"vt-d" Capable Motherboards

[Remi fa Sola]

Hi,

Although the title says it all, I'll try to give a little more background.

Ive been wondering if it was possible to use one computer to power multiple games, like so:
Friend comes over with a laptop,
Friend tries to fire up a game on laptop,
Friends laptop says "OH HELL NO!"
(sidenote: this is point where were currently stuck)
I split my PC into 2 by creating a virtual machine,
He logs on to the virtual machine and uses its power to play a game and we live happily ever after.

Well, as far as ive understood it, one needs to have vt-d capable hardware to assign a pci-express slot to the virtual machine (eg, the graphics accelerator). However, its incredibly hard to find a definitive list of motherboards capable of this. (so far only the Q35/45 series) But! the motherboard also requires (at least) 2 pci-e slots for me to pull this off. Unless im wrong and the virtual machine is able to "leech" off my main graphics card...

Information on the amd version ( IOMMU ) is even harder to get, and im not even sure if they call it that.

So, all in all, I'm at a loss here. I'd appreciate any suggestions and help you can give me. I know It will probably be cheaper and easier to buy a cheap gaming pc for guests but thats not the point, its gotten personal now Besides, I'd like to be able to use the full power of my processor for sensible tasks like rendering. Being able to use SLI when playing by myself is a big plus too.

My current motherboard is a p7n sli platinum (which, layout wise would be perfect) but fat chance thats going to work...

Anyhow, as ive said, any help is appreciated. Moreso, on which part of the forum could I ask questions about the software side?

Thanks in advance
-Remi

 

[PCTC2]

Welcome to AT Forums!

Sorry to be harsh and break your bubble, but...

Virtual Machines aren't really meant for gaming. Even if you can find a platform, and a hypervisor to do so, and run a virtual-machine aware guest OS, I'm not sure the compatibility of what you are trying to do. You can't run two mice, two screens, and two keyboards on the same host differently. The VMs don't work that way. Unless you find a way to map the duplicate HIDs to only the virtual machine using a USB hub or something.

I think it would be less of a headache for you to just buy a cheap gaming PC.

 

[Remi fa Sola]

Thanks for the reply,

No worries, i wasn't really expecting it to work (although that might not have been clear from the original post). However, I do believe it was possible to map USB ports to VM's with"MS Virtual PC 2007 (or something), but thats just details.

The original plan was to bind a discrete network card to the VM and use a remote desktop program to enter the VM from a laptop. (yes yes, I know even if this works theres probably going to be a lag issue) Fundamentally, the VM can't go "outside its box", so hopefully there's a way to isolate the whole (although I'm sure my PC is gonna object to this)

Anyhow, like i said in the OP, this is a nerdrage thingy and I think I'm going to have more fun trying to figure this out (even if it can't be done) than actually game... (sad as that may sound )

Perhaps you, or anyone else, can refer me to some decent literature on the subject matter? That would be a start.

And if nothing else, this has been an excellent excuse to sign up on this forum, ive been lurking here for way to long!

 

[PCTC2]

Originally posted by: Remi fa Sola
Thanks for the reply,

No worries, i wasn't really expecting it to work (although that might not have been clear from the original post). However, I do believe it was possible to map USB ports to VM's with"MS Virtual PC 2007 (or something), but thats just details.

The original plan was to bind a discrete network card to the VM and use a remote desktop program to enter the VM from a laptop. (yes yes, I know even if this works theres probably going to be a lag issue) Fundamentally, the VM can't go "outside its box", so hopefully there's a way to isolate the whole (although I'm sure my PC is gonna object to this)

Anyhow, like i said in the OP, this is a nerdrage thingy and I think I'm going to have more fun trying to figure this out (even if it can't be done) than actually game... (sad as that may sound )

Perhaps you, or anyone else, can refer me to some decent literature on the subject matter? That would be a start.

And if nothing else, this has been an excellent excuse to sign up on this forum, ive been lurking here for way to long!

I'll check around. Mainly we (as in my work) just use virtual machines to virtual server applications or other operating systems.

But the problem I see with the video output, is generally it is a virtualized output that is rendered within the program. I don't think, if you give it a dedicated graphics card, that it will then render it over protocol anymore and will only be outputted through the graphics card itself.