Re: 6 gamers 1 GPU - Laptop pro graphics options?

Hardware Enterprise Gear
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Hey Wendell,

I really liked your recent 6 gamers 1 GPU video and I think this is the best place in the forum for this, sorry if not I am new. I actually haven’t posted in a tech forum in ages so this topic thawed me out of the ice. I tried to search and found no topics on it yet.

I have been wanting to do a poor-mans X-gamers, 1 system setup for a while but haven’t followed through. The nVidia GRID or AMD SR IOV options may enable me to split one graphics card into multiples and that is news to me. I have a dual socket Dell workstation that I was going to try to cram four cards into, but if I can do this with only 2 pro grade cards it could be cool. Thanks for the info I didn’t know this could be possible.

My recent focus is doing a One Laptop, 2 gamers setup so I can just take a spare monitor, keyboard and mouse with my Laptop and do heads-up games like Lackey CCG or maybe as high as Warcraft 3 or Starcraft 2 low settings. My Ivy Bridge HP Elitebook seems to have a all the IMMOU options needed in the BIOS. My approach was to get an eGPU with 3d graphics like a nVidia 1030. (Funny story actually I thought my HP lacked an expresscard slot and I accidentally knocked it off a table and the door to the expresscard slot popped off revealing itself to me, but now it may have a loose connection). I did get one of the external adapters (Beast adapter from China, IIRC?) and only if I wiggle the cable just right can I get the card detected by windows and still not with proper drivers. So now I am curious: it has a mobile pro graphics Quadro K2000M chip in it, does this support nVidia GRID and could I split them up and then it’s just a matter of the host OS using 2 displays and then I could setup a VM that has windows XP and Warcraft 3 on it to all be run on one laptop?

GRID has license fees you mentioned so maybe if I found a laptop with Radeon PRO graphics I could do the SR IOV approach? Some of the older Elitebooks in that gen have AMD graphics I think. It’s not obvious which chips have this, is it all PRO level drivers and can gpu-z maybe tell us? I tried a couple google searches but it seems like no comprehensive list exists for these features on which cards (especially older ones).

This is exciting that my project may take a newer angle. I am always scraping the bottom of the barrel on project parts so not sure what would be cheap enough but like I said my hopes are modest. Mostly I just want to go back to my glory days of a Warcraft 3 LAN party all in one box, if only to give the middle finger back at Blizzard for burning us all in the re-release. And it can be cool to show up at the friend’s house and have all the games ready to go in one box. Clearly my approach is not over the network I want it all virtual network on one box; the box itself can be offline so this is a variant idea for sure. Though obviously if it can run Starcraft 2 that has to phone home.

Anyways, thanks again; any more info would be helpful.

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The feature has been marketed as MxGPU, and there are a literal handful of models.

FirePro S7100x ~$200 USD used, I think it only available in MXM format.
FirePro S7150 - less common, most have the x2 version I think
FirePro S7150x2 ~$500 USD used
Radeon Pro V340 ~$10,000 USD new, hard to find

1 Like
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Awww bummer. But thanks good to burst my bubble before I buy more hardware and wonder why it doesn’t work. Some of those may drop in price used eventually, dumpster diving for off-lease hardware is one of my specialties.

Not to complicate the thread but now I have the desperate man question: what happens if I have 2 VMs try to simultaneously use the same GPU? Bad things I imagine, but no way to do it for a card without this feature? I mean we’re talking crazy software configuration but I have to wonder if it is possible like if the card has 2 display outputs maybe some way to keep the resources separated but hard to imagine when 3D rendering comes into play.

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For PCIe passthrough? The software does not allow it, and will throw a fit.

There is a cool project that has a hardware accelerated virtual GPU. https://virgil3d.github.io/

It is not even close to done, and there is not a working windows version yet.

Also, Intel has a vGPU technology called GVT-g https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel_GVT-g

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Well this is a new one… multiple users on one GPU, first time I hear of it.

Anyway, the Elitebooks/Zbooks (at least G1/G2) can’t do GPU passthrough, sadly, because the dedicated GPU goes through the Intel IGP (i.e. it’s a muxless hybrid graphics setup).

So I’m thinking this multiuser setup would also be impossible.

But that’s just my experience, if someone can make it work, that’d be amazing…

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I should have clarified my Elitebook is a bit older than those G1 (MacBook Pro wannabees) it is an 8570w with the nvidia graphics. The kind of laptop you can defend yourself with. Your graphics insight may be in play though since the intel iGPU is nowhere to be found in Windows 10, only the nVidia option. I was a bit out of touch with tech those days so I am not sure how the hybrid graphics were handled, but intel does not appear to be an option.

It was mentioned that Intel graphics can be split but I am wondering would it be any good like is there a mobile PC laptop with Iris graphics that also has all the BIOS settings to virtualize it into 2 cards? What shade is this Unicorn beast?

And IMNHSO, the 7 pound 8000 series elitebooks were the last (true) elitebook they made, just like the z840 was the last real workstation. Everything after that was a bad attempt to imitate Apple. I do like the slim aluminum ones my doctor had but only for the trackpoint which not all have. I have a T450 ultrabook to satisfy that need. Would be cool if I could split the graphics on that, it does have 1 VGA and 1 MiniDP.

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I really wish I had seen this video before I bought a K2… :frowning: My fault for being over zealous about this type of tech. I was very space limited on my build so I thought this would be a great solution and a fun piece of tech to mess with…oooops. Anyways, I may keep it around for fun and see if I can break something.

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