Like the title says, what’s the main difference in performance between gaming on a windows VM with gpu passthrough on linux vs windows installed the usual way on bare metal? Talking about steam games and not online multiplayer with anti-cheat.
Because i would really like to get rid of my windows dual boot but for the moment i don’t want to get into linux gaming with proton etc…
Also, i would use this VM for other windows-exclusive softwares.
Thank you in advance!
Using KVM with GPU passthrough has been very pleasant after the pain of the initial setup. I haven’t noticed any performance difference at all (maybe because my hardware is good / recent) and have been able to play every game except Valorant + Tarkov.
For me, anticheat was troublesome, and because of the lack of support, GPU behaviour can be erratic(Gigabyte 3060ti). I also had to stitch together different guides for it to get working
But overall it was an excellent learning experience.
what’s the main difference in performance between gaming on a windows VM with gpu passthrough on linux vs windows installed the usual way on bare metal
The main difference is the overhead of hosting another OS, increased memory, disk and cpu usage and potential side-effects with swapping, if the hosts RAM usage is too high. In some solutions for GPU passthrough, the main memory for the passthrough GPU is shared with the VM RAM, so the VMs memory size needs to be increased further.
I run a Windows 10 VM with VMware Workstation and gpu acceleration on my Linux machine, because I have a game that does absolutely not run on Linux with Proton.
It runs like native, but the overhead regarding CPU and memory is there.
I would recommend to play the games with proton instead (since you’re not into Multiplayer/Anti-Cheat stuff, where most of the difficulties lie today)
A VM for Windows-only software, that doesn’t run with WINE and Proton makes sense, but not for playing singleplayer or well supported games on Proton.
Maybe check in r/VFIO? They’ll be able to give more specific advice.
i don’t want to get into linux gaming with proton etc…
May I ask why? If you’re not going to play games with anti cheat I see absolutely no reason for you to go through all the hassle of setting up a VM with GPU passthrough when Proton works as well as it does.
I was in the same scenario when I tried to swap to Linux. I had a deal breaker program that I needed Windows to run. For me, that was Minecraft (For Windows) Bedrock with RTX
Had been involved with the developers of BetterRTX for a while before that so no access to that version of the game was not an option for me. Really don’t enjoy dual booting
The responses I got when reaching out to the Linux community to find ways to get it working on Linux?
“Just play Java. Java > Bedrock anyways”
“You can play Bedrock on Linux” (Android, not RTX compatible)
Whatever their reason for wanting to do so is, presume they hit a similar brick wall on a deal breaker for them and that they have done at least some research on the matter finding no solutions
i would really like to get rid of my windows dual boot
So first of all you’d need 2 GPUs then. You can do it with a single one, but that will mean killing your DE when you start the VM and at that point it’s essentially working like dual booting, but with all the drawbacks of running in a VM.
Second of all, the main difference is … effort. You’ll be constantly fiddling with your config to get it just right (hint: you won’t). Some games just flat out refuse to run in a VM (granted, much of the same games will also refuse to run under Linux). I could never quite get rid of the CPU overhead. You need essentially twice the amount of RAM.
Also, /r/VFIO.
It may be annoying to setup, but once it works (with Looking Glass and such) it works very well. Have been running such a setup for years
Depends how far into vfio you want to go. I run a proxmox VM to stream games from my server to any tv in the house. You can also set it up on your main (and I do, but I like to tinker a lot so having back ups and flexibility is nice) with only one gpu as long as you have some way to launch your computer (either auto boot or through browser).
In terms of performance, there’s generally barely a noticeable difference between bare metal and vm.
Why not install Steam in Linux and just see how it works for you?
You might find (as I did) that you can simply ditch windows altogether.
Check out kvm with gpu passthrough its almost a no performance hit
I have been doing exactly what your scenario is for three years now and I have no intention of looking back.
It does suck though, because lots of anti-cheat now see a VM as instant ban.
Unless you have a use case like me, where I host multiple gaming VMs for multiple people; I would just stick with Linux bare-metal.
This is the path I got down to few years ago and not turning back.
I would love to use Proton for gaming in Linux, but I play mostly online FPS, and most do not work. Apart from that, a VM offers more advantages, like hiding your personal information (just my Steam account in Windows), easy full system backup, about 95% performance compared to bare metal, and no reboots if you have two VGAs (one can be the CPU’s iGPU) and a monitor with two inputs (2xDP, 2xHDMI, DP&HDMI, etc).Come over to r/VFIO and tag me to give you all the info you need.
If you don’t want to bother with Wine/Proton/etc. then I really don’t see the point of ever trying Linux in the first place (at least when it comes to gaming).
The Windows VM solution may have been OK a few years ago, when Wine was… Really not in its prime yet. But these days, practically everything runs fine under Wine or its several implementations (Lutris/HGL/Proton/whatever). And while there will always be some performance overhead due to the translation layer, it is going to be much, MUCH lighter than CPU overhead. Not to mention that kernel-level anticheats (such as e.g. Valorant’s) are simply not going to work in a VM.