Proxmox 9.0 + Intel B50 SR-IOV -- finally its almost here! Early Adopter's Guide

rgatte · February 7, 2026, 7:49am

I mean the spec sheet from what I’ve looked at promises nothing in regards to SR-IOV capabilities so it’s unsurprising that Intel can pull off things with not much room for complaints.

Hyperwerk · February 7, 2026, 1:26pm

So currently I’m having no luck with the 3 MS-01s and my B50s. They all seem to stall even prior to POST. I’ll see if I can update the firmware on the cards in hopes of actually getting the nodes up and running. After that its all about the PVE config.

wendell · February 7, 2026, 1:48pm

fwiw these cards do this on some am5 boards pre bios update too. fix is usually board side. ot card side. and it’s also true Intel fw can make a previously posting system not post but due to bugs in the host system not Intel

I had raised that issue with Intel and gave them specific examples to test

double check your bios has resize bar and above 4g decoding enabled

Hyperwerk · February 7, 2026, 2:52pm

I’m not done yet, and willing to accept this is the early adaptors tax.

For some additional context, I’m currently running BIOS v1.27, PVE 9 with kernel 6.14.11. I’ve opened a support ticket with Minisforum, as I expect these cards to see increased adoption now that the N3rdware coolers are publicly available.

I’ve already gone through the usual PCIe-related parameters:

PCIe Link Speed → Forced to Gen3
ASPM → Disabled as far as possible. I have to boot with a Sparkle Arc A310 (which works flawlessly) to configure this, since the system provides no feedback when the B50 is installed and the option is otherwise completely unavailable in BIOS.
Above 4G Decoding → Toggled
SR-IOV → Toggled
ReBAR → Toggled

All of the above have been tested in multiple enabled/disabled combinations with no change in behavior. The system still hangs before the splash screen appears.

At this point, attention shifts to card firmware, especially given reports from December describing similar behavior on the Intel forums. A BIOS update may ultimately be required, assuming Minisforum is willing to provide one.

Strawberry · February 7, 2026, 5:11pm

You will want to update your kernel if you plan to use SR-IOV. That probably does not have any relevance to your current issue though. No post is rough.

krasovsky · February 10, 2026, 6:31pm

This is from the official changelogs inside firmware update distributed via LVFS: LVFS: Arc Battlemage B50

You can download the latest firmware .cab file, unpack it and check metadata.xml files.

justin_kasmweb · February 11, 2026, 3:01am

If it helps at all, I can confirm that I have the b50 card working with a 13th gen MS-01 both plugged directly into the PCIE slot (with no case on) and via oculink using the DEG1.

The tests in my previous post were from an MS-A1 , but just recently got a second card for the MS-01.

The card has the firmware 32.0.101.6979 .

What I can say is that it didnt work for the longest time on the MS-01. In fact I cant really say exactly what worked but at one point I did remove the CMOS battery to reset the BIOS.

If I recall correctly things did start to work after i manually specified GEN3 speed, but i then went back to auto and it still worked after that?

I did explicitly set integrated graphics instead of auto as well.

I know this isnt terribly helpful other than to say it CAN work. I’m on the middle of tests and don’t really want to risk a reboot ATM but I will send you screenshots of my bios when i get a chance.

And to clarify “work” vs “didnt work”. My main problem with it not working was the devices wasnt showing up via lspci nor dmesg from what i could tell. I didnt ever experience freezes or whatnot

rasseru · February 11, 2026, 9:22pm

I am posting my computer trauma in case it may aid someone still suffering.

In short you should never just trust Intel’s Windows Installer!

I spend three days pulling my hair out and screaming at the computer screen trying to get the B50 to recognize the SR-IOV capability. I had read all the instructions multiple times, watch countless videos on the B50 and SR-IOV. However, nothing I did worked, it was as if it was just ignoring me when it should just work.

I created a windows machine, installed the 6979 drivers, confirmed the drivers with GPU-Z, built and rebuild proxmox many times however nothing worked. What was even more infuriating was the internal motherboard gpu was showing SR-IOV capabilities. When I reach the point that I was screaming at the monitor I tried something different.

I rebuild the Windows machine, downloaded and installed the latest driver 8306. It still said I wanted a further update, so I updated the drivers again. Finally I booted Linux Mint 22.3 from a USB drive. I did not install it, I just ran it from the USB drive.

I immediately opened a terminal and type “sudo lspci -vv” and found that the B50 card finally recognized the SR-IOV capability.
It is true that the VF is limited to 2, however it was working.

Later, I reinstalled the 6979 drivers and the VF went back to 12.

In short, I had to update the drivers to the latest and then downgrade, instead of installing the desire drivers directly.

I hope this helps someone in need.

jaminmc · February 12, 2026, 1:34am

Nice! I just discovered that my Repo was posted on here. If you checkout my GitHub repo (In the first post), You will see that I have Kernel 6.18 and 6.19 available. I wonder if the newer kernels will help? I only have AMD APU, and Vega 64. So I can’t help with testing.

ExplodingLemur · February 12, 2026, 4:01am

I’ve successfully enabled 2 VFs with my B50 in Proxmox on a Dell R730XD (does not support reBAR) using the 6.17.4-2-pve kernel. However, I get an error of “not enough MMIO resources for SR-IOV” with the 6.17.9-1-pve kernel. Is anyone else experiencing this?

Two files attached with dmesg output for the B50 PCI address as well as lspci for the B50, one for each of the kernels.
dmesg_6.17.9-1.txt (10.8 KB)
dmesg_6.17.4-2.txt (12.7 KB)

One maybe-a-data-point is the BAR resize errors are different between the two kernel versions, ENOENT vs ENOSPC…

[    9.791439] xe 0000:85:00.0: [drm] Failed to resize BAR2 to 16384M (-ENOENT). Consider enabling 'Resizable BAR' support in your BIOS

[    9.781156] xe 0000:85:00.0: [drm] Failed to resize BAR2 to 16384M (-ENOSPC). Consider enabling 'Resizable BAR' support in your BIOS

Directions I followed:

github.com

ccpk1/Homelab-Public-Documentation/blob/main/Proxmox Virtual GPU Setup with Intel Arc Pro B50.md

# Proxmox Virtual GPU Setup with Intel Arc Pro B50 (SR-IOV NOT PASSTHROUGH)
## Introduction

This guide outlines the configuration required to utilize the Single Root I/O Virtualization (**SR-IOV**) capabilities of the **Intel B50 graphics card** within a Proxmox environment.

Traditional **GPU Passthrough** is the practice of dedicating an entire physical device to a single VM. For example, my **Intel Arc A770** is currently dedicated via passthrough to a single Ubuntu VM.  In contrast, the **Intel B50 card** utilizes **Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV)**. This technology allows the single physical GPU to be partitioned into multiple dedicated **Virtual Functions (VFs)**, effectively enabling the card to be **split and shared across several guest Virtual Machines (VMs)** simultaneously.

This guide focuses specifically on how to configure the **Arc Pro B50** to create these multiple virtual GPUs, as it allows me to extend high-performance graphics to several guests without needing a separate card for each one.  This capability, while common in specialized data center hardware, is now accessible to the home user at a reasonable cost, providing performance benefits for:

- **Virtualized Remote Desktop**
- **Guest OS Graphics Acceleration**
- **Media Processing (Encoding/Decoding)**

Due to the relatively new support for SR-IOV on these Intel Arc Pro cards, documented working configurations are currently fragmented across various community threads. This makes the process challenging, as one must sort through numerous evolving troubleshooting steps and comments to assemble a working solution.

This document compiles the specific, verified steps for the Proxmox host setup, including firmware updates, driver settings, and VM configuration, into one cohesive, matter-of-fact guide.
## My Configuration
* **Asus Z790 Prime** Motherboard with Intel Raptor Lake **i7 13700K** CPU and **64GB RAM** 
* **Intel Arc A770 16GB** with direct passthrough to single Ubuntu Guest for various Docker and LLM loads.  (This may change in the future, but working fine in this configuration for now. In the future it might even be possible to use this in conjunction with a virtual B50 on the same machine to provide some additional memory for LLM use)
* **Intel Arc Pro B50 16GB** to be divided amount several Windows and Linux VMs (The subject of this post)

This file has been truncated. show original

(originally posted this comment in a different thread but I think it belongs in this one)

ExplodingLemur · February 12, 2026, 4:31am

Uh…I fixed it, apparently! Add this to your kernel command line:

xe.vram_bar_size=-1

It will not attempt to resize the BAR for the GPU, and creation of VFs works again! This may be a fix for all that do not have reBAR support on their platform! If you’re blocked by lack of reBAR support, please try this option and report back.

justin_kasmweb · February 12, 2026, 10:18am

I will second this.
I didnt catch it until I got my second card . Trying to go directly to 6979 wouldnt work . I tried 3 times and the SRIOV capabilities wouldnt show. I had to install a newer driver (that only included 2 VFs) then drop back to 6979 to get the 12

jode · February 12, 2026, 8:58pm

More SR-IOV functionality coming to Linux in version 7.0

The Intel Xe driver has contiuned enabling more functionality around SR-IOV as well as Shared Virtual Memory (SVM) as part of their Project Battlematrix initiatives and preparing for next-gen Crescent Island AI accelerator hardware. Among the SR-IOV work is SR-IOV PF MERT support, SR-IOV V migration, and other functionality. On the SVM side is multi-device SVM.

Strawberry · February 13, 2026, 1:32am

SR-IOV V Migration
Is this what I think it is? Live migration support for SR-IOV? Gonna have to do some reading…

justin_kasmweb · February 13, 2026, 3:19am

This is interesting. I was just doing testing in the area this week. The goal was to see how migration and cloning worked. Here are some findings.

Cloning of VM Templates that have a resource mapping for the virtual functions will work assuming you have multiple nodes with the b50 and you’ve added the virtual functions from both nodes to the same resource mapping
Similarly migration of powered off VMs will work in the same way
When defining the resource mapping you can try enabling “Live Migration Capable (Experimental)” but it won’t even let you power on the VM. It reports that its not capable of V migration. So, live migration isnt possible.

long.barn4823 · February 13, 2026, 1:35pm

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/741626/intel-arc-pro-graphics-windows.html

2025.Q4.R2 (8314) driver is out - I’m away from computer now, unclear from skim of release notes if there is new firmware b50/b60 is in this release?

Walter_Ego · February 13, 2026, 10:26pm

@long.barn4823 There is definitely new B60 firmware which introduces the enablement of SR-IOV - B60 SR-IOV support emerges in latest Arc Pro drivers (7 VFs)

Has card specific firmwares:

~/bmg$ find .
.
./golden-fwcode
./golden-fwcode/bmg_g21_fwupdate_golden.bin
./golden-fwdata
./golden-fwdata/bmg_onix_arkn_intel_arc_pro_b60-b60_config-data_golden.bin
./golden-fwdata/bmg_shangke_ms_intel_arc_pro_b60_dual_48g_gpu1-b60_config-data_golden.bin
./golden-fwdata/bmg_sparkle_dual_b60_passive-b60_config-data_golden.bin
./golden-fwdata/bmg_shangke_ms_intel_arc_pro_b60_dual_48g_gpu2-b60_config-data_golden.bin
./golden-fwdata/bmg_shangke_maxsun_intel_arc_pro_b60_milestone_24g-b60_config-data_golden.bin
./golden-fwdata/bmg_ibc-dws-b93_e212_config-data_golden.bin
./golden-fwdata/bmg_asrock_passive-b60_config-data_golden.bin
./golden-fwdata/bmg_sparkle_b60_blower-b60_config-data_golden.bin
./golden-fwdata/bmg_asrock_creator-b60_config-data_golden.bin
./golden-fwdata/bmg_sparkle_b60__passive-b60_config-data_golden.bin
./opromcode
./opromcode/bmg_OpromCode.bin
./fwcode
./fwcode/bmg_g21_fwupdate.bin
./golden-opromcode
./golden-opromcode/bmg_OpromCode_golden.bin
./golden-opromdata
./golden-opromdata/bmg_e212_1114_config23_golden.bin
./fwdata
./fwdata/bmg_onix_arkn_intel_arc_pro_b60-b60_config-data.bin
./fwdata/bmg_sparkle_b60_blower-b60_config-data.bin
./fwdata/bmg_ibc-dws-b93_e212_config-data.bin
./fwdata/bmg_asrock_creator-b60_config-data.bin
./fwdata/bmg_shangke_maxsun_intel_arc_pro_b60_milestone_24g-b60_config-data.bin
./fwdata/bmg_shangke_ms_intel_arc_pro_b60_dual_48g_gpu1-b60_config-data.bin
./fwdata/bmg_shangke_ms_intel_arc_pro_b60_dual_48g_gpu2-b60_config-data.bin
./fwdata/bmg_asrock_passive-b60_config-data.bin
./fwdata/bmg_sparkle_b60__passive-b60_config-data.bin
./fwdata/bmg_sparkle_dual_b60_passive-b60_config-data.bin
./opromdata
./opromdata/bmg_e212_1114_config23.bin

quilt · February 13, 2026, 11:12pm

B50 Pro firmware is upgraded too. Not sure what the difference is but in any case I still have 2 VFs. Maybe stuff for future SRIOV migration?

Skud · February 14, 2026, 12:04am

This might be the big update for the B60!!

Firmware in v8306

Firmware in v8314

Shadowbane · February 14, 2026, 3:48pm

I wouldn’t get excited. The fact that Intel has created custom firmware for the B60, which allows you to have up to 7 VFs, is good for Intel. I would advise caution when purchasing this card for SRIOV workloads until at least two firmware upgrades. The reason I advise caution is that Itel could decide to limit the VFs to two, as they did to the B50.