VM Gaming Hardware Requirements

[mishmash-]

I'm looking to convert my existing unraid box to host a gaming VM (just one for myself). My daily driver laptop is a lightweight unit - and I'm also weighing up whether it will be cheaper or better to go with an eGPU.

 

My question is will a gaming VM using a i7 4770 and a GTX 1060 mini with passthrough support modern-ish titles? How steep do the hardware requirements get when running games through a VM? Are there any general rules of thumb? (i.e. need 0.5 GHz higher and one level above recommended requirements, etc)?

[Alphahelix]

On 3/24/2018 at 3:59 AM, mishmash- said:

I'm looking to convert my existing unraid box to host a gaming VM (just one for myself). My daily driver laptop is a lightweight unit - and I'm also weighing up whether it will be cheaper or better to go with an eGPU.

 

My question is will a gaming VM using a i7 4770 and a GTX 1060 mini with passthrough support modern-ish titles? How steep do the hardware requirements get when running games through a VM? Are there any general rules of thumb? (i.e. need 0.5 GHz higher and one level above recommended requirements, etc)?

I would take 2 cores and the two HT - giving you 4 Virtual cores total. I also have a GTX 1060 and I feel nor see nor performance loss (though it most likely i there, its just to small for me to notice) I tried with an external GPU via ExpressCard. Not recomended, true it is producing much better results than the internal GPU. but the PCIe x1 lane is not near enough for gaming in my opinion. I have run Stellaris and Path Of Exile on my rig, no problem for me. 

[Jcloud]

On 3/23/2018 at 7:59 PM, mishmash- said:

My question is will a gaming VM using a i7 4770 and a GTX 1060 mini with passthrough support modern-ish titles? How steep do the hardware requirements get when running games through a VM? Are there any general rules of thumb? (i.e. need 0.5 GHz higher and one level above recommended requirements, etc)?

Yeah I think it would work fine. Really just look at the software requirements for the game titles to run and follow the minimum/recommendations for graphics and memory.  Your GTX1060 is a decent base-line for gpu gaming performance, just make sure it's on 3.0 PCIe 4x or 8x slot (probably is if you're not doing anything fancy). 

 

Alphahelix already gave you the right idea for CPU, just take two cores and their corresponding HT's.  The only question becomes memory, you didn't say how much you have. If you have memory to spare (24G+ of ram) I would recommend allocating at least 16GB to the VM for a quality gaming experience. What ever the amount of ram you allocate to the VM remember to leave somewhere between 2-4GB not allocated for unRAID host.

 

As for the how steep do the hardware requirements get when running games through a VM, I treat it as the same as if I was just on said system.

 

I hope that helped and answered your questions.