's going to be cheaper over time if I could buy high-end gear for my main machine and then have that gear become 2-3 other PCs when I upgrade. In this case, I upgraded my CPU and am putting my Ryzen 3800X, along with some spare parts, into this new two-VM single-machine gaming rig.

 

Goals

• On boot, I only want to start a single VM. The others can be loaded on-demand; preferably from a web UI.
• I want a clean way of divvying up system resources such that both VMs are equally using the available hardware.
• Ideally, I'd like to turn off the unused GPU when running this as a single system. My 980 Ti is definitely the loudest thing in that case, and I'd like to shut it off.
• The only role this machine needs to fulfill, as of today, is playing 2 instances of the same game.

System Specs

- ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero

- AMD Ryzen 3800X 8c/16t

- 32GB RAM

- nVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti (Primary)

- nVIDIA GTX 980 Ti (Secondary)

- 3x250GB SATA SSDs (I want to stripe the data)

- 1kW PSU (I have a 450W PSU in there as a secondary, but it's currently disconnected)

 

Each of the 2 VMs would have 4 cores, 16GB RAM, and 1 GPU. The drive space would be shared.
 

Methods

I found 5 ways of accomplishing my goal:

• Unraid (KVM in CentOS)
• Proxmox (KVM in Debian)
• VMware ESXi (their own hardware-level hypervisor)
• Windows + Hyper-V
• Aster (Sketchy Russian Windows app)

Ideally, I'd divvy up these gaming systems using the physical hardware through a hypervisor (like some of the solutions), but I've had trouble setting it up.

 

Problems

Unraid

I've tried just about every configuration, read a bunch of articles, and watched just about every available video. The furthest I'd gotten is running a Windows install and just about booting into Windows after the first restart on the 980 Ti. Since it was late, I shut down the VM that night, and I've never been able to replicate that behavior since.

 

Trying to load the Windows ISO from the main GPU didn't work either. It'd zoom in on the text and that display would be frozen. Surprisingly, I know it actually loaded Windows because the nVIDIA drivers were installed when I use the VNC method.

 

I even tried updating to the latest 6.10 RC1 and that didn't fix it either.

 

I also tried booting the Linux Mint and SteamOS ISOs. Neither of those worked either. If SteamOS worked with this multi-PC model and I knew Proton supported most of the games, I'd use it immediately.

 

Last thing to note, I figured Unraid would start up pretty fast, which it does, but by the time the web GUI starts and VMs would start, man that takes forever. I'm not gonna have my kids wait 10 minutes after turning on the computer to start gaming. They'll get bored and mess with my stuff instead. When I had 2 separate Windows machines, the thing would boot up Steam in seconds.

 

How does Linus do it? He's supposedly using Unraid at home even with his VR machine. What's he doing differently than I am to consistently have it work in every video? How's he able to remotely turn on VMs?

 

Proxmox

After waiting hours for the installer to finish, I loaded up Proxmox, and it said "your server is running at this address on port 8006". Tried accessing it, no go. Tried a few more times, no go. There were some hardware failures showing up, but nothing that should've affected the Ethernet connection. Either way, I gave up pretty quick as it's only going to be more complicated from here.

 

VMware ESXi

I read this article on using VMware ESXi (something about vSphere) and GPU-passthrough:

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Multi-headed-VMWare-Gaming-Setup-564/

I don't mind paying for a top-notch solution, so I tried it out, but any time I tried to run the VM, it would freeze up the machine; in fact, I got a purple screen once. Gave up pretty quickly here because they disabled support for in-hardware virtualization on the CPU when using PCI-passthrough in the latest ESXi v7. At least, that's what I understand from reading around online.

 

Windows + Hyper-V

This is where I'm at right now. Don't know if I can separately share the mouse and keyboard with the VM and GPU-passthrough seems pretty complicated to setup.

 

This guy's video is 2 VMs, one GPU:

https://youtu.be/XLLcc29EZ_8

Not exactly what I'm looking for, but it should work for me right? Thing is, he doesn't go into mouse and keyboard sharing or any of the other information I want to know. I need a real-world use case.
 

I'd like to do a single GPU-passthrough and be done with it.

 

I also don't think Hyper-V supports the configuration where I can on a second monitor upon starting the VM.

 

Aster (ibiksoft.com)

I'm not this desperate yet, but there's a sketchy Russian app which runs multiple users off the same system. You can separately assign monitors, speakers, mice, and keyboards. All the drivers would be installed in the host system too. Sounds super amazing!

 

It doesn't allow easily sharing or targetting the GPU, and it's sharing system resources between users with no way to designate how many system resources go to which box. You're still able to split up the CPU by cores, just not the GPU. I think you're supposed to select the GPU on a per-game basis. Most games don't support that.

 

It also doesn't seem to have a way to enable a display only when using the software.

 

These are the two videos I saw on the product:

- https://youtu.be/TjKokZd3i70

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhNE2GGWj-o

 

Conclusion

At this point, I'm wondering if everyone's been lying in their articles and videos about multi machine GPU passthrough. It's supposed to work, but it doesn't work for me. It's not like my hardware is lacking either. I thought it was because I had nVIDIA cards, but they updated their drivers recently to allow running consumer cards in a VM.

 

At this point, I'm completely lost and desperate for some help and advice on where to go from here.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, Sawtaytoes said:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhNE2GGWj-o

 

Hey those are both my videos

 

1 hour ago, Sawtaytoes said:

t doesn't allow easily sharing or targetting the GPU, and it's sharing system resources between users with no way to designate how many system resources go to which box. You're still able to split up the CPU by cores, just not the GPU. I think you're supposed to select the GPU on a per-game basis. Most games don't support that.

You can select the gpu by which monitor the session is plugged into. Works pretty well.

 

This id say is the easyiest method by far.

1 hour ago, Sawtaytoes said:

After waiting hours for the installer to finish, I loaded up Proxmox, and it said "your server is running at this address on port 8006". Tried accessing it, no go. Tried a few more times, no go. There were some hardware failures showing up, but nothing that should've affected the Ethernet connection. Either way, I gave up pretty quick as it's only going to be more complicated from here.

What error did you get? You need to use https too for the web session. could you ssh in.

 

1 hour ago, Sawtaytoes said:

This is where I'm at right now. Don't know if I can separately share the mouse and keyboard with the VM and GPU-passthrough seems pretty complicated to setup.

 

Hyper-v doesn't support usb passthough, but you can passthrough usb controllers. This is normally more complex than the linux options, so id skip it

 

1 hour ago, Sawtaytoes said:

Unraid

I've tried just about every configuration, read a bunch of articles, and watched just about every available video. The furthest I'd gotten is running a Windows install and just about booting into Windows after the first restart on the 980 Ti. Since it was late, I shut down the VM that night, and I've never been able to replicate that behavior since.

 

Your gonna have to go more into detail here about what exact issues you see. Some hardware just doesn't like gpu pass-though as its not really officially supported. Was the 980ti the primary gpu? What is the vms config?

 

 

[emosun]

1 hour ago, Sawtaytoes said:

It's supposed to work

such is everything that i have to tell everyone. Nothing really HAS to work , it's supposed to but with how bad software is these days there's no reason to expect it to ever be consistent

1 hour ago, Sawtaytoes said:

know of a good solution

Yeah use two computers. TBH it would take maybe less than a half hour to plug in a second machine to play 2 games seperately like you wanted.

 

1 hour ago, Sawtaytoes said:

• On boot, I only want to start a single VM. The others can be loaded on-demand; preferably from a web UI.
• I want a clean way of divvying up system resources such that both VMs are equally using the available hardware.
• Ideally, I'd like to turn off the unused GPU when running this as a single system. My 980 Ti is definitely the loudest thing in that case, and I'd like to shut it off.
• The only role this machine needs to fulfill, as of today, is playing 2 instances of the same game.

As for these goals...... you;re expecting too much of modern machines. Theres no reason this type of setup would ever be reliable and functional consistently. You very well could get it to work and enjoy it for a week before a windows/driver/game/software update bricks it.

[Sawtaytoes]

56 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Hey those are both my videos

 

You can select the gpu by which monitor the session is plugged into. Works pretty well.

 

This id say is the easyiest method by far.

What error did you get? You need to use https too for the web session. could you ssh in.

 

Hyper-v doesn't support usb passthough, but you can passthrough usb controllers. This is normally more complex than the linux options, so id skip it

 

Your gonna have to go more into detail here about what exact issues you see. Some hardware just doesn't like gpu pass-though as its not really officially supported. Was the 980ti the primary gpu? What is the vms config?

 

 

Thanks for your response!

 

I ditched the Hyper-V idea. That guy was using Parsec to remote in. Not ideal for my situation. It's a neat idea, but I want to avoid streaming lag.

 

With Proxmox, you're right, `https` was my issue...  I still have the USB drive and might give it another shot tomorrow. This is probably the most times I've ever installed Windows outside of a job.

 

---

 

For Unraid, the 980 Ti was (and still is) the secondary GPU. I was getting a black screen when running VMs. If I ran one on the 1080 Ti, the first time it ran, you'd get a zoomed in view of the console, sometimes some funky colored dots on a black background, but for the most part, just a black screen there too.

 

I made sure to dump the vbios off my cards and use them, I even tried grabbing some off TechPowerUp and removing the "no VM" header. I made sure to add the card's soundcard, even once tried editing the XML to make sure they shared the same bus. Tried both BIOS types and just about every configuration I could figure out to get it working.

 

---

 

I tried out Aster. The program is amazing considering what it does. I'm honestly really impressed. Unlike literally every other solution I tried, this one feels so natural. And now, I only have to maintain one version of Windows. In terms of power draw though, I can't shut off the other "place".

 

I setup Sandboxie to sandbox the entire Steam app. That includes any games as well. I don't mind having 2 separate installs of a game, even if it takes up more space, so long as saving files and configurations don't interfere. Took a bit of configuration to get that working.

 

You're correct on the GPU selection, I can select which "place" a monitor goes to and that designates the GPU. Wild.

 

It's strange you can't designate network cards though. That's something I'd really like to see. For LAN gaming, it'll be an issue having a single shared IP. On the other hand, online gaming works fine because it doesn't care about your IP, it cares about your Steam username. I tested it out and that worked!

 

The UI's so cryptic, I wouldn't have even seen the cores option. On that topic, I'm still not sure if that option works.

 

I've been playing around with the core checkboxes, then running games to see if it matters. I can't figure it out. I think the issue is I don't know which cores are the main and which are the second thread. With Unraid, it showed me: 0:7, 1:8, etc. I did that in Aster, but I think the cores might be setup 0:1, 2:3, etc. Still not sure.

I did run into an issue where I unplugged and plugged back in a keyboard. The CPU was pegged at 100% after that until I restarted (which itself took a while). Dunno if that was Aster or Sandboxie though.

 

What I did notice with this setup is that high network traffic spikes the CPU like crazy. Most-likely, that's because of Sandboxie. I'm betting there's a setting to have it be more lax about that stuff. I've already configured some of those settings on the DefaultBox they give you, but there's gotta be more to it.

 

52 minutes ago, emosun said:

such is everything that i have to tell everyone. Nothing really HAS to work , it's supposed to but with how bad software is these days there's no reason to expect it to ever be consistent

Yeah use two computers. TBH it would take maybe less than a half hour to plug in a second machine to play 2 games seperately like you wanted.

 

As for these goals...... you;re expecting too much of modern machines. Theres no reason this type of setup would ever be reliable and functional consistently. You very well could get it to work and enjoy it for a week before a windows/driver/game/software update bricks it.

It takes a lot of time and energy to maintain more than a single system. I like the idea of having a single machine. It's cleaner and takes a lot less time to maintain. Also, I can buy more-expensive parts which last longer (in terms of compute power) and tend to be more reliable.

In this case, my Ryzen 7 3800X is top-tier processor that'd be underutilized in a single machine. If I can double it up into 2 virtual machines, I can front the cost to upgrade my main rig more often with top-tier hardware.

 

I might have a Ryzen 9 5950X today, but my goal is to upgrade to a 24-core 5000 series Threadripper. My 5950X will move on down to this dual-VM rig.

 

When Zen 4 Threadripper comes out in a couple years, I can then use my old Threadripper parts to make 3 gaming rigs each with 8 dedicated cores and 16x PCIe lanes each! It opens up so many options that I didn't have with a bunch of Mini-ITX boards and a bunch of crappy 2-4 core AMD A8 and Intel 4000 series processors.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Sawtaytoes said:

With Proxmox, you're right, `https` was my issue...  I still have the USB drive and might give it another shot tomorrow. This is probably the most times I've ever installed Windows outside of a job.

I use proxmox a good amount, It can do this, but its probably gonna be more work than unraid for about the same result here. 

 

1 minute ago, Sawtaytoes said:

tried out Aster. The program is amazing considering what it does. I'm honestly really impressed. Unlike literally every other solution I tried, this one feels so natural. And now, I only have to maintain one version of Windows. In terms of power draw though, I can't shut off the other "place".

 

Power shouldn't be a big issue, the gpus don't use much power at idle(like 10-15w i think)

 

And you can sleep /shutdown the system if needed.

 

2 minutes ago, Sawtaytoes said:

It's strange you can't designate network cards though. That's something I'd really like to see. For LAN gaming, it'll be an issue having a single shared IP. On the other hand, online gaming works fine because it doesn't care about your IP, it cares about your Steam username. I tested it out and that worked!

 

Shoot should have looked at that more. Couldn't get lan gaming to work with tf2, but not sure if its just tf2.

 

I think you can host on anouther PC, and then connect with multiple systems with the same IP just fine.

 

3 minutes ago, Sawtaytoes said:

I've been playing around with the core checkboxes, then running games to see if it matters. I can't figure it out. I think the issue is I don't know which cores are the main and which are the second thread. With Unraid, it showed me: 0:7, 1:8, etc. I did that in Aster, but I think the cores might be setup 0:1, 2:3, etc. Still not sure.

Core info is a MS tool that tells you what threads goes to which core on the cpu.

 

Id just leave it so each user can use it all if performance isn't a issue though.

 

4 minutes ago, Sawtaytoes said:

t takes a lot of time and energy to maintain more than a single system. I like the idea of having a single machine. It's cleaner and takes a lot less time to maintain. Also, I can buy more-expensive parts which last longer (in terms of compute power) and tend to be more reliable.

Yea the big problem is no one(well big like MS/intel/AMD) makes a good solution for multiple users one pc playing games. GPU passthrough was moslty made for server uses, and works ok on the desktop. There are good solutions in the cloud that do this, they just aren't for the desktop

 

Id just get multiple systems and save the time and effort if it was me here.

[Sawtaytoes]

7 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I use proxmox a good amount, It can do this, but its probably gonna be more work than unraid for about the same result here. 

 

Power shouldn't be a big issue, the gpus don't use much power at idle(like 10-15w i think)

 

And you can sleep /shutdown the system if needed.

 

Shoot should have looked at that more. Couldn't get lan gaming to work with tf2, but not sure if its just tf2.

 

I think you can host on anouther PC, and then connect with multiple systems with the same IP just fine.

 

Core info is a MS tool that tells you what threads goes to which core on the cpu.

 

Id just leave it so each user can use it all if performance isn't a issue though.

 

Yea the big problem is no one(well big like MS/intel/AMD) makes a good solution for multiple users one pc playing games. GPU passthrough was moslty made for server uses, and works ok on the desktop. There are good solutions in the cloud that do this, they just aren't for the desktop

 

Id just get multiple systems and save the time and effort if it was me here.

After playing around with Aster more, it actually lets the displays go into power-save separately! That's exactly what want to see. It really feels like 2 independent systems now. If the cards are only doing 10-15w idle, then no big deal. I'll pay for that cost with convenience. Seriously, only OS to update and maintain? Yes.

 

I want as little maintenance as possible, but I also like playing with toys. Having a 2-VM system is pretty cool. As I've tested so far with Aster, it's a low-maintenance set it and forget it.

 

I'd forgotten about it until now, but I have a solution for Sandboxie and Steam!

The reason it's an issue is Steam installs in `Program Files (x86)`, but what if it installs in `%appdata%`? Then you'd have a separate instance per user and wouldn't have to worry about Sandboxie at all! Not only would that improve performance, but it'd be a lot less to worry about. Not 100% sure if it'll work yet; trying it out now.

 

I'm honestly surprised how good this random software Russian software works considering the janky UI and broken English in some menus.

 

What I'm really happy about is your two videos. Without them, I would've never downloaded this program. I've been really stressed about not having a working computer for my son and now... It's working!

 

---

 

I dunno if you've ever used or heard of BeTwin, but it's another similar product. Curious how it works compared to Aster. It's significantly older and doesn't look like it's been updated in years. Might be another possible low-maintenance solution.

[Sawtaytoes]

You can't use multiple copies of Steam at the same time without Sandboxie. It looks for some kinda app ID when running the installer and the executable. If could patch the executable, I could that issue and avoid Sandboxie altogether.

[Sawtaytoes]

Update

Aster isn't Russian, it's from Tallinn (Estonia).

 

I also found something new which might work: XCP-ng. I haven't tested it out, but it looks like a worthy alternative to Proxmox, Unraid, and VMware ESXi.

 

Performance

I fixed all performance issues with Sandboxie as far as I've seen.

 

I'm surprised how well this works as I try out games that stress the system more.

 

Compatiblity

Some games don't run properly in the sandbox unless I first run them unsandboxed. I think this is because of the runtimes you need to have installed before running most games.

 

So far in my testing, I'm unable to run Baldur's Gate 3 in Vulkan mode using either Sandboxie nor Aster. Not sure which app is the culprit. Thankfully, there's a DX11 option I can use instead. Not sure if other Vulkan games are affected.

 

CPU Cores

Instead of allocating CPU cores per terminal, I left it open. I ran 2 copies of CPU-heavy games and noticed no problems.

The reason I changed my mind on this is because neither Divinity: Original Sin 2 nor Baldur's Gate 3 would load if I allocated CPU cores. I might be able to do it in Windows on a per-process basis like this:

 

CPU Spikes when Downloading

Still noticing CPU spikes from downloads. When downloading games on Steam, even only at 500Mbps, my CPU usage spikes to 33%.

 

It's not Sandboxie, so it might be Aster, but it could also be the 2.5Gbps Realtek Ethernet port on the motherboard. I'm curious what would happen if I switched to the 1Gbps Intel port instead.

 

Quirks

I've noticed some weird quirks like when I sign out of the first terminal, Steam closes the game and itself on the second terminal. Since it runs system-level, that's probably the issue. It noticed a user signed out and kills itself. If I had it running in a sandbox on that terminal, it probably wouldn't close.

I also noticed some games not working in Steam Big Picture (not sandboxed). This might be the fact that those are Freddi Fish games from the late 90s and completely unrelated to this setup.

 

Thoughts
The setup isn't ideal, but way better than running 2 VMs so far that I've seen. Since it's running Windows natively on the bare metal (no hypervisor or VMs), it works like I'd expect. I think I'm using Aster in a non-standard configuration though. It's probably not meant for someone to only use one terminal most of the time when that's not the first terminal.

I'm just happy I was able to find a solution that works. Aster is very low-maintenance when compared to Proxmox, Unraid, XCP-ng, and VMware ESXi.

[Sawtaytoes]

Another Update

I paid for Aster. It's worth it. Great piece of software!

 

CPU spike when downloading
From talking to Aster support, Steam decompresses downloads which is why I was seeing CPU spikes when downloading games.

 

Assigning Ethernet cards

They also have an option to assign private IPs to network cards and assign those IPs to specific users. Not ideal, but it works. I'd prefer having it use the DHCP addresses and giving me the option of physical adapter goes to which user.

 

Auto-Login

I used to have my Windows machines setup to automatically log into Windows and open Steam in Big Picture when the computer booted. Aster lets you choose, for each Place, if there's a default Windows user selected and if that user is automatically logged in. Pretty nifty!

 

Single GPU mode
Thanks to @Electronics Wizardy, I tested out multiple Places on a single GPU, and that works too! So I can play Baldur's Gate 3 at the same time my kid's playing an adventure game without any special Windows configuration or Hyper-V required. It's really impressive!

 

You can share the same GPU soundcard when using a single GPU configuration, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Anyone else?

Is anyone else out there using Aster?

It's the cheapest and easiest way of getting multiple people to be able to play games on a single machine. It has some quirks because of Steam which you wouldn't have with a VM, but that's a minor annoyance compared to all the setup and configuration you'd need to do with Unraid, Proxmox, VMware ESXi, or other VM-based systems that you don't with Aster on a single install of Windows.

[Sawtaytoes]

I fixed the Vulkan issue by updating to the latest nVIDIA GeForce 492 drivers. Both the nVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti and the 980 Ti work with Vulkan now when playing Baldur's Gate 3! Looks like it was just a bad driver or a bad driver install. Not really sure which. This latest driver just came out a few weeks ago, so maybe that's what fixed it.

Now I have even fewer issues running Aster. The only remaining quirk is the initial configuration of Sandboxie and making sure you install and run apps on a non-sandboxed Steam first before sandboxing. That's it!

[Sawtaytoes]

I posted a guide to using Aster, Steam, and Sandboxie:

 

[Sawtaytoes]

I bought some more licenses of Aster to see how many I could run off this one machine. It handles 4 workplaces on 2 GPUs and 1 CPU!

I ran 4 copies of Serious Sam 3 without any issues. The game's really efficient, but the 980 Ti and 1080 Ti aren't really meant to run multiple games at the same time; although, it totally works!

I ran the benchmark on all machines and each workplace was able to max the framerate to the display. I turned off v-sync on a couple and had hundreds of frames extra on top of what was available. Most-likely, I could probably have 6 or more workplaces running Serious Sam 3 on this one computer.

When doing multi-user PCs, I highly recommend v-sync or frame-capping. That will greatly help with performance across workplaces because you're not using more resources than you need.

It really goes to show how much you can get out of a single high-end rig. More and more, I'm wishing I'd used Aster years ago when I was building and maintaining 5 other individual LAN computers for when people came over. If it knew it was this simple, I could've saved a lot of time and money on fewer high-end parts.

[Dr_badwolf]

On 9/1/2021 at 12:10 AM, Sawtaytoes said:

I'm building a two-VM single-machine gaming rig. So far, I've wasted hours and hours getting nowhere.

 

To save myself on time, I'm curious if anyone else has a setup like this or if you guys know of a good solution that fulfills my goals.

 

Edit

I ended up going with Aster.

 

History

I downsized to 3 gaming machines for LAN gaming and decided I wanted less machines to maintain. It's going to be cheaper over time if I could buy high-end gear for my main machine and then have that gear become 2-3 other PCs when I upgrade. In this case, I upgraded my CPU and am putting my Ryzen 3800X, along with some spare parts, into this new two-VM single-machine gaming rig.

 

Goals

• On boot, I only want to start a single VM. The others can be loaded on-demand; preferably from a web UI.
• I want a clean way of divvying up system resources such that both VMs are equally using the available hardware.
• Ideally, I'd like to turn off the unused GPU when running this as a single system. My 980 Ti is definitely the loudest thing in that case, and I'd like to shut it off.
• The only role this machine needs to fulfill, as of today, is playing 2 instances of the same game.

System Specs

- ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero

- AMD Ryzen 3800X 8c/16t

- 32GB RAM

- nVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti (Primary)

- nVIDIA GTX 980 Ti (Secondary)

- 3x250GB SATA SSDs (I want to stripe the data)

- 1kW PSU (I have a 450W PSU in there as a secondary, but it's currently disconnected)

 

Each of the 2 VMs would have 4 cores, 16GB RAM, and 1 GPU. The drive space would be shared.
 

Methods

I found 5 ways of accomplishing my goal:

• Unraid (KVM in CentOS)
• Proxmox (KVM in Debian)
• VMware ESXi (their own hardware-level hypervisor)
• Windows + Hyper-V
• Aster (Sketchy Russian Windows app)

Ideally, I'd divvy up these gaming systems using the physical hardware through a hypervisor (like some of the solutions), but I've had trouble setting it up.

 

Problems

Unraid

I've tried just about every configuration, read a bunch of articles, and watched just about every available video. The furthest I'd gotten is running a Windows install and just about booting into Windows after the first restart on the 980 Ti. Since it was late, I shut down the VM that night, and I've never been able to replicate that behavior since.

 

Trying to load the Windows ISO from the main GPU didn't work either. It'd zoom in on the text and that display would be frozen. Surprisingly, I know it actually loaded Windows because the nVIDIA drivers were installed when I use the VNC method.

 

I even tried updating to the latest 6.10 RC1 and that didn't fix it either.

 

I also tried booting the Linux Mint and SteamOS ISOs. Neither of those worked either. If SteamOS worked with this multi-PC model and I knew Proton supported most of the games, I'd use it immediately.

 

Last thing to note, I figured Unraid would start up pretty fast, which it does, but by the time the web GUI starts and VMs would start, man that takes forever. I'm not gonna have my kids wait 10 minutes after turning on the computer to start gaming. They'll get bored and mess with my stuff instead. When I had 2 separate Windows machines, the thing would boot up Steam in seconds.

 

How does Linus do it? He's supposedly using Unraid at home even with his VR machine. What's he doing differently than I am to consistently have it work in every video? How's he able to remotely turn on VMs?

 

Proxmox

After waiting hours for the installer to finish, I loaded up Proxmox, and it said "your server is running at this address on port 8006". Tried accessing it, no go. Tried a few more times, no go. There were some hardware failures showing up, but nothing that should've affected the Ethernet connection. Either way, I gave up pretty quick as it's only going to be more complicated from here.

 

VMware ESXi

I read this article on using VMware ESXi (something about vSphere) and GPU-passthrough:

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Multi-headed-VMWare-Gaming-Setup-564/

I don't mind paying for a top-notch solution, so I tried it out, but any time I tried to run the VM, it would freeze up the machine; in fact, I got a purple screen once. Gave up pretty quickly here because they disabled support for in-hardware virtualization on the CPU when using PCI-passthrough in the latest ESXi v7. At least, that's what I understand from reading around online.

 

Windows + Hyper-V

This is where I'm at right now. Don't know if I can separately share the mouse and keyboard with the VM and GPU-passthrough seems pretty complicated to setup.

 

This guy's video is 2 VMs, one GPU:

https://youtu.be/XLLcc29EZ_8

Not exactly what I'm looking for, but it should work for me right? Thing is, he doesn't go into mouse and keyboard sharing or any of the other information I want to know. I need a real-world use case.
 

I'd like to do a single GPU-passthrough and be done with it.

 

I also don't think Hyper-V supports the configuration where I can on a second monitor upon starting the VM.

 

Aster (ibiksoft.com)

I'm not this desperate yet, but there's a sketchy Russian app which runs multiple users off the same system. You can separately assign monitors, speakers, mice, and keyboards. All the drivers would be installed in the host system too. Sounds super amazing!

 

It doesn't allow easily sharing or targetting the GPU, and it's sharing system resources between users with no way to designate how many system resources go to which box. You're still able to split up the CPU by cores, just not the GPU. I think you're supposed to select the GPU on a per-game basis. Most games don't support that.

 

It also doesn't seem to have a way to enable a display only when using the software.

 

These are the two videos I saw on the product:

- https://youtu.be/TjKokZd3i70

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhNE2GGWj-o

 

Conclusion

At this point, I'm wondering if everyone's been lying in their articles and videos about multi machine GPU passthrough. It's supposed to work, but it doesn't work for me. It's not like my hardware is lacking either. I thought it was because I had nVIDIA cards, but they updated their drivers recently to allow running consumer cards in a VM.

 

At this point, I'm completely lost and desperate for some help and advice on where to go from here.

FINALLY SOMETHING TRULY IN MY REALM!!!

[Dr_badwolf]

Aster is Sh17.
Its in fact so bad at things, I still have a license, that i have completely abandoned caring to even ask for a "new-machine-license" (because i upgraded)

[Dr_badwolf]

Not even kidding.
Im not even sure why I redacted the key... habit i guess.

[Sawtaytoes]

@Dr_badwolf What issues did you run into while using Aster over another system?

[Dr_badwolf]

4 minutes ago, Sawtaytoes said:

@Dr_badwolf What issues did you run into while using Aster over another system?

Aster is a
multiple user
windows virtual desktop
sandbox
a mutation of windows servers concurrent RDP
certain games will run ok.
Others require the machines ID.
Like Digital rights... protectional... things.

[Dr_badwolf]

Just now, Dr_badwolf said:

Aster is a
multiple user
windows virtual desktop
sandbox
a mutation of windows servers concurrent RDP
certain games will run ok.
Others require the machines ID.
Like Digital rights... protectional... things.

Beyond that issue (really should have just kept writing)
... Hardware sharing: Mice and keyboards are fine, so long as they dont require system-wide drivers.
Some gaming hardware requires exclusive system calls.
Those require admin to be an HID.

The sound system technically works.
but its splitting the Audio calls into software, which lags you.
Then you have how windows renders the desktop window manager.
So youre splitting your GPUs between each other in wierd ways.
Cause if you have 2 unrelated GPUs... youre still cross rendering OpenGL.
This takes up both cars, and sucks frames and frametime.

[Sawtaytoes]

Interesting, so there are situations where using multipoint can be problematic. As far as I know, it's not remote desktop, it's multipoint technology. Remote desktop would incur a greater cost to performance.

But I get where you're coming from. There are definitely some things I didn't consider with this setup like certain games only wanting to run one instance or driver considerations.

Doesn't Sandboxie fix the issues of games wanting more system-level control?

In terms of gaming devices, that's a good point. I don't have very many, so I've never run into those issues. The way people would probably use Aster, I'm assuming it's gonna be hand-me-down equipment, so it's possible to run into issues there too.

In terms of RGB, having a single Windows install seems simpler. Would you agree?

[Dr_badwolf]

On 10/7/2021 at 1:31 PM, Sawtaytoes said:

Interesting, so there are situations where using multipoint can be problematic. As far as I know, it's not remote desktop, it's multipoint technology. Remote desktop would incur a greater cost to performance.

But I get where you're coming from. There are definitely some things I didn't consider with this setup like certain games only wanting to run one instance or driver considerations.

Doesn't Sandboxie fix the issues of games wanting more system-level control?

In terms of gaming devices, that's a good point. I don't have very many, so I've never run into those issues. The way people would probably use Aster, I'm assuming it's gonna be hand-me-down equipment, so it's possible to run into issues there too.

In terms of RGB, having a single Windows install seems simpler. Would you agree?

I do use sandboxie... 
But... yeah i never did not try them together. 
Try and let me know

 

[Sawtaytoes]

On 10/9/2021 at 6:51 PM, Dr_badwolf said:

I do use sandboxie... 
But... yeah i never did not try them together. 
Try and let me know

 

You definitely need Sandboxie. Steam runs system-level. It's required sadly :(. But with the configurations I've done, it doesn't slow it down now.

[Dr_badwolf]

Just now, Sawtaytoes said:

You definitely need Sandboxie. Steam runs system-level. It's required sadly :(. But with the configurations I've done, it doesn't slow it down now.

Ok so thats actually pretty cool to know.
It does make sense that steam will work, its account based and not System ID based.

If you would like to engage in more science heres a list of things i have not had a chance to test.
- Simultaneous HID Peripherals that use a service (like Razer/Asus/Corsair Mice and Keyboards)
- Audio software processing (like Creative Command Center/Sonic Studio)
- 2x DirectX games
- 2x OpenGL
- 2x Vulkan
Games running simultaneously

- 2x Non Steam Games. (origin clients etc...)
- Sandboxie Persistence issues: Saved Games, Preferences set in a game etc... 

 

[Sawtaytoes]

23 hours ago, Dr_badwolf said:

Ok so thats actually pretty cool to know.
It does make sense that steam will work, its account based and not System ID based.

If you would like to engage in more science heres a list of things i have not had a chance to test.
- Simultaneous HID Peripherals that use a service (like Razer/Asus/Corsair Mice and Keyboards)
- Audio software processing (like Creative Command Center/Sonic Studio)
- 2x DirectX games
- 2x OpenGL
- 2x Vulkan
Games running simultaneously

- 2x Non Steam Games. (origin clients etc...)
- Sandboxie Persistence issues: Saved Games, Preferences set in a game etc... 

 

I've tried two games with DX11 and Vulkan modes. Both work. Haven't tried OpenGL. I have tried, on the same GPU, DX11 and OpenGL games at the same time, but the OpenGL game was ScummVM.

The keyboard and mice on that machine are the same Razer and Logitech ones, but no special software installed.

The monitor and both graphics cards are the same now too. I had 2 different cards before, but now that they're the same, I got some "plug in your SLI connector" messages, but those went away after the first boot.

 

Haven't tried those other pieces of software nor do I have non-Steam games released in the last 20 years, but those are all really great things to test!

[Dr_badwolf]

1.) OpenGL tends to share its rendering across desktops, multiple cards included.
Now I tend to buy two different brands of GPUs for various experimentation reasons - for isolated desktops, It... shouldnt... matter... (ponders that for a moment)
Yeah because DirectX [Version here] are "DirectX [Version Here]" Compliant, as is openGL. 

However... now you can DiK with SLI experiments.

2.) There is one thing i forgot thats semi recent on windows... Something called "windows Sandbox"
Play with that. It might be like sandboxie and- (Realizes he hasnt played with it much himself... fk it ill install it too)
-Microsoft knowing their own source code, may have some enhancements... (or maybe its garbage)

3.) No battle.net? No... Just duplicate Apex.

Bonus.) Also remember that you need at least as much [SYSTEM MEMORY as the GPU MEMORY] + (total) * .5, at a minimum
- Its standby program memory (windows + game)
- Graphics stuff
- and Graphics stuff thats not doing anything in "this zone"

= but all things considered... you a crafty MF (specially' with that sandboxy)

edit: should actually say
 [SYSTEM MEMORY as the GPU MEMORY] + [(total) * (1/2)]

Edited October 15, 2021 by Dr_badwolf
Bad math grammar.

[Sawtaytoes]

This system has 64GB of RAM, but I never knew you needed more than the GPUs.