WIN11 VM for Editing and Games = ISSUES. Might wanna drop your experience?

[deltaexray]

I don't know if it's the right category, if not please feel free to change

ISSUES:

While Videoediting, footage is running away after playing start and pause.

With TS Doctor, to Edit recorded TV Shows of my Set Top Box, playing Pause/Start, footage runs away and cannot make a precise cute = skipping frames ends in standing image with 500ms of not moving. = Latency Issue?

General not responsive, even after config changes. (Increasing Bandwidth)

Gaming is laggy, even with low demanding Games at HD Settings with GTX 960.

Parsec :

Lags, drifting mouse and it feels like it is running at 10 FPS.

CPU at MAX 75%

GPU at MAX 70%

EDIT #1: GPU Encode is between 40-70% usage. 

Nothing seems to throttle, there’s no indication that CPU or GPU are a Factor here.

Bandwidth edited to 100 instead of 50, encoder set to 64 which is Highest Quality.

Desktop / Display still look a little „blurry“.

VDISK issue maybe?

In general, through Parsec, it feels a little less responsive then through VNC

 

Hardware:

 

UnRaid VM:

8 7252 EPYC Cores, Host Passthrough

MB: Supermicro H12SSL-NT

16GB (16384MB) RAM

Hyper-V OFF

I440fx-7.2

OVMF-TPM

3.0 qemu

Primary VDISK Location: Manual, VirtIO, 200G, (Location is a single NVME 2TB)

Said NVME: KIOXIA 2TB Gen 4 on an ASUS Hyper M.2 Card (All GEN 4 and Bifurcation enabled)

GTX 960 Passthrough with VFIO

Netwotk: br1 with virtio

 

Software:

 

WIN11 Images made with NTLite, removed a lot of bloat and did some tuning, however, I’ve been running the same image on two different machines with NO issues. Mind you, without parsec.

 

IDEAS:

VDISK Issue? Passingthrough a single NVME for direct and only storage for WIN11?

Configuration Issue? Wrong Settings, both on WIN11 and UnRAID? Parsec maybe too?

Parsec just being shit?

 

In general, I don’t think that the Hardware is the issue here. Except for one small thing: The CPU, EPYC 7252, is a „special one“ since it is only 8 cores and effectively only 4 Memory Channels. Could it be the case that there’s simply not enough bandwidth in terms of System Memory available to have sufficient performance?

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So this it the write up of the current state of these issues, with said VM and Parsec. Before the current WIN11 Image, I tested like 6 different ones before this one was stable. From my Point of view, I think Parsec might be the issue but also why is it so? 
Diagnostics are attached. 

Thanks in Advance,

Cheers - Alex' 

Edited July 27 by deltaexray

[Kilrah]

Do you have a monitor plugged to the GPU? If not try one, if it runs better you may need a dummy plug.

Edited July 26 by Kilrah

[JonathanM]

How many (and which) cores do you have dedicated to the VM? Keep in mind that the host needs resources (CPU and RAM) to supply I/O and system emulation.

[deltaexray]

He y'all, 

Thank you for the reply's. 

As a quick update: Double checked that it isn't Parsec what it makes to "laggy" and it's the same with RealVNC / VNC Connection through UnRaid. 

 

On 7/26/2024 at 12:55 AM, Kilrah said:

Do you have a monitor plugged to the GPU? If not try one, if it runs better you may need a dummy plug.

No, there is no monitor connected - There is, however, a HDMI Dummy plug plugged into the GPU. Already checked if resolution is the problem, problems present themselves regardless of 2560x1440 or 1920x1080. 

 

 

On 7/26/2024 at 1:00 AM, JonathanM said:

How many (and which) cores do you have dedicated to the VM? Keep in mind that the host needs resources (CPU and RAM) to supply I/O and system emulation.

That is actually a very good suggestion: I'll check right away and see if the 50/50 Split, so 4 cores for VM and 4 cores for UnRaid isn't a great split. 

 

EDIT #1: Nope, it's even worse with less than 4 Cores for the VM and more for UnRaid. Stil, it wouldn't surprise me if it the CPU itself, since it is one of the lowest EPYC's you can get. 
I might try to add a monitor directly to see if it is the video all the together that causes all of this. 

EDIT #2: With a monitor directly connected to the GPU, it's sort of the same experience, just a bit faster given it is not a networked connection. However, it has the same "running away" issue while editing. So I'm moving the VM on a passthrough SSD to let it have its own device. 

Cheers, 
Alex'

Edited July 27 by deltaexray