Ryzen, KVM, and gaming... Status?

[bme]

I’d like to build a Ryzen 1950x KVM machine that my son can (also) use as a gaming rig (for sure in one VM, possibly in two), but I’m unsure Ryzen/KVM are “there” yet. I’m encouraged by various posts here discussing patches to fix NPT and other issues, but am both hoping for thoughts and advice on the following:

• Is this viable? If I build such a system, will it work and will it work well?
• What hardware might be recommended (motherboard, video, etc.)?
• I know I’ll need to passthrough the GPU (thinking nVidia 1070/1080), and assume I’ll need to passthrough USB (for stutter-free keyboarding and mousing), but do I also need to passthrough IO (to an SSD) or sound (to keep it from lagging or otherwise)?
• Has anyone passed through two GPUs to play games in two VMs simultaneously and considered the result a “success” (in that the performance in each VM was on par with the performance when running only one VM)?
• Any tips, advice, or otherwise?

Thanks much! Hoping to make my son’s Christmas while still getting something I can use for “real” “work”.

[gnif]

Is this viable? If I build such a system, will it work and will it work well?

YES! My daily is a Ryzen 1700X, I game, run VMs and program. I would consider myself using the machine in weird and wacky ways that 99% of the population don’t care about. (ie, figuring out the NPT fix). But I also play triple A titles on my 1080Ti, both native in windows and now in a KVM vm.

What hardware might be recommended (motherboard, video, etc.)?

I am running an Asrock AB350 Pro4, been very happy with it. I had stuck with Asus for many years but their lack of bios support and broken ACPI implementations have made me move to Asrock. As for RAM, 16GB suits my needs, with 8GB permanantly devoted to a windows VM via 1GB huge page tables.

Note: Do your research and get RAM that works well with the Ryzen, the DDR clock speed directly affects CPU performance.

I know I’ll need to passthrough the GPU (thinking nVidia 1070/1080), and assume I’ll need to passthrough USB (for stutter-free keyboarding and mousing), but do I also need to passthrough IO (to an SSD) or sound (to keep it from lagging or otherwise)?

Yes and no, this is not an AMD specific thing, you will get this on an Intel build also. There is a patch set for Qemu that fixes the pulse integration that I find fixes 99% of the problems. As for keyboard and mouse (video too btw), I have a secret project that I have been working with @wendell on that resolves this, and will be released soon under GPL 2.0.

For HDD I am passing in a ZFS zvol as the operating system drive and a physical SSD for general data (this will change though, it was just convenient). The advantages here are awesome performance, with all the data integrity that ZFS affords.

Has anyone passed through two GPUs to play games in two VMs simultaneously and considered the result a “success” (in that the performance in each VM was on par with the performance when running only one VM)?

Not that I am aware of, you are still sharing the CPU though and you would be surprised at how much of an impact this can have on performance in this kind of scenario, but for most things I don’t think it would be a problem. The bigger issue would be getting the two video cards to play nice with each other by ensuring they are isolated in seperate IOMMU groups.

Edit: Looks like @SirTeddy is doing this over here:

[GUIDE] Package ryzen npt/acs patches into Fedora kernel package

After patched,I tested PUBG and discovered one thing on the Ryzen platform. Ryzen [email protected] Giga Aorus AX370 Gaming 5 GTX1070x2 VM1 has 0~7 pinned VM2 has 8~15 pinned quality: all ultra 1080p when VM1 play PUBG alone, FPS at 77 avg.(looks like normal) when VM1 and VM2 play PUBG at the same time ,both FPS at 42~46 (very bad) but when test cpu bench mark at the same time,all vm can reach 1/2 ryzen 1700.

Any tips, advice, or otherwise?

Don’t overthink it, virtualization is not going to be 100% perfect on any platform, but it is damn close. I am now running W10 with PCI passthrough using my secret soon to be released program to control the VM using Spice for KB & Mouse, and streaming the video back to the host… in the past running a VM of any sorts under linux while worked always felt sluggish, but with this setup it is so close to perfect I can’t fault it.

[SirTeddy]

I am now running W10 with PCI passthrough using my secret soon to be released program to control the VM using Spice for KB & Mouse, and streaming the video back to the host…

Hey guy,whats that,sounds fantastic

[gnif]

Hey guy,whats that,sounds fantastic

In progress :)… I can’t say more for now

[SlipperyVagoo]

Has anyone passed through two GPUs to play games in two VMs simultaneously and considered the result a “success” (in that the performance in each VM was on par with the performance when running only one VM)?

Not exactly but sort-of like that you have this. It runs more like dual booting but running multiple dual boots at the same time

[SirTeddy]

when will this project come out

[gnif]

These all require a physical keyboard, mouse and monitor for each VM, for a PC that is used by a single person for gaming and linux this isn’t ideal… a solution is on the way

@SirTeddy soon, we already have a fully functional prototype.

[SlipperyVagoo]

Yeah, that is the drawback but it shows that it should be possible

[gnif]

Correct, this has acutally been possible since the NVidia GRID (2014), but not in the consumer sector on general gaming hardware.

[SirTeddy]

when most of the games supports Ubuntu/Linux ,will it be useless?
if someone only play CS:GO,he wont need to use KVM,but use Bare metal.

[SgtAwesomesauce]

I’m quite excited for this project for productivity use. I’m hoping to take advantage of it for Outlook, Skype for Business and a few proprietary Windows programs, if it’s what I think it is.

[gnif]

At this point I will state what it will do (or rather, what it already does do ) :

• Allow seamless integration with the Host desktop environment with VGA PCI passthrough, with near zero latency allowing not just office usage, but high rate of input (ie, FPS games) to be playable without input lag, or loss of video quality.

[SgtAwesomesauce]

Oh man, this is exactly what we need to make passthrough an easy solution.

Keep up the good work!

---

On a somewhat related note, I shot a message to my AMD rep and she said she was unable to provide any assistance with the hardware. I wish I had better news. I’m going to ask my boss if we can allocate some cash to get you some more hardware, but our budget is extremely tight right now (it’s pretty much zero for the next 2 months) so I don’t want to promise anything.

[SirTeddy]

another question:
is that free?

[gnif]

I’m going to ask my boss if we can allocate some cash to get you some more hardware, but our budget is extremely tight right now (it’s pretty much zero for the next 2 months) so I don’t want to promise anything.

Thanks for the support, please talk to @wendell, he is also trying to see what he can do to provide support for this.

@SirTeddy Yes, GPL 2.0 License , it will be released open source.

[SlipperyVagoo]

At this point I will state what it will do (or rather, what it already does do ) :

Allow seamless integration with the Host desktop environment with VGA PCI passthrough, with near zero latency allowing not just office usage, but high rate of input (ie, FPS games) to be playable without input lag, or loss of video quality.

Thanks, i am not able to utilize this yet but that would be useful when i get to build my next computer

[bme]

Awesome! So, not only is this doable now, it’ll only get better. Time to start building!

Thanks for the detailed response, and looking forward to your project coming out!

[wendell]

I think the Ryzen 8 core x399 and a vega56 are all we need. Ram and Mobo are doable from my end.

You have PSU and everything else ? Might do a fundraiser on the Linux channel

[gnif]

Thanks wendell, at this point I don’t have anything else modern enough for such a machine (everything spare I have is Bulldozer generation stuff), but considering the generosity of yourself and the community I can organize a case and PSU locally.

[Zumps]

Might do a fundraiser on the Linux channel

Please do we’ll get behind it I’m sure. Like you talked about on the podcast with Noah (btw great talk), you can be the catalyst/fundraiser to these kinds of projects, which would be well received in the community I’m sure.