(Part 2) Best products from r/VFIO

Easiest solution for me was to pass through a PCIe USB hub. This is the one I got, I found it recommended in an old post. Also picked up one of these. Plugged an aux cable from that into the microphone jack in the onboard audio. Then just use pavucontrol to set it up as a loopback device to whatever your physical device is.

Also did M+KB with the USB hub and a hardware KVM switch. There are other means to do it, with the Software KVM Switch and Evdev passthrough but I found the hardware solution to be the easiest and fastest.

Yeah, F31 has kernel-5.3.8-300 so I think it is OK, I will try this MOBO (ASRock AM4/X570M Pro4) because this guy had success with that MOBO.

I am not interested on the audio right now.
I think I am good at Linux, but I haven't tried this before.

In my case I will use 2 GPU, GT710 for Host and Quadro RTX 4000 for the Guest.


I will try F31 too. I am about to buy the whole parts, let's see what happen!

This was probably the best one I tried. It worked for 1440p@144Hz and also does USB switching. Little expensive, but everything cheaper seemed to only support old DP standards.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00ZR18VPS

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06W2HJKVC

However, I only needed an 8x adapter, so...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000ZTEFGG

So if you need a 16x slot:

https://www.amazon.com/Supermicro-RSC-R1U-E16R-Rsc-R1U-E16R-Riser-Card/dp/B00MJ5AWR0

Hope that helps

Edit: I haven't installed the angled bracket yet.

Quick look at their virtualization cards:

$1549USD and the x2 variant is $3,377 on Amazon but going for $2,599 on NewEgg. These provide SR-IOV I think, so it's a different kind that's been around for a while, perhaps the slightly cheaper professional models might support vGPU in future.

I am almost embarrassed to say I have this one lol https://www.amazon.com/BlasterX-Multi-Channel-Surround-Entertainment-Soundbar/dp/B01M5G07KF

There are much more reasonable ones out there, but this one had the inputs I wanted and acts as a USB soundcard, not just a dumb soundbar. But warning, the USB does not work that well in linux. It seems like the volume adjust does not really work, and you can't control the LEDs as far as I am aware. It does not bother me because I am using SPDIF optical in linux and only use the USB in windows. I am dreaming of doing some USB snooping in windows to see if I can't hack a better linux driver though :)

Not sure about AMD cards, but i've had weird issues with nvidia ones unless I added a dummy monitor to them. Usually it'd be stuck at 800x600 regardless of anything other factors. They're pretty cheap and just stick in the port on the back of the card.

something like, https://www.amazon.com/Display-Emulator-Headless-Display-Fit-Headless-1920x1080-3840x2160/dp/B06XSZR7CG/

my goal right now is to achieve highest machine/$ utilizing virtual machines , to do server>thin client feed efficiently you need hardware acceleration which means a gpu and that makes things complicated ...
im planning to do some experiments i can especially with these miinig stuff there are things like this which if they work would be a really nice solution....
im not an expert on pci lane allocation or pci passthrough but linus was able to get 8 individual cards off of a single pcie slot on his 6 editors 1 cpu system which doesnt line up with stuff ive been reading online on how iommu groups are the limiiting factor on gpu passthrough (maybe because he used acs override idk)...

I thought about Synergy, but I chose to go with a cheap hardware solution instead. I have my mouse and keyboard hooked up to a USB hub which is in turned hooked up to this USB switch. This switch is connected to my host via the USB ports on the back of the motherboard and the guest through a USB controller card that I passed through. It works extremely well. The only downside for me is that it takes a couple seconds for the mouse and keyboard to initialize every time I switch it.

I actually use looking glass often, you can get an hdmi display emulator/edid spoofer, which works well with looking glass:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077CY48RB/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

another option I use which is sometimes smoother esp in fps games is to use an hdmi switch with both the passthrough gpu output and the host primary or secondary output going to channel 1 and 2, then the output from the switch going to your monitor, then just switch between them

as for using the host system's obs, you'd have to either use looking glass or a capture device for the hdmi switch route. if going the hdmi switch route you'll want a capture device that has hdmi passthrough or get an hdmi splitter and split the signal from the switch out to the capture in and monitor

source: I stream on twitch using vfio. ;)

I have successfully passed through one of these cards to a hackintosh running on a virtual machine:

https://www.amazon.com/Inateck-Express-Controller-Internal-Connector/dp/B00JFR2H64

It features a fresco fl1100 controller which has native macos drivers in at least high sierra and mojave.

I will add I got a sapphire pulse Rx 570 and had nothing but issues yesterday. I either had a black screen or stuck on the tiano core boot screen. I tried switching slots, using vbios pulled from the card and techpowerup. Nothing would work. One core of the VM would pin 100% and nothing would start. r7 2700x Gigabyte ax370 with a gt 1030 as the primary card. I tried a fresh Mojave VM and a Pop OS VM. Nothing in both.

https://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-11266-04-20G-Radeon-Backplate-Graphics/dp/B06ZY21842

I went with a different approach. I got a set of these speakers and this cable. I then ran that cable from the audio output on my monitor to the speakers and set the VM to use the monitor's audio. The speakers mix the audio with hosts audio so it's fairly seemless.

I'm guessing something like that won't work in your situation

this is my mobo.
AS for the rest I've got a i5-6500 and the video cards are R9 270 (previous) and a GT 710 ( addition). Currently there are 2 monitors plugged into each video card and I have one connected to the mobo. I am able to run with the one connected to the mobo.

Holy shit! Its on sale right now, I think I will buy it now since it will probably save me a lot of hassle in the future (I can't believe it's about the same price i paid for synergy pro, I will see if they do refunds)

EDIT: Link for anyone who is interested:
https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Triathalon-Multi-Device-Wireless-910-004790/dp/B01LF37K80/ref=sr_1_1?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1495840680&sr=1-1&keywords=logitech+m720

I actually ended up solving this with a more expensive USB sound card. Turns out you really get what you pay for.

Stereo Line-in USB Soundcard
Shielded audio cables

I got this one, and it works great with my 3900x. I didn’t upgrade the AGESA from what shipped with it out of fear that the groupings would change. I’m using the ACS override patch because I wanted to pass in the SATA controllers and stock groupings had them bundled together (IIRC).

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07STNZF9L/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Yea, I wouldn't bet on it being in my favor, but i found a cheap PCI gpu, is this good enough to take over the load of X while im in the guest os? (I wont be running a monitor) here