Xen users - Nov 2010 - VGA passthrough - GA-890FXA with ASUS EAH5750 video

Hello,

I would like to report to the group that I have been successful with VGA 
passthrough using the following configuration:

Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD5
ASUS EAH5750 1GB GDDR5 video
Fedora 13
XEN 4.0.1
Windows 7 64 bit HVM guest

Xen was installed per Pasi''s Fedora 13 Xen 4.0 Tutorial found here:

http://wiki.xen.org/xenwiki/Fedora13Xen4Tutorial

The tutorial was very helpful and many thanks to Pasi for putting it and the 
RHEL6 tutorial together.

Initially I could not get VGA passthrough to work, all the VGA passthrough 
procedures I found included putting gfx_passthru=1 in the VM configuration file 
but every time I did this the boot process would hang with a prompt at the QEMU 
console.  After several days of trying to figure this out I finally hit the 
magic combination...  VGA passthrough worked without gfx_passthru=1 configured 
and the initial passthrough needs to be done while the VM is running.  I did the
passthrough using the xm pci-attach command.  After doing this I found Windows 
detected the video card so I loaded the video drivers in the VM and rebooted and
now it is working well.  Windows 7 reports the "Windows Experience
Index" for
Graphic and Gaming as 7.3/7.3 and id_perftest with Quake 4 was around 70fps at 
Ultra Quality 1920x1200.  I am not much of a gamer but that is plenty fast for 
me!

Thanks,

Eric



      

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On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 12:15:44PM -0800, Eric Houby
wrote:
>    Hello,
> 
>    I would like to report to the group that I have been successful with VGA
>    passthrough using the following configuration:
> 
>    Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD5
>    ASUS EAH5750 1GB GDDR5 video
>    Fedora 13
>    XEN 4.0.1
>    Windows 7 64 bit HVM guest
> 
>    Xen was installed per Pasi''s Fedora 13 Xen 4.0 Tutorial found
here:
> 
>    [1]http://wiki.xen.org/xenwiki/Fedora13Xen4Tutorial
> 
>    The tutorial was very helpful and many thanks to Pasi for putting it and
>    the RHEL6 tutorial together.
> 
Thanks :)
>    Initially I could not get VGA passthrough to work, all the VGA
passthrough
>    procedures I found included putting gfx_passthru=1 in the VM
configuration
>    file but every time I did this the boot process would hang with a prompt
>    at the QEMU console.  After several days of trying to figure this out I
>    finally hit the magic combination...  VGA passthrough worked without
>    gfx_passthru=1 configured and the initial passthrough needs to be done
>    while the VM is running.  I did the passthrough using the xm pci-attach
>    command.  After doing this I found Windows detected the video card so I
>    loaded the video drivers in the VM and rebooted and now it is working
>    well.  Windows 7 reports the "Windows Experience Index" for
Graphic and
>    Gaming as 7.3/7.3 and id_perftest with Quake 4 was around 70fps at Ultra
>    Quality 1920x1200.  I am not much of a gamer but that is plenty fast for
>    me!
> 
Nice to hear it works!

I should update the wiki page here with your information:
http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenVGAPassthroughTestedAdapters

-- Pasi


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Hi Eric,
I''m going to upgrade my computer with a 890fx motherboard in order to
use
VGA Passthrough.
I''m looking for a setup similar to yours.
Which BIOS version do you have in your motherboard? Is it official or beta?
Did you install this patch:
http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2010-10/msg00284.html ?
Did you try to pass-through other PCI devices?

Thanks,
Leonardo


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Leonardo,

My motherboard came with BIOS version F4 which did have an option for IOMMU but 
xm dsmeg showed that IOMMU was not working with it.  Upgrading to released 
version F5 did not resolve the problem so I loaded beta version F4a and was able
to enable IOMMU with that version.

I am not sure if the ATI patch you mention is in xen-4.0.1-6 but I did not apply
it.  I have passed other PCI devices including the second Ethernet port and a 
USB controller (00:16.*) for keyboard/mouse and external DVD drive for the guest
VM.

Good luck with your upgrade and let me know if you have other questions.

-Eric




________________________________
From: Leonardo Prosperi <leo.prosperi@gmail.com>
To: xen-users@lists.xensource.com; ehouby@yahoo.com
Sent: Thu, November 25, 2010 3:24:32 PM
Subject: VGA passthrough - GA-890FXA with ASUS EAH5750 video

Hi Eric,
I''m going to upgrade my computer with a 890fx motherboard in order to
use VGA
Passthrough.
I''m looking for a setup similar to yours.
Which BIOS version do you have in your motherboard? Is it official or beta?
Did you install this patch: 
http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2010-10/msg00284.html ?
Did you try to pass-through other PCI devices? 

Thanks,
Leonardo


      

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