First things first, here's my current specs:

http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/3284901
UserBenchmarks: Game 13%, Desk 64%, Work 52%

	Model	Bench
CPU	Intel Core i7-6700K	93.9%
GPU	Nvidia GeForce GT 610	2.1%
HDD	Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 2TB	82.7%
HDD	WD WD20EZRX-00D8PB0 2TB	65%
RAM	G.SKILL F4-2400C15-8GVS F4-2400C15-8GVS F4-3000C15-16GVR F4-3000C15-16GVR 48GB	75.1%
MBD	Asus Z170-E

ok, I'm upgrading to a solid state drive. I bought a 1TB one from Samsung. (the Samsung 850 EVO 1TB).

I do like Linux (RHEL flavor, so I'll probably use CentOS 7) better as an OS more then Win. I previously had a laptop where I ran CentOS as a host OS and Win7 as a guest; using virtual box.


I'd like to do the same for my desktop (specs shown above). However, I'd also like to get a (or a pair of) really good graphics card, like the nvidia gtx 1080 or 1070.

So my question is two-fold:
1. does nvidia support linux for the gtx 1080, and does anyone currently run that setup (btw, I'm dual monitor).
2. Would the graphics still be good (if I bought the above card) for windows 7 if I'm using that OS as a vm using virtual box?

I don't necessarily do any "heavy" gaming or anything like that on my PC, but sometimes I'll edit a gopro video and I'd like to have the option to game on the windows vm if I end up wanting to. (primary is PS4 console).

4/10/2017 12:11:25 PM

not really sure why there's a huge space between my html anchor

UserBenchmarks: Game 13%, Desk 64%, Work 52%

4/10/2017 12:17:06 PM

Been out of graphics work too long to say much about the current state of affairs but I generally believe that because of the virtualization layer, performance is still pretty trash. There are a number of people who have done sort of hacked out passthroughs but I don't know the mechanics there but the goal is always to give the VM a more direct path to the GPU. Lately though there have been efforts by NVIDIA and AMD to provide this more officially, though these look more like enterprise type solutions.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/dedicated-gpus.html


So not much help here

4/10/2017 1:02:19 PM

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Multiheaded-NVIDIA-Gaming-using-Ubuntu-14-04-KVM-585/

This might be a little more helpful, though I don't know how much VirtualBox provides vs VMWare.

4/10/2017 1:05:07 PM

Linux graphics all comes down to drivers. My experience would be to go for like a "founders" or base model card, and run it on top of a very common OS. Ubuntu seems to have far and wide the best driver support, most likely because SteamOS is a derivative of it. But "best" can still mean waiting 6+ months for any kind of game optimization; you might see up to 30% fewer frames from any review you read online for blockbuster games.

When I went to an AMD graphics card I gave up and went back to Win10. I feed 12GB of RAM to a Ubuntu VM and it's very hard to tell it's not on bare metal. With the Linux subsystem in win10 I rarely use it anyway. Most open source stuff is cross-compiled or easily runs in the subsystem (FFMPEG, apache, etc.)

However... I too want a 1080Ti; so report back results

4/11/2017 6:09:56 AM

virtualized gpu works great, but not with virtual box. You need xen, vmware, or kvm. https://medium.com/@calerogers/gpu-virtualization-with-kvm-qemu-63ca98a6a172

All of AWS/Azure gpus are "virtualized", it just depends on your hypervisor choices as to whether you want passthrough or a vgpu.

4/14/2017 10:26:10 AM