Windows 10 Poor Performance & Sound (GPU & SSD boot drive passthrough)

[Kudagra]

After hours of combing through the similar posts (on here and reddit) and watching space invader's videos, I've failed to find any solution to my W10 extremely poor performance issues. I can hardly stand to navigate the desktop, let alone do anything like gaming. My sound is also very staticky while using onboard audio. If I pass sound through the video card (outputting through monitor speakers), it's fine, but I'd prefer to use the onboard if possible.

 

Does anyone possibly have a suggestion outside of what I've already attempted?

 

ATTEMPTED SOLUTIONS

Performance:

-SSD passthrough (dedicated vm drive)

-CPU pinning/isolating

-VM emulator pinning (outside of vm cores)

-Updated latest VirtIO drivers

-MSI edit (MSI_uti settings enable/disable)

-"HPET" enable/disable (XML)

-Hyper-V Disabled

 

Sound:

-MSI edit (MSI_uti settings enable/disable)

-Sound quality setting adjustment (CD -> DVD -> Studio)

 

 

SPECS

Host:

-i7 3930k (6 core, 12 threads)

-32GB 1600MHz RAM

-240GB SSD Cache

-Many Storage drives

 

Guest:

-4 cores, 8 threads (pinned and isolated)

-GTX 1080 (passed through /w bios dump, no errors)

-12GB RAM

-1TB SSD (completely passed through with 250gb partition dedicated to W10 [the remainder is HFS+ for OSX])

-2TB WD Black (completely passed through)

 

XML TEXT

W10 XML.rtf

Edited November 25, 2018 by Kudagra

[david279]

Use virtio for all your disk. Sata is just not gonna get it.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

[Kudagra]

2 minutes ago, david279 said:

Use virtio for all your disk. Sata is just not gonna get it.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
 

From everything I've seen, I've been led to believe that the performance of the Sata passthrough was better than virtual mounting. Is that mistaken?

[david279]

Yeah that's mistaken. Passing thru sata drives via virtio is better than vdisk but running then using sata is no good.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

[Kudagra]

6 hours ago, david279 said:

Yeah that's mistaken. Passing thru sata drives via virtio is better than vdisk but running then using sata is no good.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
 

Switching my disks over to VirtIO made a night and day difference in my performance. Thank you very much.

 

That's what I get for starting my VM experience with Mac (where sata passthrough was required). I wasn't even aware that VirtIO was actually considered a pass through method.

 

 

EDIT: Ehh I spoke too soon. Performance is still pretty pitiful in comparison to my bare hardware.

Edited November 26, 2018 by Kudagra

[jonp]

We're going to need to see more details.  Can you do a youtube video or something to demonstrate what the experience in the VM is like?  

[BoilerAC]

Have you had any luck?  I have a similar situation, my SSD (Passed through using VirtIO) is pegged at 99% at all times.  It's like Windows is CRAWLING.

[Kudagra]

On 12/7/2018 at 9:12 PM, BoilerAC said:

Have you had any luck?  I have a similar situation, my SSD (Passed through using VirtIO) is pegged at 99% at all times.  It's like Windows is CRAWLING.

I've resolved the majority of my performance problems, but sound is still having to be passed through the GPU. 

 

I purchased a pci-e USB card and passed that through, and I rebuilt my W10 VM, but with Hyper-V enabled and VirtIO as my mount method (I'm sure it was the VM rebuild changes that did it, but I figure I'd include everything I did). I originally had disabled Hyper-V in an attempt to fix my Nvidia Error 43 passthrough, but after resolving that error I figured I'd try reenabling Hyper-V.  Keep in mind, I still have my guest's cores isolated, and the -VM emulator pinned outside of those guest cores. The pci-e USB card was because my usb devices (mouse/keyboard) would constantly disconnect when they were being passthrough individually in the VM settings. Since installing the pic-e card, I haven't had a single disconnect.

 

Now everything it seems to be running pretty solid, unless Unraid is doing a parity check. During a parity check, my W10 VM will hard freeze for anywhere from 5-20 seconds, and then pick up running again. This gets pretty annoying when parity checks take 26 hours. Oddly enough, I don't have the same issues during a parity check when I'm booted into my Mac OS VM. Outside of that, I'm very happy with the entire setup and plan on purchasing my Unraid license soon.

 

And in case anyone else that comes across this post is experiencing the Nvidia Passthrough problem, I resolved mine by booting Unraid into legacy mode instead of EFI mode. I was hoping to keep everything running as new-tech as possible, but I couldn't get my GTX 1080 to passthrough on either my W10 or Mac OS VM's with Unraid in EFI boot.

Edited December 11, 2018 by Kudagra

[Kudagra]

On 11/27/2018 at 1:23 PM, jonp said:

We're going to need to see more details.  Can you do a youtube video or something to demonstrate what the experience in the VM is like?  

I appreciate you replying in an attempt to help at the time. For some reason I didn't get an alert that you had posted, otherwise I would have gotten a video for you as requested.