Low GPU usage while gaming on VFIO Proxmox host

wolfemium

New Member
May 17, 2022
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Hello there!

As the title says, I'm using VFIO and I'm getting ~30-40% GPU usage in games, with the exception of Quake II RTX where I had full GPU usage. However if I launch a GPU benchmark the usage will be 100% but results will be lower than baremetal as expected from a VM.

I've attached Unigine Heaven benchmark images, the one with the higher score is baremetal performance.

Hardware:
Motherboard: MSI Z390-A Pro
CPU: Intel i7-8700
Memory: 32GB 4x8GB 2400MHz
GPU: Dell OEM NVIDIA RTX 2060 (TU106 version)
Storage: 1TB SK hynix NVMe
 

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can you post your vm config ? i noticed your gpu model nr is different than the baremetal version, do you use some custom rom image?
 
can you post your vm config ? i noticed your gpu model nr is different than the baremetal version, do you use some custom rom image?
the number is actually the driver version, the baremetal image was taken back in 2020
here's my vm config

Code:
#set_halt_poll 0
bios: ovmf
boot: order=virtio0
cores: 4
cpu: host
hookscript: local:snippets/exec-cmds
hostpci0: 0000:01:00,pcie=1,x-vga=1
hotplug: disk,network,usb
localtime: 1
machine: pc-q35-6.2
memory: 10240
meta: creation-qemu=6.1.0,ctime=1642089869
name: frogbox
net0: e1000=0A:3E:FB:DB:F8:17,bridge=vmbr0,firewall=1
net1: virtio=96:F6:7C:07:A3:AF,bridge=vmbr1,firewall=1
numa: 0
onboot: 1
ostype: win10
scsihw: virtio-scsi-pci
smbios1: uuid=124c74ff-767d-4e5f-ac05-8c1d476da786
sockets: 1
tablet: 0
usb0: host=1-8,usb3=1
vga: none
virtio0: nvme:100/frogbox.raw,backup=0,discard=on,size=320G
vmgenid: 9aa07870-7154-4f65-9ef3-cc9ff3e218b6
 
mhmm looks all normal so far... are there any logs in the syslog/dmesg that might give a hint?
i'm not sure how much of the cpu is used in that benchmark, but you could try to disable the powersaving features in the bios?
(scheduling the virtual cpus onto real ones can cause weird behaviour when the cores clock up/down)
also you could try to enable hugepages, maybe the memory makes a difference
also you could try to enable iothreads on your virtio0 disk
 
mhmm looks all normal so far... are there any logs in the syslog/dmesg that might give a hint?
i'm not sure how much of the cpu is used in that benchmark, but you could try to disable the powersaving features in the bios?
(scheduling the virtual cpus onto real ones can cause weird behaviour when the cores clock up/down)
also you could try to enable hugepages, maybe the memory makes a difference
also you could try to enable iothreads on your virtio0 disk
Well I tried disabling C-states in my BIOS and that had no effect, iothreads had no effect and I don't know if hugepages would really have an effect considering my friends on AMD don't use hugepages and they don't have this problem.
 

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