2 gamers 1 cpu.... can it be done with 1 GPU?

[rhavimarques]

currently i have a laptop and a desktop, but planning on selling the laptop, the only thing holding me back is the fact that i can game with friends when they come over on my laptop.

 

so i've been giving hte 2 gamers 1 cpu thing a thought, i have most of the peripherals already: 3 monitors on my desktop alone, and a second keyboard and mouse would be easy.

the CPU wouldn't be an issue, i have a 4790k that i could simply split down the middle and have myself 2x "i5"s.

 

but i have a single gtx 970... i'm sure it alone could run multiple instances of the games i plan on playing anyway, i can very often have 2 games running at once, dota 2 and rainbow six siege, kerbal space program and civ 5... etc etc.

so my idea would be to have the 2 gamers 1 cpu thing setup on a second HDD/SDD, and run that if i ever want to game with somebody else locally...

but does it work?
 

[The Sloth]

depend on resolution the 970 handicap is 3.5 gb vram   

[ThinkWithPortals]

Doubtful.

[rhavimarques]

Just now, nerdslayer1 said:

depend on resolution the 970 handicap is 3.5 gb vram   

what i'm thinking mostly isnt about the power of the 970... if it has to be games on medium settings then that's fine, i can run rainbow six siege on the 950m laptop on low, and i'm pretty sure the 970 is a few magnitudes better.

 

what i'm thinking is if the virtualization software can split a gpu's performance.

[rhavimarques]

2 minutes ago, ThinkWithPortals said:

Doubtful.

because its not 2 physical graphics cards?

[pwn_intended]

Don't think it will be possible. You need a physical GPU per virtual machine. That is if you are going the route that linus did for 8 gamers.

 

[ThinkWithPortals]

Just now, rhavimarques said:

because its not 2 physical graphics cards?

Yeah. I think a GPU would freak the f**k out if it detected that it was installed in two systems and doing two different workloads.

[Bananasplit_00]

there is no way to split your GPU so no, this cant be done with a single GPU if one of the clients isnt running on the intergrated graphics and you wont have 2 "I5"s, its more like 2 higher end overclocked I3s

[rhavimarques]

Just now, Bananasplit_00 said:

there is no way to split your GPU so no, this cant be done with a single GPU if one of the clients isnt running on the intergrated graphics and you wont have 2 "I5"s, its more like 2 higher end overclocked I3s

eh, 4 threads is 4 threads.

so it could be done having one instance running on the intel, and another on the 970?...

 

it could also be done with say... a 970 and.... a 1050?

[Bananasplit_00]

1 minute ago, rhavimarques said:

eh, 4 threads is 4 threads.

so it could be done having one instance running on the intel, and another on the 970?...

 

it could also be done with say... a 970 and.... a 1050?

yes to both as long as your motherboard has two 16x slots it should be fine but a 1050 is a pretty weak card in comparason so just pick up another 970 used or something 

[DarkBlade2117]

I mean.. Maybe? With a dual GPU it might be possible. I know A R9 390^2 (2 390's, not 390'xs) exist and 295x2's can be found pretty cheap.

5 minutes ago, ThinkWithPortals said:

Yeah. I think a GPU would freak the f**k out if it detected that it was installed in two systems and doing two different workloads.

 

[SCHISCHKA]

to get the 2 gamers one pc they would have used VGA passthough. This involves disabling one PCI slot on the host and assigning to the VM. You cannot do this with one physical card. To do this with one card you would need to use VNC which will be slow on most games

[rn8686]

You can run two monitors, but your not going to be gaming on both with only a 970. 

[cynexit]

You definitely need two GPU of some sort. The whole idea works because you pass a GPU trough the Host to a VM, you're not distributing the GPU like the CPU core wise but you give "one whole GPU" to one specific instance of a guest machine.

 

Add another GPU and this should work, don' expect too much from the shared i7 though since you really just get two i3's with high clocks in the end. But this should actually be enough for most games I think.

[rhavimarques]

2 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

yes to both as long as your motherboard has two 16x slots it should be fine but a 1050 is a pretty weak card in comparason so just pick up another 970 used or something 

 

2 minutes ago, DarkBlade2117 said:

I mean.. Maybe? With a dual GPU it might be possible. I know A R9 390^2 (2 390's, not 390'xs) exist and 295x2's can be found pretty cheap.

 

 

i'm trying to figure a solution where i can still game with 2 people and not spend huge amounts of cash :P.

a 1050 is weak in comparison, but again, the point isn't to have 2 systems running everything on ultra, its to play a game side by side while having a beer.

 

i can play games on ultra when i'm alone >_>

 

 

also, another use cenario is when college mates come over to either program on visual studio, run unity/unreal engines, or model in blender, and you don't need beefy gpus for those cases either.

[DarkBlade2117]

Just now, rhavimarques said:

 

 

i'm trying to figure a solution where i can still game with 2 people and not spend huge amounts of cash :P.

a 1050 is weak in comparison, but again, the point isn't to have 2 systems running everything on ultra, its to play a game side by side while having a beer.

 

i can play games on ultra when i'm alone >_>

 

 

also, another use cenario is when college mates come over to either program on visual studio, run unity/unreal engines, or model in blender, and you don't need beefy gpus for those cases either.

Your best case scenario tbh is to just not deal with it and pick up 2 used GPU's like R9 280x's which I just seen 1 go for $80 though they are normally $100.

[Bananasplit_00]

1 minute ago, rhavimarques said:

 

 

i'm trying to figure a solution where i can still game with 2 people and not spend huge amounts of cash :P.

a 1050 is weak in comparison, but again, the point isn't to have 2 systems running everything on ultra, its to play a game side by side while having a beer.

 

i can play games on ultra when i'm alone >_>

 

 

also, another use cenario is when college mates come over to either program on visual studio, run unity/unreal engines, or model in blender, and you don't need beefy gpus for those cases either.

well its fine for low/medium settings 1080p i guess

[rhavimarques]

4 minutes ago, SCHISCHKA said:

to get the 2 gamers one pc they would have used VGA passthough. This involves disabling one PCI slot on the host and assigning to the VM. You cannot do this with one physical card. To do this with one card you would need to use VNC which will be slow on most games

aaah ok, the whole PCI slot is given over to the guest pc... i think i get it now... so would it not work on the intel...?

 

2 minutes ago, DarkBlade2117 said:

Your best case scenario tbh is to just not deal with it and pick up 2 used GPU's like R9 280x's which I just seen 1 go for $80 though they are normally $100.

well, i already have a gtx 970...
i also want to dual-boot the system so i don't have to use this weakened-awkward thing on my dayly basis.

[SCHISCHKA]

Just now, rhavimarques said:

aaah ok, the whole PCI slot is given over to the guest pc... i think i get it now... so would it not work on the intel...?

Might be possible to use intel on host and assign your PCI to guest

[rhavimarques]

7 minutes ago, cynexit said:

You definitely need two GPU of some sort. The whole idea works because you pass a GPU trough the Host to a VM, you're not distributing the GPU like the CPU core wise but you give "one whole GPU" to one specific instance of a guest machine.

 

Add another GPU and this should work, don' expect too much from the shared i7 though since you really just get two i3's with high clocks in the end. But this should actually be enough for most games I think.

i'm not expecting too much from the shared i7, but an i3 with hyperthreading clocked at 4.4~ is probably fine for most games save star citizen.

[ThinkWithPortals]

1 hour ago, DarkBlade2117 said:

I mean.. Maybe? With a dual GPU it might be possible. I know A R9 390^2 (2 390's, not 390'xs) exist and 295x2's can be found pretty cheap.

 

Right, but as you said, that's two GPUs, just on a single PCB.