Video passthrough on Lenovo TS140

[gulo]

Hello

 

I spent few hours trying to get video passthrough working on my Lenovo TS140 Unraid server. There are two PCI x16, one PCI x1 and one PCI slots on the motherboard. I had few different video cards to play with but my goal was to use Geforce 720 PCI x16 card for openELEC VM passhtrough to my receiver via HDMI.

 

I spent a long time messing with different cards/settings/slots but to cut the long story short the whole trick was in the BIOS settings on the motherboard. Most people probably know that but I figured I will share my experience to help someone else in my situation.

 

In the Video Settings portion of BIOS the default setting for Select Active Video is Auto. In order for the passthrough to work this must be changed to IGD (Internal Graphics Device)

 

In addition to this you almost must change Multi-Monitor Support to Enabled

 

Once I changed those two settings the video passthrough started working flawlessly. I have watched several movies on my openELEC VM with zero video or audio issues.

 

I do have a question for experts on the board though. I would like to also put a video card in the regular PCI slot for another VM video passthrough. However the Multi-Monitor Support setting help says it supports synchronous display on IGD and PEG (on board and PCI express) cards. Does that mean the PCI slot is disabled with this setting?

 

thanks

 

 

[jonp]

Hello

 

I spent few hours trying to get video passthrough working on my Lenovo TS140 Unraid server. There are two PCI x16, one PCI x1 and one PCI slots on the motherboard. I had few different video cards to play with but my goal was to use Geforce 720 PCI x16 card for openELEC VM passhtrough to my receiver via HDMI.

 

I spent a long time messing with different cards/settings/slots but to cut the long story short the whole trick was in the BIOS settings on the motherboard. Most people probably know that but I figured I will share my experience to help someone else in my situation.

 

In the Video Settings portion of BIOS the default setting for Select Active Video is Auto. In order for the passthrough to work this must be changed to IGD (Internal Graphics Device)

 

In addition to this you almost must change Multi-Monitor Support to Enabled

 

Once I changed those two settings the video passthrough started working flawlessly. I have watched several movies on my openELEC VM with zero video or audio issues.

 

I do have a question for experts on the board though. I would like to also put a video card in the regular PCI slot for another VM video passthrough. However the Multi-Monitor Support setting help says it supports synchronous display on IGD and PEG (on board and PCI express) cards. Does that mean the PCI slot is disabled with this setting?

 

thanks

 

 

 

It shouldn't no.  Set the multi-monitor support setting to "disabled" in your BIOS.  You should be able to use the other PCI slot for another GPU just fine.

[gulo]

Thanks, however I could not get my current video card to with until I enabled the multi monitor support option.

[jonp]

Thanks, however I could not get my current video card to with until I enabled the multi monitor support option.

Pardon?  Sorry, I'm not understanding your message. Are you saying you were able to pass through both GPUs to different VMs ok, but you had to set the BIOS multi monitor setting to enabled?

[gulo]

Well I only have one video card right now and it is pci x16. I was only able to pass it when the multi monitor option was enabled. I am wondering if I were to get a second video card (old regular PCI) could I pass both of them at the same time.

[jonp]

Hmm, should be able to.  This stuff can be a bit picky from mobo to mobo.