Xen and gaming?

[BeetleJuice]

Hi folks, I was away from gentoo and linux in general some time now because I use my PC mainly as gaming platform.
Since most opensource apps (xchat,gaim,mozilla) were ported to win32 I migrated to windows completely some time ago, didn't like the dual booting.

So, this new Xen VM, didn't found much about gaming performance here on the forums, any of you made experience with that?
thx

[PaveQ]

Does 3D rendering work with Xen? Can Xen run windows? I'm interested too

[ansalmo]

[teidon]

I doubt that Xen can run 3D games. The "problem" with virtual machines is that... they are _virtual_ machines. So, even if your computer has a fancy 3D-accelerator card, virtual machines that you run in your computer won't have. They only have some generic virtual devices. I'm not sure if it is possible to somehow add support for host computer's hardware for virtual machines though.

But for the record, VMware released a free virtual machine software a while ago called VMware Server. There's a Windows and Linux version of it. I've used it little and it is quite good software - especially for Linux users. You won't be able to run any software that requires some specific hardware (like tv-card, 3D-accelerator, sound card...), but it is possible to run any other "normal" sofware in their native environment. So if you need to run some Windows program (MS Office..) but Wine can't handle it, VMware Server will solve the problem. But like said, playing games on it won't work too well. 3D games won't work because there's no 3D-acceleration and 2D games will lack sounds.

VMware does have somekind of support for USB devices. Unless I understood it wrong, some USB devices that are connected to the host computer can be directed to a virtual machine running on that computer. Now that might mean that it would be possible to use USB sound cards, tv-cards, etc on VMware's virtual machines, but I'm not sure of that. And if there would be a USB video card, it might be possible to use that too on those virtual machines allowing you to play 3D games on them. But I'm not sure how the USB support works on that thing...
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[BeetleJuice]

Thank you all for the answers. I messed around with cedega some time ago, actually most games ran fine but I also have "exotic" flightsimming hardware (HOTAS and IR tracking device) thats not programmable under linux.

[LubosD]

[xanas3712]

Xen isn't exactly a normal VM from my limited understanding either. So it's not really comparable.

Virtualization is definitely something I plan to invest in when it's come down in price a bit on the new chips. As soon as there is something in the 300-400 range it will be worth it I think.

[Tarch]

Now xen supports 3d acceleration! Now I'm running XGL + compiz-quinnstorm under XEN successfully with great performance, and if you go here there is an article talking about running simultaneously two instances of UT2004 using two video cards. Amazing!!! =)

Bye! =)

[xanas3712]

Yeah I've heard that, nice to see improvements over the months since I last posted in this thread.

But it doesn't support windows yet (3d acceleration that is, as you need a paravirtualized driver). I think it will be a few months more till I have a good reason to want to use xen myself but it definitely sounds like they are making progress. If I had a virtualization supporting processor like the newer AMD/Intel chips I'd install it to help in testing, but since I don't I'm going to wait to purchase one until xen can at least run windows in some limited, buggy, fashion. I'm willing to deal with that, just not shell out money when it's not here yet.

[plonka2000]

Hi All,
I've been watching Xen for some time and I think its a great technology.
I'm seriously considering investing into an AMD AM2 Athlon X2 setup to use this, as the total cost of a new MB/CPU/RAM is now within the £400 bracket... My main aim is to run Xen, but alas I am a serious gamer as many of you are... Its the only reason I use WindowsXP.

From what I understand, it is possible to run Linux inside Xen and have X11 acceleration, which is great...
However, is anyone heard of any developments on the Windows side for 3D acceleration...?

Or does anyone know of any sources of good information?

This thread could be made the official Xen Linux/Windows gaming thread even.
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Using Gentoo and Windows XPee.
Check my site here

[avnielknight]

Virtual Machienes do not allow 3d acceleration since the video driver is purely pretending to be a display adapter. The most progress I have seen is that VMware finally allows 2 cpus to be emulated.
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[plonka2000]

Well here's hoping.

I'm sure before the years out there will be a VM breakthrough... Its progressed leaps and bounds the last few months already.
_________________
-Do not be afraid of what is different.
-Do not be afraid of being different.
-After all, ignorance is not an excuse.

Using Gentoo and Windows XPee.
Check my site here

[avnielknight]

It's good to remain hopeful.
_________________
Regards,
-Mark Austin
http://www.avnielknight.org
http://www.myspace.com/avnielknight

[Saint1911]

[plonka2000]

[Saint1911]

True, but the fact remains that you can't use the amd's at this point in time, personally though my desktop has always been amd since 3DNOW! was 'new' and the next upgrade will be AMD aswell. Still if it's something you need to function now, it's conroe. *waiting for quad cpu's*
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[plonka2000]

[Saint1911]

[neuron]

from a XEN point of view, I dont see why it's not possible to have one cheap 20$ display adapter running in ring0, running your linux xgl stuff. And having a more powerfull card dedicated to a windows host running on xen. And allowing xen direct access to that hardware.

[rbv4531]

I saw a great explanation of this on another website.

Basically, for 3-D acceleration, you need direct memory access -- with video card working as a bus master. This means the video driver has to be able to give the physical address of the shared RAM buffers so that the video card can read that memory without using the CPU. Non-paged memory allocated from the kernel wouldn't go through the MMU -- except in a domU kernel isn't using physical addresses, cause the hypervisor has configured the MMU. Video driver thus can't know the correct address to pass to the GPU, unless (a) the chipset gets a MMU for I/O (this is what Intel's upcoming VT -d is about I hear) or (b) you have a paravirtualized xen-aware video driver that uses a hypervisor trap to do the logical -> physical address translation.

So c'mon nvidia, we all want paravirtualized drivers... .pleeeeeeze!

[Fafhrd_]

Found this thread while doing some research about gaming with linux. I need to have .NET support, which isn't available in WINE (yet), so I'm looking at VMware and Xen.

Anyway, thought you guys might like this http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=78632
[Patch] unified patch for Xen or Realtime Preemption for 1.0-8776

[plonka2000]

[xanas3712]

[neuron]

[xanas3712]

Ok, wait, so he is running 2 linux vm's accelerated, so the 2 guest OS are linux or is one windows/one linux?

If everything is linux that's still cool.

Do you have a link for this? I've looked and looked but most of what I find on running 3d accelerated guests is months and months old and pure theory. There is a lot of talk of running the 3d nvidia driver with patches, but it sounds from the threads that those patches are only for the host OS. Again, prove me wrong, but I would think if they were doing 3d accelerated guests there would at least be someone posting some screenshots and I've seen not a one.

I assume you are not talking about "http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/CoolConfigurations" because this only works if you have separate dedicated video cards.