The performance – both graphics and computing – under Xen and KVM has been nothing less than stellar! I’ve been doing VGA passthrough since summer 2012, first running Windows 7 on a Xen hypervisor, switching to KVM and Windows 10 in December 2015. The tutorial uses a technology called VGA passthrough (also referred to as “GPU passthrough” or “vfio” for the vfio driver used) which provides near-native graphics performance in the VM. In the tutorial below I describe how to install and run Windows 10 as a KVM virtual machine on a Linux Mint or Ubuntu host. This allows us to create virtual machines on a Linux host platform without compromising performance of the (Windows) guest system.įor some benchmarks of my current system, see Windows 10 Virtual Machine Benchmarks The Solution Many modern CPUs have built-in features that improve the performance of virtual machines (VM), up to the point where virtualised systems are indistinguishable from non-virtualised systems. And you do not want to dual-boot into Linux or Windows. You need top notch (3D) graphics performance under Windows for computer games, photo or video editing, etc. You want to use Linux as your main operating system, but still need Windows for certain applications unavailable under Linux. Turn on MSI Message Signaled Interrupts in your VM.Part 14 – Passing more PCI devices to guest.

Part 13 – Run Windows VM in user mode (non-root).qemu: hardware error: vfio: DMA mapping failed, unable to continue.AMD Ryzen Hyperthreading (SMT) Not Supported.AMD Vega / RX 5700 XT / Navi Graphics Cards.IOMMU group contains additional devices.Identical graphics cards for host and guest.BSOD when installing AMD Crimson drivers under Windows.AMD GPU doesn’t reset after VM shutdown.AMD Motherboard BIOS Update Breaks VFIO.No Video Output after GPU Passthrough (black screen).Kernel 5.1 through 5.3 having Issues with VFIO-solved with latest kernel update.Part 10 – Create Script to Start Windows.Part 8 – Prepare Windows VM Storage Space.Part 3 – Determining the Devices to Pass Through to Windows.UEFI support in the GPU used with Windows.

Virtualbox interface for qemu