XaVierDK

After a couple restarts, as well as switching around which CPU threads went to which VM, the issue seems to have resolved, for some unknown reason. Happy I don't have to format my PC though, so if someone ever encounters this issue, stay patient and try a few things. Best Regards.

Running to VMs off unRAID. After having an unclean shutdown last night, after accidentally putting one of the VMs to sleep and not being able to wake it up again, now whenever I install the Nvidia driver for the GPU, the entire system becomes laggy, unresponsive and glitchy. Removing the GPU in Device manager along with the driver software fixes the issue, but that is obviously not ideal. I tried recreating the VM with the same vdisk images as before, same result. My only other solution so far, would be to recreate the VM along with its disks from scratch. Again, not ideal. Restarting the array has no effect. The other VM so far is not affected, so it's a software issue I think. I'm running Windows 10 on both VMs, off of unRAID 6.1.9. Any ideas and suggestions to solve the problem would be welcome. Specs: Gigabyte Z87x-DS3 Intel i7-4790 32GB GSkill DDR3 memory Cache disk: Samsung Evo 850 1TB SSD Array disks: 1TB and 2TB Hitachi HDDs GPUs: Gigabyte GTX 780 3GB, Gigabyte GTX 960 2GB.

Please do and report back your findings. Final update on World of Tanks. It turns out the mods I had been running on my bare metal machine, where my framerates were fine, were killing my framerate on my VM. I suspect something with the way they were handled in relation to the CPU queue. Anyway ,after uninstalling those, it's all smooth sailing.

Another small update on my Witcher 3 findings. Using a USB polling rate of 125, forcing the game to 4 threads and everything else to 1 through a small program I found called CPU Control, it's like playing on a bare metal pc again. I allocated 5 cores in Unraid to my PC, 3 for the GF. It should be noted this was done with the GF's VM turned off, but I don't think it matters that much. I don't think Windows can handle an uneven number of cores, it only shows 4 threads. Anyway, I'm getting more satisfied with my gaming experience now, though there are some hoops to jump through, and having things running in the background while playing might require some tinkering. Best Regards

Please do and report back your findings. I started out with something different. Ran a 3DMark on both VMs at the same time. This is the result from mine: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/10300777? My GF, who's running with only three threads (tried having CPU 0 unassigned as per the idea further up) got a score of about 5800 points on a GTX 960, getting about 5970 if mine wasn't running. Pretty decent results I think, and much more in line with what your tests showed than what I could conclude from World of Tanks. Will still try Witcher 3 later, and report back Got to test out The Witcher 3. Running on 4 threads with most stuff on high or ultra, with Hairworks turned off, was hovering about 40-50 fps by my guess (I need to install Fraps), possibly more when not in a city. There was a problem with the mouse movement though, which might be to do with the game. There's a lot of mouse lag in menus without "Hardware cursor" turned on, and even in game with it turned on. I found some people talking about reducing the USB polling rate for the mouse to 125, haven't tried that yet. It's definitely playable though if the mouse problems get solved. Best Regards

Please do and report back your findings. I started out with something different. Ran a 3DMark on both VMs at the same time. This is the result from mine: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/10300777? My GF, who's running with only three threads (tried having CPU 0 unassigned as per the idea further up) got a score of about 5800 points on a GTX 960, getting about 5970 if mine wasn't running. Pretty decent results I think, and much more in line with what your tests showed than what I could conclude from World of Tanks. Will still try Witcher 3 later, and report back

I'm going to try a bit of a challenge later, throwing The Witcher 3 at it. If that runs decently, I'll just assume World of Tanks is horrible, and I'll have to live with lower settings in game Thank you very much for all your help so far.

That was my next trick to try, to let one core stay free for UnRAID. Would hopefully not turn out to leave too little performance for the VMs.

My GF and I were hoping to "spare" a PC because she only games once in a while but likes having a decent PC for doing work and playing when it hits her. So having one PC pulling double duty seemed ideal. Hoping it doesn't actually require a 6-core HT CPU to make it work, as I really would like to not compromise on my own gaming experience when she fires up her VM (apart from the slowdowns that are associated with sharing 8 virtual cores). It could simply be that 4 hyperthreaded cores running at 3.8Ghz (according to Dashboard) simply isn't enough to share between two gaming VMs on a Z87 chipset. How do you update your unRAID version when the time comes? I'm quite new to your software, so I've literally just downloaded and set it up once. I'll report back with a different game later today. Thank you for your responses

So do you have hyper threading turned on or off? How many and which specific CPUs do you have assigned to each VM? Hyperthreading is on. Both VMs have 4 cores assigned, core 0-3 for the first and 4-7 for the second, along with 7GB of RAM. Hmm, if you turn her VM off and play, how is it? It improved. Not quite to a point where I maintained the performance that was reported in your own 3Dmark tests, but where the game went from barely playable to tolerable. Somewhere around 45-50 fps with medium to high settings. I'll try running other games today to see how performance is for something else. It could just be that World of Tanks is ridiculously CPU bound, or running with only two hyperthreaded cores is simply not enough unless I close down everything else while gaming. Out of curiosity, could you assign all eight cores to both machines, to maintain performance when only one VM is running, and have the OS split the performance when both are running? Best Regards

So do you have hyper threading turned on or off? How many and which specific CPUs do you have assigned to each VM? Hyperthreading is on. Both VMs have 4 cores assigned, core 0-3 for the first and 4-7 for the second, along with 7GB of RAM.

I've just installed 2 VMs on a system VERY similar to what you tested. An i7-4790 (non-K, I didn't know this series of K processor could use VT-d. Live and learn), 16gb of RAM, a Gigabyte Z87 motherboard and a GTX 780. I'm getting horrendous performance in World of Tanks (the only game I've tested so far), while my GF is getting pretty decent performance on her GTX 960 playing Alice Madness Returns. When I was running bare metal, my FPS in World of Tanks would hover around 70 fps for most maps, with everything maxed out. Running my VM, I get 24-30 FPS if I'm lucky. CPU utilization is at around 40% for my 4 cores (2 physical, 2 virtual), going to about 50%. So I think it's something with my GFX, which is in the 16x PCI-E slot on the motherboard. Can you help me identify what might be causing problems? All drivers are up-to-date.

I got around it by hardcoding the BUS/DeviceIDs for the the USB devices on that VM, same as you would do with multiple identical devices. Will have to wait and see whether they change device ID in the future. Or get a new keyboard. Best Regards

I've built two VMs running Windows 10. Having used the <controller type='usb' index='0' model='nec-xhci'> line to passthrough USB devices, I can find my keyboard and mouse just fine on one of them. On the other, my keyboard apparently stays linked to the underlying UnRAID OS, which means it doesn't show up in the USB selection list when setting up the VM, and it is of course not available in Windows. Is there a way to change which keyboard is used by UnRAID OS, or do I need another solution? My keyboard is a CM Storm Quickfire TK. I have set it up in 6KRO mode, as N-key rollover supposedly doesn't work. Best Regards