Re: [Xen-users] Xen 4.7.0 graphics pass through problems (Win10, AMD Radeon)

[Peter Milesson <miles@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks,

Final results of my tests.

Passing USB devices individually worked, except for my USB sound device, 
where the sound was chopped up, and very unpleasant. If I'm not 
completely wrong, I read something that passing of USB devices is 
effectively USB 1.1. Not very usable for things that need speed.
I also tried usbctrl-attach, and usbdev-attach. It did not work at all.

I got the idea to try to pass another physical USB controller on the 
PCI-bus, than the original one. This time everything seems to work just 
great. The USB function very good, and the graphics output almost 
completely undisturbed. I just need to give the command xl 
pci-assignable-add in the start script for my Windows 10 domU, and use 
the corresponding pci parameters for the USB controller and the graphics 
card in the domU configuration file.
So far Xen 4.7.0 seems quite stable.

Hope this helps somebody.

Peter

On 2016-09-09 11:35, Peter Milesson wrote:
> Hi again,
>
> I've been playing around a bit more.
>
> It seems one of the problems is that I passed a couple of PCI-devices 
> (USB controllers) to the VM, beside the graphics card.
> When I pass the USB-devices individually in the VM configuration file 
> (usbdevice=['tablet','host:1.4','host:1:9','host:x.y']), the display 
> problems seem to be more or less gone.
> IMHO, if you work in a VM with graphics, keyboard, mouse, etc., it's 
> much simpler just pass the PCI-devices for a USB port, and you can 
> connect whatever USB hubs and devices. With the method above, one has 
> got to list the devices specifically. And I connect and disconnect a 
> bunch of different USB-devices (barcode readers, docking stations, 
> 1-wire devices, serial ports, etc.) frequently.
> I'm going to play around with this a little more, and publish my 
> findings here. If somebody has got any idea how to allocate a whole 
> USB-port, without passing a PCI-device, I would be happy to know.
> Best regards,
>
> Peter
>
> On 2016-09-09 09:51, Peter Milesson wrote:
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > I've been using Xen for 3 years, starting out with 4.2, and I've been 
> > upgrading regularly, and installed 4.7.0 today.
> > I'm using Windows 10, 64-bit with PCI pass through in a VM with 
> > PV-drivers, using a AMD Radeon HD6450 card (AMD graphics cards don't 
> > seem to need graphics pass through)
> > Previously (up till Xen 4.6.3), the graphics output has displayed 
> > some shorter lines, a bit like thin coarse snow, when watching 
> > videos. The distortions stayed within the movie, and was tolerable.
> > After upgrade to Xen 4.7.0, the video performance is seriously ugly. 
> > Just for example, I open cnn.com and move the mouse pointer up and 
> > down over the photos, which creates a bunch of flickering lines over 
> > the display. The same with moving content in Youtube for example. Or 
> > opening a Cygwin terminal window and scrolling through a file. Terrible.
> > Nothing else has changed, only the Xen version.
> >
> > The current situation is far from acceptable, and my question is, if 
> > somebody else has got the same experiences, and possibly if there's a 
> > solution.
> > If somebody has got a solution here, I'd be very grateful.
> >
> > Hardware and OS details below.
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> > Peter
> >
> > *Hardware*
> > CPU: AMD FX-6100 (6-core)
> > Chipset: AMD 970A (has got a working IOMMU)
> > RAM: 16GB DDR3-1600MHz
> > Video: AMD Radeon HD6450
> >
> > *OS*
> > Linux Slackware 14.2 (latest)
> > Kernel: 4.4.19 long term stable
> >
> > *Xen*
> > Version: 4.7.0 (configure same as 4.6.3 and previous versions)
> >  ./configure --prefix=/usr --localstatedir=/var --sysconfdir=/etc 
> > --libdir=/usr/lib64 --with-xenstored=oxenstored 
> > --disable-qemu-traditional --disable-rombios --disable-stubdom
> > Xen dom0 boot entry (grub2):
> > menuentry "Xen 4.7.0 / Slackware 14.2 (kernel 4.4.19-dom0)" {
> >        set root=(hd0,1)
> >        multiboot /boot/xen-4.7.0.gz iommu=1 dom0_mem=2048M 
> > dom0_max_vcpus=2 dom0_vcpus_pin console=vga cpufreq=xen:performance 
> > noreboot
> >        module /boot/vmlinuz-4.4.19-dom0 console=vga earlyprintk=xen 
> > root=/dev/sda1 ro clocksource=xen xencons=off
> > }
> >
> > *Guest OS*
> > Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (2VCPUs)
> > Latest PV Drivers (8.2 series)
> > Graphics driver: Latest WHQL driver 15.201.1151.1008
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Xen-users mailing list
> > Xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > https://lists.xen.org/xen-users
>
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