Virtualization and 3D

Question

linux

Good afternoon. I set out to assemble something like a Steambox for games (a regular system unit that will always be connected to the TV). In parallel, while I select the parameters of the components, I wonder which OS to install. On the one hand, Valve's tendency to popularize Linux is very pleasing. On the other hand, there are a lot of old school games that no one will port. I do not want to put Windows as the main system.

Therefore, question. Has virtualization grown to the point where you can virtualize Windows on Linux without a noticeable drop in performance? I mean, PCI passthrough (if I'm not mistaken) when the video card (PCI device) is given to the guest system. Will it work, what's the performance hit? What software can do this?

I understand that this option is possible only if there are two or more video cards. I think for this you need to choose a platform either with integrated video, or a second budget video card.

What will it look like on Linux? Will he be able to switch video cards on the fly (there is also something to play in native Linux)? What hardware support is required for all this?

Answer 1

Creating such a system based on Xen Cloud Platform 1.6, I ran into some problems. One of the main ones is the motherboard (in my case, Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H). With VT-d virtualization enabled (should be supported by the processor and motherboard), the HDD and SSD that are connected to the SATA controller with the Marvell 88SE9172 chip are not visible (there is information on the Internet that there are problems with Marvell chips). I tried compiling from source - it didn't help (I used Debian 7, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 13.04, Xen 4.2.1, Xen 4.3 didn't want to compile), Xen builds its own kernel (maybe I did something wrong?).
Another problem is that the second Atheros AR8161 network card is detected, but does not work. I didn’t understand, because. this is secondary.
Be aware that the TRIM feature for SDD will not work (from the wiki): TRIM does not work with "virtual" disks stored as images, which limits the use of the command in a virtual environment.
For this feature to work, you need to forward the ENTIRE controller to the virtual machine. In my case, there were 3 of them - 1x Intel, 2x Marvell. But unfortunately Marvell doesn't work.
For the above reasons, I ordered another motherboard - ASRock Z77 Fatal1ty Professional (3 SATA controllers).
Although I have now begun to doubt the need for SSD drives (I will listen to a weighty argument in their need; I periodically process photos and virtual tours).
As for performance, I didn’t do specialized benchmarks. I ran it in W7 only, which showed 7.7 points not in virtualization for all positions, except for video (the built-in Intel HD P4000 was used), and in the virtualization environment W7 showed 7.7, except for the point where the disk system performance (SSD does not work, HDD was used), video - Gigabyte Radeon HD 7770
. I’m going to change the motherboard (I haven’t arrived yet), I can do several tests, if you tell me which ones (-:
I’m thinking of writing a post, but I’m not sure that I’ll do everything correctly in Habr’s rules.

Answer 2

It's easier and more hassle-free to install Wine.

Answer 3

Xen
With normal hardware, there shouldn't be any problems.
GNU\linux, unlike the window, can work without a video card
. The performance drop should not be critical
. one video card will be given to the guest OS and should not be accessible from the main
Wine is surprisingly well developed towards game support in recent years, with old serious problems it should definitely not be in 99% of cases. With very old ones - there are no problems in DosBox for a long time.

Answer 4

If there are no problems with the hardware (the transfer does not work very well yet, a video card may come across that cannot be transferred, or there will be problems installing drivers ... but they are solvable, etc.), then another problem may arise: for example, anti chit guard the frost system in the aion game from innova may not allow running from a virtual machine (did not try it, but there were complaints on the forums).