noob setting up kvm with guest windows for gaming, am trying to do the impossible?

[tlink]

I am completely new to virtualization, i know some stuff but not a lot. i've run some simple VM's before using hyper-v and windows virtual pc. the first problem is that i do not have a clue if my hardware will properly support it. i know my cpu supports VT-x and VT-d but i have no clue if my motherboard supports IOMMU or vfio (im not completely sure what all of that even is). does my hardware support pci pass trough for gaming? do nvidia gpu drivers support it? (i read somewhere that amd was way better on this front). can i assign all my cpu cores on a slightly lower clock to the guest OS or would that ruin my host? i want to keep performance degradation at its lowest. my second problem is where to find the resources to learn about setting up a kvm. i want to run it from bash since thats the least resource intensive and it would allow me to switch to linux easily without dual booting or anything like that because its a hassle.
 

i would want it similar to this, but the linux gui OS would be virtualized too (not sure if it's done here). can i even change core allocation in kvm within booting machines? for example im playing a low demand game in windows VM so i boot it with just 2 cores and boot linux on the other screen using 2 cores, but if i want to play gta V i assign all 4 cores to the windows vm before booting and don't boot the linux vm.

 

system specs:

i5-6600k

16GB 3GHZ ddr4 g.skill ram

asus z170 pro gaming

no dGPU yet

some shitty slow harddrives, going to upgrade them sometime to ssd's etc.

550 watt psu

[SLAYR]

Here is a good guide to setup kvm.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Multiheaded-NVIDIA-Gaming-using-Ubuntu-14-04-KVM-585/

 

5 hours ago, tlink said:

i read somewhere that amd was way better on this front

Nvidia gtx gpu cannot be passed into vms if you use certain programs like exsi (to get people to buy quadros), but for KVM any gpu should work.

 

5 hours ago, tlink said:

can i even change core allocation in kvm within booting machines?

You cannot change the core count on the fly, you will have to shutdown the vm, tweak the setting then launch it again.

 

5 hours ago, tlink said:

 

i would want it similar to this, but the linux gui OS would be virtualized too

You are better off just running linux and having a single windows vm to increase performance and reduce complications, if you want to do that look at other hypervisors like unraid, vmware exsi, or xenserver.

 

exsi will have issues with nvidia gtx gpus, but unraid and xenserver can pass gtx gpus into vms.

http://xenserver.org/open-source-virtualization-download.html

[Electronics Wizardy]

28 minutes ago, SLAYR said:

Nvidia gtx gpu cannot be passed into vms if you use certain programs like exsi (to get people to buy quadros), but for KVM any gpu should work.

You can pass any pcie devicice through.

Grids and tesla's let you run multiple vm's off one gpu using vgpu in esxi or xen.

 

29 minutes ago, SLAYR said:

You cannot change the core count on the fly, you will have to shutdown the vm, tweak the setting then launch it again.

Yes you can http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/CPUHotPlug

 

Linux supports it and some datacenter and enterprise editions of window server.

 

6 hours ago, tlink said:

can i assign all my cpu cores on a slightly lower clock to the guest OS or would that ruin my host?

Just give your guest all the cores and full power. If it need it it will use it otherwise the host or other vms can use it.

 

 

[SLAYR]

50 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You can pass any pcie devicice through.

Grids and tesla's let you run multiple vm's off one gpu using vgpu in esxi or xen.

If you use something like exsi you can't pass a nvidia gtx card into a vm, the gpu bios won't allow for it if you hack the card and put a quadro bios on it it will work then. Some software like KVM, unraid and xenserver do manage to get around it though.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, SLAYR said:

If you use something like exsi you can't pass a nvidia gtx card into a vm, the gpu bios won't allow for it if you hack the card and put a quadro bios on it it will work then. Some software like KVM, unraid and xenserver do manage to get around it though.

You can, but you will normally get a error when installing drivers, but then if you using esxi, just buy a tesla.