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Re: [Xen-users] VGA/PCI Passthrough of Secondary Graphics Adapter



On 04/29/2013 10:17 PM, Casey DeLorme wrote:

    I'm not disputing that FLR makes it easier. What I am saying,
    however, is that if the driver is written without cutting corners
    and making assumptions, it should be able to manually re-initialize
    the device.

I totally wish that was the case, if you find a linux method of doing
this I would love to know about it.

The reality is that this doesn't really help us - if the driver is poorly written and can't handle re-initializing the device on it's own, it doesn't really matter whether the device has FLR or not. IMO the problem is the quality of the driver, not the implementation of FLR.

Years of experience have taught me that as much as Nvidia's drivers suck, ATI's drivers suck even more. :(


        I point my fingers at FLR because its described responsibility is to
        reset device state in virtual environments, and every one of the
        problems I have encountered appear to be linked to the state of the
        card.  However, other users have posted very different experiences,
        leading me to believe that it could well be hardware specific.


    I suspect it's down to shoddy drivers. Has anyone actually reported
    problems with a supported Quadro card ([246]000 or FX [345]800)?

Not the mailing lists, but as supported devices (as per the wiki) I'm
willing to bet nVidia has been contacted for troubleshooting support.

If only ATI provided a method to contact them for such support, considering they claim that they "tested" 4850/4870 cards to work with Xen and VGA passthrough. If they've tested it, it'd be nice if they documented it. Personally I've not seen any evidence of the sort of stability you'd rightfully expect when the manufacturer vouches that something works.

        I started with a consumer nVidia card, it didn't work that's why I
        switched to AMD.  If you can share the model of a $180 USD consumer
        nVidia card with HDMI out and onboard audio that can be
        converted to a
        working Quadro model card and is equal to or outperforms my AMD
        I would
        gladly switch.


    GTX680 and GTX690 have been done:

    
http://www.eevblog.com/forum/__projects/hacking-nvidia-cards-__into-their-professional-__counterparts/msg207550/#__msg207550
    
<http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/hacking-nvidia-cards-into-their-professional-counterparts/msg207550/#msg207550>

    Note: Small amount of soldering required.

I saw that, would be awesome if I had a bit of extra cash, but more if
someone can confirm that it works.

As I said, give me a week or two to get my hands on a Quadro, then another week or two to get my hands on a GTX680 and modify it. This WILL happen because it will take some pretty insurmountable obstacles to make me concede to live with rebooting my machine whenever I want to have a blast of Borderlands 2 with friends. :)

         From what I have seen the Quadro 2000 is the earliest
        model with onboard audio, and none of them have HDMI out so you
        would
        need a DisplayPort to HDMI adapter, plus they cost double what I
        paid
        for my card.  If you compare passmark benchmarks my card has a 60%
        performance gain over a Quadro K2000, and 30% over the Quadro
        4000 which
        costs four times as much.  Going back to the lack of demonstration
        videos really makes me wary of throwing that much money into a
        "possible" alternative, especially one that performs worse than my
        current.  While I have seen emails mentioning Quadro, that's
        about it.


    Expect a report back from me on this as soon as I get my hands on a
    Quadro (2000 or FX3800, I have no intention of spending more than a
    bare minimum). My priority is to have something that works, and
    works _reliably_.

That is something to look forward to, please do send out details if you
get a Quadro and it works.

Count on it.

Gordan

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