What GPU should I get for vGPU?

Operating Systems & Open Source Virtualization
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Hey, so long story short, I run QubesOS. I’ve been trying to daily drive it but have found that the lack of 3d acceleration and video decode in VMs/Qubes has nearly been a deal breaker. Solution? Get a SR-IOV capable GPU!

So the question is simple, what GPU should I get for SR-IOV?
A few things to note:
-I don’t know if I can use mdev-based vGPU solutions, QubesOS supports PCI passthrough but not mdev passthrough. I could try to do it manually, but that kind of sounds like a pain.
-I am likely required to install drivers to dom0 (my host) to get vGPU supported. Long story short, I’m not supposed to install any custom drivers or proprietary software… or really anything to my dom0 (which is effectively host). I’d prefer to not go NVIDIA, but if it’s the best option, let’s just go with it.

Now, I’ve already tried a 12th gen Intel iGPU but found it super unstable and just outright not working on QubesOS. (It worked, just barely, on my Arch Linux install)

I’ve considered a few options:
-Intel Arc A770 (Pros: Cheap, Cons: Required either a cross-flash or the slow Xe kernel module)
-NVIDIA A2 (Pros: Supports SR-IOV from NVIDIA, Cons: EXPENSIVE)
-NVIDIA P4 (Pros: CHEAP, Cons: Required mdev and is pre-Turing)
I would put whatever AMD offers here but I can’t find solid information on AMD’s SR-IOV offerings.

I’m sorry for rambling, I just wanna find a solution so I can get my work done.

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There’s a handful of variants of one server-class card from a few generations back (FirePro S7100 series listed in a previous topic here), then all the gaming-class cards can only support one host at a time and (nearly all) have issues resetting them if you pass between VM’s.

Not on your list: Intel Flex 140 or Flex 170, which @Wendell has done videos about: Flex 170 GPU from Intel - Subscription Free GPU Accelerated VDI on Proxmox 8.1 / How to Set Up SR-IOV with Intel Flex 170. When they appear on eBay, the $2000 price is hard.

It’s beyond my capability and time to implement – but not beyond my imagination to dream – of a qemu-kvm extension which took host GPU hardware and advertised its capabilities within the guest VM’s, using mesa or proton libraries to compute/render on the GPU. You might even do the old trick like the first Voodoo pass-through cards and have the QXL or Cirrus in-built card mask out the section of screen to be written by the host’s GPU, but I figure it’s a lot of moving parts to co-ordinate and get right.

K3n.

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Although there is a lot of value in the Intel ARC. I am not sure about how stable the Intel ARC drivers are? The gaming experience is not 100% on windows though but may be the Linux support is a better story…

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