Is single GPU passthrough a good idea?

English Virtualization
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After trying OpenSUSE Leap as a guest OS in Tumbleweed, I realized that the video performance was terrible. This makes sense, because there is no hardware acceleration. This can be mitigated with GPU passthrough, but the problem is that I only have one good GPU.

My current setup consists of:

  • RTX 2070 Super Windforce (yes, a NVIDIA GPU unfortunately)
  • AMD Ryzen 7

There are three options:

  1. Set up single GPU passthrough with my RTX 2070 Super video card (if possible)
  2. Insert a crappy GTX 740 from my old PC into my current one and use it for my host OS.
  3. Option two, but with a better video card

The second option might not be that bad. I only want to use my host OS for personal stuff. That includes mainly coding and socializing. I want to install two VMs: one for work and one for gaming and music production. The GTX 740 might be sufficient.

So my question is, what should I do and why?

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@SuperUSEr Hi and welcome to the Forum :smile:

You need two gpu’s, an extra keyboard/mouse and monitor for GPU passthrough. Likewise your motherboard needs to support iommu etc…

Have a read here on how to setup with qemu: Running Windows 10 on Linux using KVM with VGA Passthrough - Heiko's Blog

Also have a read here: Set up for KVM/QEMU GPU passthrough IOMMU for AMD GPU needed

1 Like
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Why? What prevents VM from using virtual devices?

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@arvidjaar definitely needed during the install, since all activity is taking place on the gpu passthrough monitor. After install I used barrier on the windows machine.

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@arvidjaar there is an exception, vGPU and the GRID driver, alas I have yet to get it compiling on the Tumbleweed Kernel (I’m not a coder), else I could use my Tesla P4 and allocate to the virtual machine.