PCI Video card recommendation for GPU Passthrough
- Thread starter bobshenji
- Start date
Do you want PCI passthrough to a single VM (at a time) with physical display output? Or mediated passthrough to multiple VMs (at the same time) without physical output (only 3D acceleration)?
Only 3D acceleration is required. We Can configure a remote desktop software (RDP) inside the guest since it is not possible to display the frame buffer of the GPU via NoVNC or SPICE on the Proxmox VE web interface. Can one PCI card support more than one VM at the same time?
Possible, but need "specific hardware+license" for that:
Code:
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/NVIDIA_vGPU_on_Proxmox_VEVideo card passthrough to single VM will work without problem, but you need to search for which video-card modell works for best ( reset bug, driver error code 43 ), and also the Host Machine need to have proper IOMMU support. I tested the NVIDIA 3080TI card, worked without problem in a Single VM passthrough.
Intel Flex 170 see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYcntiF4j2Q&t=2s
and: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLK_i-TQ3kQ&t=919s
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i believe Nvidia quadro cards can use vGPU without licensing, theres also ways to use GTX 10 / RTX 20 cards with an unlock and by emulating their vGPU profiles as quadro cards to avoid licensing. nvidia probably has the best support/documentation online for all of these things but can be the most problematic/complicated/costly if you arent profiecent and/or willing to violate their terms of use.
intel cards or iGPUs with SR-IOV / GVT-g (like the card Mir recommended ) are often great, iGPU was one of the easiest ones i've worked with. if your system has an iGPU you can actually use vGPU profiles with an iGPU (although with low vram usually so only for basic 3D and usually for a low number of instances like 1-4 depending on the iGPU/CPU that you have and the higher the number the lower vram you can assign. ) but if all you need is a few vGPU profiles, an iGPU can be all you need.
intel cards or iGPUs with SR-IOV / GVT-g (like the card Mir recommended ) are often great, iGPU was one of the easiest ones i've worked with. if your system has an iGPU you can actually use vGPU profiles with an iGPU (although with low vram usually so only for basic 3D and usually for a low number of instances like 1-4 depending on the iGPU/CPU that you have and the higher the number the lower vram you can assign. ) but if all you need is a few vGPU profiles, an iGPU can be all you need.
Hey Bob,
we own a Intel Flex 170 and a nVidia L4 for the same reason. We wanted to get cheap and licensing free vGPU to our RDS-host.
Long story short: Pay the nVidia premium and get a license. Everything else doesn't work if you want to use SR-IOV.
If you don't want to use SR-IOV you can just use any GPU and pass it through completely.
We had nothing but problems with the Flex. The drivers for linux aren't updated, it WILL keep your system from booting once you upgrade the kernel and the Windows VMs have frequent issues as well (mostly graphical glitches f.e. everything turns black).
The new B60 promises SR-IOV once more (apparently for Q4 2025) and is talking about "Linux Multi-GPU" and "SRIOV and Manageability Features". I wouldn't hold my breath though.
we own a Intel Flex 170 and a nVidia L4 for the same reason. We wanted to get cheap and licensing free vGPU to our RDS-host.
Long story short: Pay the nVidia premium and get a license. Everything else doesn't work if you want to use SR-IOV.
If you don't want to use SR-IOV you can just use any GPU and pass it through completely.
We had nothing but problems with the Flex. The drivers for linux aren't updated, it WILL keep your system from booting once you upgrade the kernel and the Windows VMs have frequent issues as well (mostly graphical glitches f.e. everything turns black).
The new B60 promises SR-IOV once more (apparently for Q4 2025) and is talking about "Linux Multi-GPU" and "SRIOV and Manageability Features". I wouldn't hold my breath though.