Gaming under a VM

[OogyWaWa]

Hi All,

I'm finally looking to build up a new box, but I want my cake and to eat it too.

Basically, I want to build a pretty beefy box to run esx (or any vm solution really, not picky) to host my nas, router and a few other things. But I want to get back into the PC gaming, so I'm planning on throwing in a nice video card too.

Does anyone know how far video card passthrough has come on vm platforms? I've seen some older threads on hardocp that look promising.

Any recommended graphics chips that play nicely? Am i really going to get to play skyrim at high quality in a VM?

 

[Gunbuster]

Windows 8 Pro. You get Hyper-v for free.

Or get server 2012 and workstationize it. http://www.win2012workstation.com/ same diff.

If you're a student get 2012 free at dreamspark.

 

[ShintaiDK]

You might want a plan B with not playing games in a VM if you expect high performance.

 

[ultimatebob]

I wouldn't use VmWare ESXi, that's for sure.

The hardware compatibility list on the product is small, as it is meant to run on servers.

You would have better luck running VmWare Workstation under Windows 7... You can do your gaming in the host OS and run your VM's in Workstation.

 

[Zstream]

The simple answer is no. You will not be able to play skyrim over with a remote protocol with all the fancy settings.

in order to the best performance, you're going to need windows server 2008r2 or 8 and remote FX enabled. You should get an ok experience with that enabled. You could try hdx and Citrix but it sucks for a 3d lan protocol. Heck, VMware and the pcoip protocol isn't meant for it.

Good luck to you.

 

[OogyWaWa]

not sure windows will work because i need to pass through some drive HBA's and hdds. Not to mention... windows...eew...

was thinking something bare metal like esxi. if i'm not going bare metal, then i probably need to go solaris, as i want my raid array to be zfs.

thinking of trying something similar to this:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1205216/guide-create-a-gaming-virtual-machine

 

[Zstream]

That guy has no idea of remote protocols. Hdx, pcoip is not meant for gaming at all. While hdx is great, its not meant for heavy graphics at all, period, end of story

If you want a generic nice machine with a bunch of VMS, go ahead and use whatever is most comfortable but for 3d, you will need a remote FX installation with compatible graphics cards and it will require windows.

 

[Zstream]

I even see that they're running vnc. I can't take that forum post serious with that recommendation. If you need help with hdx or a remotefx install, let me know.

I have a few dell hba PCIe cards and a ton of storage even on consumer hardware and it works just fine.

 

[Gunbuster]

Yeah "windows...eew..." ಠ_ಠ

Gaming on a 100% supported platform and having the same hyper-v as server 2012 with the ability to migrate storage on live vm, and disk pass through (though I dont know why you would bother as using a VHD had just about 0 performance penalty these days) for free.

Sounds like you want to go out of your way to make things a pain in the ass. Seriously look up the features of hyper-v

 

[Maximilian]

Xen can do video card passthrough on a VT-D enabled CPU, i read a post once that detailed how a guy set this up on linux to get native windows performance using xen and a windows 7 virtual machine using the windows 7 drivers.

It was way over my head so i didnt look too much into it. For a linux buff though im sure it would have made more sense.