Professional GPUs that also handle gaming

[Cromulent]

I need a GPU that supports sharing with virtual machines as well as the host operating system so I can do graphics stuff in multiple virtual machines at the same, but I'd also like to be able to game on the system when I'm not working.

Would I be better off getting something like a Quadro and then sharing it between the host and multiple virtual machines or should I get two 2080Tis and do GPU pass-through of the second one to a single virtual machine?

The 2080Ti option is not as nice since I can only run one virtual machine and the host operating system, whereas the Quadro system should be able to cope with more virtual machines.

What are my options here? What about AMD? I know nothing about AMD professional or consumer cards.

 

[Cromulent]

Just a little bump to see if anyone knows the answer to this?

 

[Vince]

If you want to share the cards resources between multiple machines you will need a quadro or a Radeon WX, i've used WX's for this and it's worked quite nicely. In terms of the consumer stuff you only have the option of passthrough and depending on what you are using to virtualise that can be a bit challenging. So to be clear, quadro and wx work nicely sharing resources, everything else doesn't. I don't know if anybody has tried to flash a Radeon 7 to mi50 or a geforce to a quadro but that might be the other option.

Fwiw in esxi I had much more success with AMD cards than NV when I was messing around with this a few months back, I think that might be because of the open source linux baked AMD drivers (at least at the time) whereas I found myself having quite a few more issues trying to pass through or share NV cards. That could well have changed more recently.

 

[Cromulent]

If you want to share the cards resources between multiple machines you will need a quadro or a Radeon WX, i've used WX's for this and it's worked quite nicely. In terms of the consumer stuff you only have the option of passthrough and depending on what you are using to virtualise that can be a bit challenging. So to be clear, quadro and wx work nicely sharing resources, everything else doesn't. I don't know if anybody has tried to flash a Radeon 7 to mi50 or a geforce to a quadro but that might be the other option.

Fwiw in esxi I had much more success with AMD cards than NV when I was messing around with this a few months back, I think that might be because of the open source linux baked AMD drivers (at least at the time) whereas I found myself having quite a few more issues trying to pass through or share NV cards. That could well have changed more recently.

Thanks. I'll look into the AMD cards in that case as I want the system to be as bulletproof as possible. I do still want to game though so I'm a little bit wary of an AMD system. I feel like a Quadro 5000 would be the best card to get at the moment but I might wait for the next generation of Nvidia cards because it can't be long until they come out.

 

[Quartz]

Do you really need the facility? Do things like Windows Terminal Services, X, and VNC not offer sufficient functionality?

 

[Vince]

Thanks. I'll look into the AMD cards in that case as I want the system to be as bulletproof as possible. I do still want to game though so I'm a little bit wary of an AMD system. I feel like a Quadro 5000 would be the best card to get at the moment but I might wait for the next generation of Nvidia cards because it can't be long until they come out.

It has to be said that my experience is esxi only and there are other options. Personally i use a 7 and ive had good results with 4 amd cards passed through to seperate vms. When i was testing i had a vega64, radeon 7, rx550 and an rx570 all passed through to vms and running very well.

Id wager a bet that the quadro 5000 would be almost as easy to get going and would be reliable.

 

[Cromulent]

Do you really need the facility? Do things like Windows Terminal Services, X, and VNC not offer sufficient functionality?

Terminal Services requires Windows Server unless I am misunderstanding something (very likely). Also I'm not planning on running things remotely so X11 forwarding and VNC aren't really an option.

What I want to do is pretty simple but I'm open to any solution that meets my needs.

I need a PC for programming. I want to run Linux as my primary OS but I also want to game on Windows. I could either get a dedicated machine for programming and just game on a cheaper system or I could get a Quadro card and benefit from its GPGPU capabilities while programming under Linux and also be able to play games on Windows 10 Pro running in a virtual machine.

Remember that I am very space-constrained. I live in a studio apartment which means I need to fit everything in one room. Two computers would really suck in that example.

 

[Vince]

Terminal Services requires Windows Server unless I am misunderstanding something (very likely). Also I'm not planning on running things remotely so X11 forwarding and VNC aren't really an option.

What I want to do is pretty simple but I'm open to any solution that meets my needs.

I need a PC for programming. I want to run Linux as my primary OS but I also want to game on Windows. I could either get a dedicated machine for programming and just game on a cheaper system or I could get a Quadro card and benefit from its GPGPU capabilities while programming under Linux and also be able to play games on Windows 10 Pro running in a virtual machine.

Remember that I am very space-constrained. I live in a studio apartment which means I need to fit everything in one room. Two computers would really suck in that example.

Do you want to be able to run both simultaneously?

 

[Cromulent]

Do you want to be able to run both simultaneously?

Well, that depends. I don't need to be running anything when gaming but I would need to run Linux and Microsoft Office at the same time. So I could dual boot for games and I could run Windows 10 in a virtual machine for Microsoft Office. Of course, it would require two licenses of Windows 10 but that would be paid for by the cheaper GPU.

 

[Quartz]

Remember that I am very space-constrained.

I have a solution for you: put two GPUs in your PC, one for your Windows VM and one for your Linux VM. Use a monitor with multiple inputs and plug both GPUs into the monitor. Some monitors (e.g. the Dell U3219Q) have built-in KVM switches which is very useful but not strictly necessary: what I did was have the keyboard and mouse for PC 1 black and the keyboard and mouse for PC 2 beige. If your monitor only has a single input you will need a KVM. Even sdimpler would be to have two monitors and stack one monitor above the other. If you decide against the virtualisation route, look at Intel's new Ghost Canyon 'Elemen' / NUC boxes.