Hey, so im looking to move from a windows 10 host to a Manjaro host and there are few things i need to sort out and would like your input on.
I am a gamer at heart, my main games are CS:GO, COD:War-zone, BF:5, LoL, Heartstone…
i pretty much play it all on a daily basis, so the decision to move faces me with two routes i can go - either i install Manjaro and run a windows 10 in a VM or dual boot windows and Manjaro on the same drive.
i have a couple of questions on those method’s that might way in the decision:
what is the performance impact of a VM with passthrough or dual boot?
can i run a windows 10 VM and passthrough using Intel igpu since i only have 1 GPU? ( RTX2080 aorus xtreme)
if i run Win 10 VM with passthrough can i maintain G-Sync and 165Hz on my desktop and games?
(165 fps at the very least with out tearing…)
is it considered a bad practice to dual boot on the same SSD NVME M.2 Drive i have?
are there any issues that can happen from dual booting?
which one in your opinion is the better option?
i run a
Intel i7-9700k-@4.9Ghz
Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Pro
AORUS GeForce RTX 2080 XTREME 8G
Corsair Vengeance 16GB 3200MHz CL16
BTW im a newbie Linux user, my first Linux experience was Arch(loved the challenge…) and ubunto for a bit on VM so consider linux difficulty in setup of the environments
Out of the 5 games you listed, I’ve personally played CS:GO (Native, duh), LoL (Doomed - riot vanguard incoming) and Hearthstone on linux. I’ve succesfully installed BF4 and ran it on singleplayer but getting punkbuster to work is pita… iirc I’ve read somewhere that it’s doable but YMMV. Usually games with anticheat are nigh impossible to run on linux.
I’d suggest starting with dual boot, fiddle around in Manjaro to get familiar with it. Try out native cs:go, try to install hearthstone etc. Learn a bit about linux in general. (Pro tip - aliases are dope! They can be found in your .bashrc-file.)
Read up on vfio Archwiki - PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF - enable iommu on manjaro and check out your iommu groups.
Some answers to your questions:
In my experience running win10 in a vm with a passthrough gpu the performance impact was minimal.
It is doable. Keep in mind that you need 2 input’s in your monitor, one from iGPU and second from your GPU. Otherwise you need to switch your input cable to your monitor from one gpu to the another. Some reading regarding single-gpu passthrough: joeknock90 - single-gpu-passthrough YuriAlek - vfio
Yes. I’ve had Asus ROG PG278Q for a while now. G-sync and high refresh works on linux and inside a win10 VM. Your performance should be close to bare metal.
Managing your linux /boot and windows boot partition inside one drive could be a hassle. (I’ve heard win updates scuffing grub/bootloader) Otherwise it should not be a problem - Just fire up manjaro installer and try it out!
Not really… In my experience the biggest issue is/was leaving windows to rot.
Both have their merits.
Dual boot is easier.
VFIO is not… Setting up gpu passthrough is serious nerd work… I must have spent over 12 hours reading, watching videos and trying to get it to work. But it is all worth it! You feel that good tingle every morning when you press your power button and you know… you will boot into linux - you will be free!
Just give linux a try! If you like to tinker - You will like linux.
::EDIT::
Important message from the future!!! Before you do anything - Backup your data! Atleast 3 different copies… And preferably 2 different locations (1 in your pc’s hdd, another on external hdd, third server/any computer you have access to. (Parents - Siblings - 2nd computer - Your mate’s)) For maximum security package your data with a password if you feel iffy giving someone your personal files.
If you have Windows installed on it’s own SSD. You can pass-through the whole drive to the VM. Not only does this give better performance. It gives you the option to also boot Windows bare metal if you want to.
fooo… Wow dude, first of all, im really grateful for your detailed answer, its definitely not obvious.
couple of things on my mind -
first of all im 100% going Linux, once i tasted that apple on arch and the shenanigans windows gave me it seems like there is no other way really…
secondly about performance loss from bare metal to VM, how much are we talking about? like 10% drop? more then that?
thirdly, i guess lets say 90% of my time on games is on CS:GO which like you said has native support to Linux and CoD:Warzone who has no support whatsoever to Linux, can a VM passthrough run everything just like a bare-metal windows 10 would?(with a lose of some performance of course…) especially CoD:Warzone?
forth thing, how does a passthrough will work if lets say i have PG278Q and another monitor on portrait mode for coding(i do WebDev and ML/AI so its just really comfortable this way), i don’t really need my second monitor for games i use him only for vscode so i dunno how will it actually work? do i need the second monitor also running a cable to the igpu and the 2080?
on the dual boot front of things, i don’t mind if the dual boot mess up windows since its only going to be for games, i am more afraid it will mess with my Linux partition since most of my work is going to be done there(including my actual work not just personal data).
and again dude, much thanks for spending the time to write such a descriptive message.
Speaking from personal experience, the performance drop (if there was any, imo games ran just fine) was closer to 5% than 10%
Yes - a vm win10 will run any game normal win10 would run. I have seen reports of people getting banned on various games when running win10 in a vm though. You must do some research regarding CoD:Warzone.
Think of the monitor situation like this: Linux(host) has only iGPU when win10|vm is on. win10|vm has your 2080. Your gpu’s can only output signal from their respective os’s. Only when you boot into linux, will your 2080 be able to output signal from linux.
So essentially at the minimum you will need 2-cables, both from your 2080 to both of your monitors. When you boot linux, you are able to use the 2080 for gaming and both of your monitors. Now if you were to run win10 in a vm, your 2080 would be bind to windows and you would lose your signal from linux. And if you wanted to see signal from your linux, you would need to connect a cable from your iGPU to one of your monitors. And change the input from your monitor too. It can be done inside linux on some monitors tho, the program is called ddcutil. It can be found on most linux distro repos. (Or you could just ssh from windows into your linux host if you were a crazy person teehee…)
(including my actual work not just personal data).
Let me repeat: Backup your data!!!
Windows can’t mess up your linux partitions, it can only scuff the bootloader. If you have 1 big partition on your ssd, you can split it into smaller piece(s) to give a partition for which to install windows on.
Also BigBlueHouse’s comment is golden - You could buy a ~120-240gb ssd for which to install windows10 on bare metal - but still be able to run win10 inside a vm from linux. (The same install!!!)
::EDIT::
It should be obvious by now but you will need to passthrough your mouse+kb into win10. It’s possible to do a script to switch your mouse+kb between win10 and linux. From my experience, when I booted win10 in a vm I did not interact with linux at all but YMMV.
Thanks! You just blew my mind - Just recently installed win10 on a new ssd… I will have to give this one a try. (Making it work would mean 120gb free space from an ssd! Also some 240gb from backups - who needs 2 windows installs on one computer? )
2 more questions after reading the guide on passthrough,
can i use the 2080 in Linux as well? i saw something about making the igpu and GPU in isolation which makes me use the igpu for Linux and the 2080 for windows 10 VM.
i don’t mind making the igpu in linux when im using the windows 10 VM but if its going to be all the time even when im not using the VM that sucks and ill have to go with dual boot option if thats the case…
do you have a good guide for doin what BigBlueHouse mentioned? passing the whole drive to VM so the windows 10 on it will get booted to the VM and if needed i can do windows 10 on bare metal as well?
Yes you can but it means a bit of trickery when you want to run win10 in a vm. (You need to a. Restart and bind the vfio-pci driver to your 2080 or b. Do it on the fly (no restart))
IIrc a script for that can be found at:
Im a gamer here and i use windows 10 in a VM with dual gpu. Performance wise, it seems my VM is a bit quicker than the dual boot setup i had. Its serious geek stuff making it work tho, but its so much fun! I would recommand you try it! The only one gpu tho im not sure how to do it, but its linux, im pretty sure there is a way somewhere lol
