Known working GPUs for Passthrough?

[sdawkins1991]

Hi there,

 

I am hoping that someone may be able to help, or that all can cumulatively help by giving me feedback.

 

I am an IT professional, so am comfortable playing around with hardware/software things, though I am by no means a developer/scripter.

 

I have been trying to get a GPU stably passed through to a Windows 10/7 VM for some time now and was wondering if people could list some known GPUs and their variants so I can try to pick the most likely to work.

 

Essentially, my first platform was :

 

Asus P8B-M

e3-1230v2

16GB ECC

GTX 970

Unraid 6.2

 

There proved an issue in that, I did not have a built in GPU (I did as the motherboard has an onboard chip, but thats a long story), so the passthrough was not possible, as NVidia has known issues with that.

 

So I returned the GTX 970 and bought a RX480 4GB (Sapphire Nitro+). This then allowed me to use the same GPU for Unraid as a VM, but the issues were not entirely solved. I would now experience a common issue I have come to learn, where the VM would crash when installing the video drivers.

 

This happened with Q35/i440, SeaBios/OVMF, with video and audio passed through, varying numbers of cores and memory.

 

So I decided to refresh the system as it was a bit old, and upgraded to Skylake:

 

Asus Z170M PLUS

i7 6700k

16GB 2400Mhz Corsair Memory

RX480 4GB

 

Unfortunately the same issue still persists, leaving me a little frustrated, but willing to work toward a solution.

 

It appears that someone said they have the XFX RX480 GTR passing through without issue, with others having issues with other variants.

 

I am confused as to whether it is pot luck with the hardware working/dodgy batch, or whether I am doing something fundamentally wrong.

 

Any help is appreciated, though I am away from the server for around 5 days now.

 

Thanks!

[bungee91]

Basic adapter, GT710/20/30, I have also had great success with the R260X however that is a bit old now.

 

[dimes007]

I've personally passed with no issue:

this GT 730 (WARNING: double width card)

Radeon HD 8570 that came with an HP Envy and is not available retail.

 

[sdawkins1991]

Thanks guys, glad to know people are having some success!

 

I am mainly looking for a 'last season' enthusiast card, so anything like a GTX 970 or RX480, due to their 'bang to buck' ratio.

 

Possibly thinking about a GTX 1060 or perhaps a XFX RX480 GTR, though am unsure about the 480 due to my previous experience. Do the different aftermarket cards run different BIOS's? I would assume so, but not sure if that would make a difference if another RX480 did not work?

 

Am tempted to try the 970 again now that I have an IGPU to get over the other Nvidia issues.

 

Thoughts and opinions please.

 

Thanks

[f3dora]

Asus 980ti Strix OC works perfectly with MSI enabled. Most UEFI compatible GPUs should work. IIRC some people have problems with the new AMD GPUs, not sure about the new nvidia pascal consumer GPUs.

 

EDIT: According to multiple users the new NVidia pascal GPUs work in unraid.

[detz]

I'm passing a MSI GAMING GeForce GTX 1060 through just fine.

[ned.stark]

I am passing through a GTX 1080; no issues here.

 

I will soon be up with another VM and it will have the HD 4670 passed-through.

[Naldinho]

I've passed through three different Radeon HD all without issues

[f3dora]

I've passed through three different Radeon HD all without issues

The new AMD 4XX GPUs?

[sdawkins1991]

Wow, thanks guys, wasn't expecting so many responses in quick succession!

 

Glad to hear people are having luck with the GTX series as they are generally more power efficient than the AMD (quite important to me as its a NAS at the end of the day).

 

@f3dora - may I ask what you mean by 'with MSI enabled'?

 

As I said, the main issue I experience is when installing the GPU drivers, the VM crashes.

 

In W10 when using SeaBios, the VM would crash but spike CPU to 100% and unfair thought the VM was fine, bar the maxed CPU.

 

When using OVMF the VM would just reboot and I would get the '.dll is either not supported by Windows or...' error.

 

When using W7, the VM would run with drivers but would randomly crash, obviously no OVMF support here.

 

I have never really played with enthusiast cards before, can you flash the BIOS on them? Someone mentioned UEFI support? Can you explain please?

 

Thanks guys, really appreciate the help from the community!

[f3dora]

Enabling MSI interrupts on passed through GPUs can fix HDMI audio problems and on some systems improve performance.

• https://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/UnRAID_6/VM_Guest_Support#Enable_MSI_for_Interrupts_to_Fix_HDMI_Audio_Support
  
• http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=378044
  

I use the MSI switching utility (not the script) from the bottom of the post on the guru3d forums.

[sdawkins1991]

Thanks f3dora, I just assumed you meant MSI as a retailer, or afterburner!

 

I guess it is just a job of googling whether or not your card is MSI capable?

 

I have noticed that the MSI 1069 is not too much these days.

 

Trying to stay away from the 'ultimate' cards as the 'bang for buck' ratio is normally frantically impacted on these.

 

I typically game at 1080p but would like the option of 1440p or even 4K at lower settings, as an alternative in the future!

[kode54]

GTX 960 4GB

 

And I learned from another topic on this forum that the NVidia "code 43" errors only apply when freshly installing the drivers with HyperV and other such features visible. It's perfectly safe to turn those back on after rebooting the machine post-install. Gotta be careful of automatic driver updates, though.

[Naldinho]

I've passed through three different Radeon HD all without issues

The new AMD 4XX GPUs?

 

No. These were all card that were 2-3 years old.

[f3dora]

I guess it is just a job of googling whether or not your card is MSI capable?

Its almost impossible to find information online if a card is MSI capable, there is a guide on how to find out if your card its MSI capable in the unraid wiki.

 

GTX 960 4GB

 

And I learned from another topic on this forum that the NVidia "code 43" errors only apply when freshly installing the drivers with HyperV and other such features visible. It's perfectly safe to turn those back on after rebooting the machine post-install. Gotta be careful of automatic driver updates, though.

I never got an error 43 on my Card (Asus 980ti Strix OC, Hyper-V enabled) i actually recently uninstalled my GPU driver using DDU and everything still worked perfectly, just at 800x600 until i installed the driver again.

[kode54]

Correcting my post. It worked on first reboot. Then a Windows Update and reboot later, it failed.

 

Safest option for recent and as of this post current NVidia drivers:

 

• No need for features -> kvm -> hidden, or at least doesn't appear to be necessary.
  
• No veridian or hyperv sections in features.
  
• No hypervtimer in clock.
  

 

Tossing those into the system post-install seems to work for one boot, then fail. Either the HyperV status isn't being enabled immediately, or the OS is installing the drivers for it after the NVidia drivers already start up, causing it to not be detected. Either way, a good idea to leave these options off when running NV drivers, and use either AMD or Intel or VNC when you need a VM with HyperV, such as for Windows Phone simulation.

[SpaceInvaderOne]

I have used a few gpus in these configs. i have no built in gpu

 

primary            secondary

hd 6450            750 ti

r7 370              hd 6450

hd 6450            gtx950

hd 6450            gtx960

hd 6450            gtx970

 

latest config

 

hd 6450            gtx1070

[sdawkins1991]

Hi all,

 

Thanks for all the input and confirmation of working cards.

 

I got back home today and installed an Asus GTX 1060 6GB Strix OC in to my server.

 

I tried turning off HyperV initially but the W10 box did not boot. Turned it back on and then the VM booted no issues.

 

All drivers installed along with GPU Tweak, and I have a nice stable system!

 

You have no idea how thrilled I am to finally have a gaming VM that 'just works'.

 

A bonus about the 1060 over the RX480 is that the card is only drawing around 4-5w or so of power at idle, whereas the 480 was around 25w!

 

Once again thanks for all the help guys! One happy chappy!

 

Sam

[Rikumo1978]

On 10/10/2016 at 3:09 PM, ned.stark said:

I am passing through a GTX 1080; no issues here.

 

I will soon be up with another VM and it will have the HD 4670 passed-through.

Hello, I am currently passing through a 1080 in my UNRAID build. If I may ask.... were you passing Audio through that HDMI channel as well? And how did you get it to work? Thanks!!

[ibasaw]

hi,

is there somewhere a list of all workinng gpu passthrough ?

++

[bwainhouse]

On 10/10/2016 at 7:56 PM, detz said:

I'm passing a MSI GAMING GeForce GTX 1060 through just fine.

hi what bios are you using - i can't get this card to work (but can with a 1070)

[Sleepyme]

On 10/10/2016 at 5:49 PM, sdawkins1991 said:

Wow, thanks guys, wasn't expecting so many responses in quick succession!

 

Glad to hear people are having luck with the GTX series as they are generally more power efficient than the AMD (quite important to me as its a NAS at the end of the day).

 

@f3dora - may I ask what you mean by 'with MSI enabled'?

 

As I said, the main issue I experience is when installing the GPU drivers, the VM crashes.

 

In W10 when using SeaBios, the VM would crash but spike CPU to 100% and unfair thought the VM was fine, bar the maxed CPU.

 

When using OVMF the VM would just reboot and I would get the '.dll is either not supported by Windows or...' error.

 

When using W7, the VM would run with drivers but would randomly crash, obviously no OVMF support here.

 

I have never really played with enthusiast cards before, can you flash the BIOS on them? Someone mentioned UEFI support? Can you explain please?

 

Thanks guys, really appreciate the help from the community!

Sounds similar to my issue. I when your cpu spikes to 100% your screen will come back in about 1p minutes.