Hi, I am about to buy a used 1060 6GB for the host.
From the docs, it seems DMABUF for NVIDIA cards is in progress.
Suppose this patch comes out in the future, can I use it with the 1060 6GB?
Also, how much performance do I lose by not having DMABUF enabled now?
It has been reported that DMABUF is now available on the latest drivers, both closed and open source, however it only works for Turing and later GPUs and there are no announced plans from NVidia to backport it to other models.
1 Like
I see.
Without DMABUF, I would have higher latency, right?
No, DMABUF offloads a memory copy from the CPU to the GPU, the same copy still needs to happen regardless. So it saves you some memory bandwidth and CPU load.
2 Likes
I see, so technically a very good CPU and fast bandwidth (e.g. PCIe 3.0 x8 and 6GB of VRAM) for the host GPU can compensate for the loss of DMABUF?
DMABUF is more efficient, period. It’s not necessarily lower latency, but if your workload is already high such as running a title in the VM that is using tons of PCIe bandwidth and CPU, the no, you can not “compensate for the loss”.
DMABUF also potentially bypasses a RAM to RAM copy (not VRAM) depending on how the GPU drivers are implemented.
That said, most people do not need it today but it is recommended. Anyone using an iGPU should 100% be using it as the iGPU uses system RAM instead of having dedicated VRAM. Start running high resolutions and/or refresh rates and it starts to become more important also.
3 Likes