New VirtualBox Beta Has PCI Pass-Through Support

[Nasenbaer]

I don't think that PCI-passthrough brings us native 3D-graphics performance in the near future. KVM already has this feature. Some time ago I tried to access use a second graphics directly using QEMU-KVM and failed. I was able to install the graphics driver in the emulated windows-xp host and the installer did not complained about missing H/W - that made my happy. But after the restart I had to realize that the graphics card still did not work.

Maybe it will work in someday but I promise that it won't will be in 2011.

[MaestroMaus]

holy crap so does this mean that we'll have direct access to video cards? if so this could very easily be the end of dual booting. we can virtualize windows in linux and then run stuff like games and photoshop with a minimal performance drop. i am extremely excited if this is true.

I can guarantee you that you can not play games in it with a minimal performance drop (and that will not happen soon either).
Also, if you really care about games on Linux, please stop hoping for patchwork stuff like this in order to play Windows games. As stated before: a Windows sale does not help Linux in any shape or form. Go buy the indie stuff that does support Linux instead like the humble indie bundle, Overgrowth and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

EDIT:
Felt the urge to plug Overgrowth

[Shining Arcanine]

holy crap so does this mean that we'll have direct access to video cards? if so this could very easily be the end of dual booting. we can virtualize windows in linux and then run stuff like games and photoshop with a minimal performance drop. i am extremely excited if this is true.

It is not possible. You need VGA passthrough support for that.

http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenVGAPassthrough

[Jedibeeftrix]

the PCI pass-through support sounds potentially awesome, but i have questions:

1. what does this mean to me as the owner of an IOMMU supporting system (890FX chipset) as a desktop user?

2. does this mean that VB is finally supporting IOMMU#?

cheers

[schmidtbag]

I can guarantee you that you can not play games in it with a minimal performance drop (and that will not happen soon either).
Also, if you really care about games on Linux, please stop hoping for patchwork stuff like this in order to play Windows games. As stated before: a Windows sale does not help Linux in any shape or form. Go buy the indie stuff that does support Linux instead like the humble indie bundle, Overgrowth and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

EDIT:
Felt the urge to plug Overgrowth

until linux gets more commercial products, you can't honestly expect the average home desktop (or office) user to strictly use linux 100% for all of their needs. i have a separate computer i use strictly for gaming and nothing else, which runs windows. if linux could natively run everything i own and have yet-to-own, i wouldn't need windows at all. but if virtualbox can virtualize windows with vga passthrough, then that would still leave linux as the main os.

btw, who said i paid for windows?

[atmartens]

Does this mean I will be able to use my PCI soundcard in a Linux guest on a Windows host? I'd like to use Ardour while running windows.

[DeepDayze]

holy crap so does this mean that we'll have direct access to video cards? if so this could very easily be the end of dual booting. we can virtualize windows in linux and then run stuff like games and photoshop with a minimal performance drop. i am extremely excited if this is true.

You could then install say a native nvidia or ATI Windows driver for your video card in your Windows guests and should get very close to native performance as you are sharing the physical video device with the host. That would be sweet for running Windows within your Linux host for those Windows games you can't do without...without leaving Linux

Does this mean I will be able to use my PCI soundcard in a Linux guest on a Windows host? I'd like to use Ardour while running windows.

That could be quite possible once the technology matures.

[DeepDayze]

It is not possible. You need VGA passthrough support for that.

http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenVGAPassthrough

I'm sure a similar technology could come to virtualbox soon as well.

[werfu]

I'm sure a similar technology could come to virtualbox soon as well.

In the video shown on the Xen website, the VM is started in console mode. Doing this while X is running wouldn't be really easy ie. switching from the virtual graphic adapter in windowed mode to the VGA passthrough in fullscreen. It would imply saving all the X stack state before giving up the control to the VM, then repost the video hardware when coming back. Not quite grand public.

[Linuxxx]

Regarding Xen VGA passthrough...

Would anybody mind commenting on this...

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...e-way-to-go!!!

How is it that such a thing is already possible on Linux but hardly anybody uses it?