Hardware recommendation for PVE 8 GPU Passthrough in Windows 11 VM

Mar 18, 2022
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Hello all,

I'm at a loss at the moment. Need help with the purchase of hardware for PVE 8 GPU Passthrough in Windows 11 VM
At the moment I have a 550W power supply, motherboard: Asrock B460M Pro 4 with Intel i5 10400 (IGPU) and 16GB Kingston DDR4 in dual channel and three SSD storage media.
Two Crucial MX 500 (250GB) and one Emtec X150, which I use for Proxmox only, i.e. main system. The other two serve as storage for ISO and my VMs and containers. Furthermore two NAS disks in an OMV VM, and a NVME Kingston KC 3000, which is directly in the first M2 slot below the CPU.
The goal of all this is to loop through the graphics card in a Windows 11 22H2 VM. Now I decided against Nvidia and for AMD.
Unfortunately my old Nvidia GTX 660 Ti from Gainward does not fit into my second PCIe x16 slot, it is too long and blocks my SATA ports.
If I put the card in the first slot, then my iGPU is disabled, also I read that Proxmox has a problem with Nvidia cards anyway (driver = Error 43:eek:). Have also already read about the reset-bug, can you easily bypass this or better a card that is not affected by it ?
Which cards are suitable there, or which do you currently have in use. It does not have to be the latest Radeon card, rather so in the range RX 400 / RX 500.

I currently tend to AMD motherboard B550, for example the MSI B550 Gaming Plus there it looks better with the PCIE x16 slot.

With kind regards

Proxmoxbeginner30
 
Hello all,

I'm at a loss at the moment. Need help with the purchase of hardware for PVE 8 GPU Passthrough in Windows 11 VM
At the moment I have a 550W power supply, motherboard: Asrock B460M Pro 4 with Intel i5 10400 (IGPU) and 16GB Kingston DDR4 in dual channel and three SSD storage media.
Two Crucial MX 500 (250GB) and one Emtec X150, which I use for Proxmox only, i.e. main system. The other two serve as storage for ISO and my VMs and containers. Furthermore two NAS disks in an OMV VM, and a NVME Kingston KC 3000, which is directly in the first M2 slot below the CPU.
The goal of all this is to loop through the graphics card in a Windows 11 22H2 VM. Now I decided against Nvidia and for AMD.
I have had much better passthrough experiences with AMD than NVidia. I have some comments from my own experience that might help you decide.
Unfortunately my old Nvidia GTX 660 Ti from Gainward does not fit into my second PCIe x16 slot, it is too long and blocks my SATA ports.
Many people on this forum have had success with newer NVidia GPUs. I was never able to get a 550Ti to work and switched to AMD.
If I put the card in the first slot, then my iGPU is disabled, also I read that Proxmox has a problem with Nvidia cards anyway (driver = Error 43:eek:).
That's a pity as integrated graphics is perfect for Proxmox and most motherboards allow you to select iGPU as the boot GPU even when there a discrete GPU. Please double check this before spending money on something else. Often you need to have a (working) display connected to the iGPU otherwise it will not work.
If you cannot get the system to boot with the iGPU, try this work-around for passthrough of boot GPUs.
Have also already read about the reset-bug, can you easily bypass this or better a card that is not affected by it ?
Check the vendor-reset website for the ultimate work-around for older AMD GPUs. You will need to install it once and activate it each host reboot for the GPU.
Which cards are suitable there, or which do you currently have in use. It does not have to be the latest Radeon card, rather so in the range RX 400 / RX 500.
RX570 and RX580 (which are only slight improvements over their 400 counterparts) indeed work fine (but only with vendor-reset).
I currently tend to AMD motherboard B550, for example the MSI B550 Gaming Plus there it looks better with the PCIE x16 slot.
All Ryzen motherboard chipsets, except the X570, only support passthrough of the CPU provided devices and PCIe lanes. X370/X470 have two x16 slots that can be passed through separately (and one M.2) and all B350/B450/B550 (and lower) only support passthrough in one (the primary) x16 slot (and one M.2).
 
I have had much better passthrough experiences with AMD than NVidia. I have some comments from my own experience that might help you decide.

Many people on this forum have had success with newer NVidia GPUs. I was never able to get a 550Ti to work and switched to AMD.

That's a pity as integrated graphics is perfect for Proxmox and most motherboards allow you to select iGPU as the boot GPU even when there a discrete GPU. Please double check this before spending money on something else. Often you need to have a (working) display connected to the iGPU otherwise it will not work.
If you cannot get the system to boot with the iGPU, try this work-around for passthrough of boot GPUs.

Check the vendor-reset website for the ultimate work-around for older AMD GPUs. You will need to install it once and activate it each host reboot for the GPU.

RX570 and RX580 (which are only slight improvements over their 400 counterparts) indeed work fine (but only with vendor-reset).

All Ryzen motherboard chipsets, except the X570, only support passthrough of the CPU provided devices and PCIe lanes. X370/X470 have two x16 slots that can be passed through separately (and one M.2) and all B350/B450/B550 (and lower) only support passthrough in one (the primary) x16 slot (and one M.2).
Thanks for your information.
I am going to look for an RX 570 or RX 580 and it should be small one cause on my actual motherboard i need to put them in second pcie x16 slot because my 10g Mellanox sit in the first.
 

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