Hi folks!
Looking for your advice/opinions please.
I’ve been successfully running a Windows 10 VM with my 290x passed-through for a while now. Recently I upgraded my beloved 290x to a 5700XT. I applied the Navi Reset Patch to my kernel, everything worked… Happy days! .
However I’ve been playing Borderlands 3 for about a week now and have been feeling like performance should be better. I’ve been achieving an average of 70fps on Ultra settings. Which is absolutely playable, just felt like it could/should be better.
In an effort to gain some performance. I updated my BIOS and moved the 5700XT from an PCI-E x8 to a PCI-E x16 slot. This actually made performance worse! Pretty sure this was because the BIOS update wiped my overclock settings (4.6Ghz). So I overclocked again, but can only achieve 4.5Ghz now at reasonable temps Must be because the GPU is closer to the CPU cooler and hindering airflow? At this point Borerlands 3 was down to 65fps.
So I thought I’d try booting up Windows on bare metal and the difference was pretty drastic. An average of 115fps.
I’m pretty confident that my CPU (i7 6700k) is bottle-necking the GPU in a VFIO configuration. I know there are overheads with virtualisation, but difference in gaming performance is considerable here.
This is all a long winded way of asking. Is my CPU a bottleneck in this configuration?
Sadly I get the feeling that I’m back to Dual Booting until I can afford a new Mobo and CPU. CPU upgrade paths seem limited by the socket. Deeply regretting not getting an AM4 board now
Hardware
CPU | Intel i7 6700k |
Motherboard | Asus Maximus VIII Hero Z170 |
RAM | 32GB Corsair Vengence @ 3000Mhz |
GPU (Host) | Radeon R5 230 |
GPU (Guest) | Radeon RX 5700XT |
VFIO Config
<domain type="kvm">
<name>win10-q35</name>
<uuid>13986d16-2a9f-4bf4-a24a-661f07e99300</uuid>
<metadata>
<libosinfo:libosinfo xmlns:libosinfo="http://libosinfo.org/xmlns/libvirt/domain/1.0">
<libosinfo:os id="http://microsoft.com/win/10"/>
</libosinfo:libosinfo>
</metadata>
<memory unit="KiB">16777216</memory>
<currentMemory unit="KiB">16777216</currentMemory>
<memoryBacking>
<hugepages/>
</memoryBacking>
<vcpu placement="static" current="6">8</vcpu>
<iothreads>1</iothreads>
<cputune>
<vcpupin vcpu="0" cpuset="1"/>
<vcpupin vcpu="1" cpuset="2"/>
<vcpupin vcpu="2" cpuset="3"/>
<vcpupin vcpu="3" cpuset="5"/>
<vcpupin vcpu="4" cpuset="6"/>
<vcpupin vcpu="5" cpuset="7"/>
<emulatorpin cpuset="0,4"/>
<iothreadpin iothread="1" cpuset="0,4"/>
</cputune>
<os>
<type arch="x86_64" machine="pc-q35-4.2">hvm</type>
<loader readonly="yes" type="pflash">/usr/share/ovmf/x64/OVMF_CODE.fd</loader>
<nvram>/var/lib/libvirt/qemu/nvram/win10_VARS.fd</nvram>
<boot dev="hd"/>
</os>
<features>
<acpi/>
<apic/>
<hyperv>
<relaxed state="on"/>
<vapic state="on"/>
<spinlocks state="on" retries="8191"/>
</hyperv>
<vmport state="off"/>
</features>
<cpu mode="host-passthrough" check="none">
<topology sockets="1" cores="4" threads="2"/>
</cpu>
<clock offset="localtime">
<timer name="rtc" tickpolicy="catchup"/>
<timer name="pit" tickpolicy="delay"/>
<timer name="hpet" present="no"/>
<timer name="hypervclock" present="yes"/>
</clock>
<on_poweroff>destroy</on_poweroff>
<on_reboot>restart</on_reboot>
<on_crash>destroy</on_crash>
<pm>
<suspend-to-mem enabled="no"/>
<suspend-to-disk enabled="no"/>
</pm>
<devices>
<emulator>/usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64</emulator>
<disk type="block" device="disk">
<driver name="qemu" type="raw" cache="none" io="native"/>
<source dev="/dev/disk/by-id/ata-KINGSTON_SH103S3120G_50026B722902764F"/>
<target dev="sda" bus="scsi"/>
<address type="drive" controller="0" bus="0" target="0" unit="0"/>
</disk>
<disk type="block" device="disk">
<driver name="qemu" type="raw" cache="none" io="native"/>
<source dev="/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WDS500G1B0A-00H9H0_164407800514"/>
<target dev="sdb" bus="scsi"/>
<address type="drive" controller="0" bus="0" target="0" unit="1"/>
</disk>
<controller type="usb" index="0" model="qemu-xhci" ports="15">
<address type="pci" domain="0x0000" bus="0x03" slot="0x00" function="0x0"/>
</controller>
<controller type="scsi" index="0" model="virtio-scsi">
<address type="pci" domain="0x0000" bus="0x04" slot="0x00" function="0x0"/>
</controller>
<controller type="sata" index="0">
<address type="pci" domain="0x0000" bus="0x00" slot="0x1f" function="0x2"/>
</controller>
<controller type="pci" index="0" model="pcie-root"/>
<controller type="pci" index="1" model="pcie-root-port">
<model name="pcie-root-port"/>
<target chassis="1" port="0x8"/>
<address type="pci" domain="0x0000" bus="0x00" slot="0x01" function="0x0" multifunction="on"/>
</controller>
<controller type="pci" index="2" model="pcie-root-port">
<model name="pcie-root-port"/>
<target chassis="2" port="0x9"/>
<address type="pci" domain="0x0000" bus="0x00" slot="0x01" function="0x1"/>
</controller>
<controller type="pci" index="3" model="pcie-root-port">
<model name="pcie-root-port"/>
<target chassis="3" port="0xa"/>
<address type="pci" domain="0x0000" bus="0x00" slot="0x01" function="0x2"/>
</controller>
<controller type="pci" index="4" model="pcie-root-port">
<model name="pcie-root-port"/>
<target chassis="4" port="0xb"/>
<address type="pci" domain="0x0000" bus="0x00" slot="0x01" function="0x3"/>
</controller>
<controller type="pci" index="5" model="pcie-root-port">
<model name="pcie-root-port"/>
<target chassis="5" port="0xc"/>
<address type="pci" domain="0x0000" bus="0x00" slot="0x01" function="0x4"/>
</controller>
<controller type="pci" index="6" model="pcie-root-port">
<model name="pcie-root-port"/>
<target chassis="6" port="0xd"/>
<address type="pci" domain="0x0000" bus="0x00" slot="0x01" function="0x5"/>
</controller>
<controller type="pci" index="7" model="pcie-to-pci-bridge">
<model name="pcie-pci-bridge"/>
<address type="pci" domain="0x0000" bus="0x01" slot="0x00" function="0x0"/>
</controller>
<controller type="pci" index="8" model="pcie-root-port">
<model name="pcie-root-port"/>
<target chassis="8" port="0xe"/>
<address type="pci" domain="0x0000" bus="0x00" slot="0x01" function="0x6"/>
</controller>
<controller type="pci" index="9" model="pcie-root-port">
<model name="pcie-root-port"/>
<target chassis="9" port="0xf"/>
<address type="pci" domain="0x0000" bus="0x00" slot="0x01" function="0x7"/>
</controller>
<controller type="pci" index="10" model="pcie-root-port">
<model name="pcie-root-port"/>
<target chassis="10" port="0x10"/>
<address type="pci" domain="0x0000" bus="0x00" slot="0x02" function="0x0"/>
</controller>
<interface type="network">
<mac address="52:54:00:99:d7:89"/>
<source network="default"/>
<model type="virtio"/>
<link state="up"/>
<address type="pci" domain="0x0000" bus="0x02" slot="0x00" function="0x0"/>
</interface>
<input type="mouse" bus="ps2"/>
<input type="keyboard" bus="ps2"/>
<hostdev mode="subsystem" type="pci" managed="yes">
<source>
<address domain="0x0000" bus="0x00" slot="0x14" function="0x0"/>
</source>
<address type="pci" domain="0x0000" bus="0x07" slot="0x01" function="0x0"/>
</hostdev>
<hostdev mode="subsystem" type="pci" managed="yes">
<source>
<address domain="0x0000" bus="0x03" slot="0x00" function="0x0"/>
</source>
<address type="pci" domain="0x0000" bus="0x05" slot="0x00" function="0x0"/>
</hostdev>
<hostdev mode="subsystem" type="pci" managed="yes">
<source>
<address domain="0x0000" bus="0x03" slot="0x00" function="0x1"/>
</source>
<address type="pci" domain="0x0000" bus="0x06" slot="0x00" function="0x0"/>
</hostdev>
<hostdev mode="subsystem" type="pci" managed="yes">
<source>
<address domain="0x0000" bus="0x05" slot="0x00" function="0x0"/>
</source>
<address type="pci" domain="0x0000" bus="0x08" slot="0x00" function="0x0"/>
</hostdev>
<memballoon model="virtio">
<address type="pci" domain="0x0000" bus="0x09" slot="0x00" function="0x0"/>
</memballoon>
</devices>
</domain>