Re: [Xen-users] 3D acceleration

[Daniel Spies <daniel.spies@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Trolle,

Just forwarding this to the list, maybe someone else is interested, too.

Thank you again, I understood now. I'll give it a try and buy the new
Hardware
soon. I'll try a ATI card, to support that new open source wind blowing :)
As I still have my old card then, I'll probably try the dual screen stuff
too...

Thank you one more time for your hints and suggestions!

Cheers,
Daniel

On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 13:42:48 +0200, "Trolle Selander"
<trolle.selander@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi Daniel,
> 
> Assigning the graphics card to the HVM with "hardware passthrough" should
> indeed enable you to get full DirectX10 support (as long as your graphics
> card is a DX10 capable card, that is) under windows. However, I do
believe
> there is currently some "gotchas" in that you have to "hide" the card
from
> dom0 before you can assign it to the HVM - meaning your actual underlying
> Linux install will be running without any display capability at all. If
> you
> have two graphics cards & two monitors (or a monitor with built-in
> monitor-switch), you could could get around this, of course, by assigning
> only one of them to the HVM.
> There are various limitations and security implications of doing hardware
> passthrough without an IOMMU, and as I said, the code is currently
> definitely "experimental". However, it IS in the works, the intent is to
> merge it with mainline eventually, and it's not "vaporware", since the
> source is already available for testing. Search the xen.devel mailing
list
> archives for "direct-io" and "neocleus" if you want to read up on the
> current state of things before running of to buy any new hardware.  I'm
> dying to test it myself, but I just haven't had the time.
> 
> /Trolle
> 
> On 9/25/07, Daniel Spies <daniel.spies@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> Trolle,
>>
>> thank you for this! Just to be sure: Does this mean, I'll have full
>> DirectX10 support in Windows Vista domU? (Probably buggy, but working) I
>> just don't understand why there's this whole discussion about this being
>> impossible, and now you tell me it's possible with full 3D acceleration
>> and
>> native drivers...
>>
>> If you say that's true, I'll go straight to my hardware dealer and get
>> that
>> VT enabling CPU :)
>>
>> Compiling that stuff myself is not the problem, thanks for the warning!
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Daniel
>>
>> On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 12:09:29 +0200, "Trolle Selander"
>> <trolle.selander@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > You could try out the "direct io" branch of Xen that Neocleus is
> working
>> > on.
>> > It will enable "hardware passthrough" to a HVM domain on current
>> VT/AMD-V
>> > hardware (that is, no need for an IOMMU). This would enable you to
>> assign
>> > your graphics card to your windows HVM and run the native drivers for
>> it,
>> > with full 3D accelleration. It's under development, but the code is
>> > available and ready for testing, from my understanding, though you'll
>> have
>> > to check it out via mercurial and compile it yourself. I believe the
>> > intention is to merge it with mainline Xen, once it's ready.
>> >
>> > /Trolle
>> >
>> > On 9/25/07, Daniel Spies <daniel.spies@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 11:31:35 +0200, Christian Horn
> <chorn@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> >> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > For directx-apps i see not much in near future with xen. The thing
>> > next
>> >> > to this is vmware fusion on mac that can run some older
>> > directx-version
>> >> > in the virtual machine.
>> >> > Maybe a windows graphicdriver is technically possible that could do
>> >> this,
>> >> > but again, xen is more serverfocused.
>> >>
>> >> VMWare Fusion has poor performance. I don't know how they do this
>> >> reach-through
>> >> stuff, but I tried Counter Strike 1.6 (very old for those who don't
>> know
>> >> it)
>> >> through VMWare (Workstation - same 3D Support as Fusion) and the game
>> > has
>> >> really
>> >> poor performance. No OpenGL at all, and D3D does not work properly.
>> >> Software
>> >> mode is working, but laggy, slow and ugly. If I remember right they
>> >> convert
>> >>
>> >> D3D 8 into OpenGL, and are still using a virtual graphics adapter
>> > instead
>> >> of
>> >> reaching it through to the host. This seems with my very basic
>> knowledge
>> >> still
>> >> a non-performance solution...
>> >>
>> >> Daniel
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> Xen-users mailing list
>> >> Xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> >> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
>> >>
>>
>>


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