Are Gaming VMs Fast? KVM/VFIO Benchmarks vs Native Install

Time Stamps:
0:00 Intro
0:54​ Hardware Setup
1:14​ Software Setup
2:22​ Benchmarks
2:43​ Benchmark Results
7:00​ My Proposal

Today is KVM/VFIO/Gaming-in-a-virtual-machine benchmarks day

In this video I am using the benchmarks listed below to compare performance in a Native Windows 10 install to a GPU-enabled virtual machine running on a Linux host.

If you're unfamiliar with any of those words:
KVM stands for Kernel-based Virtual Machine. It is a part of Linux that lets us run other operating systems as a virtual machine.
A virtual machine is when you run another operating system as a program on your computer that already has an operating system. This can let you run multiple different operating systems at the same time.
An operating system is a set of software that handles all the common tasks your programs depend on, like managing your computer's hardware. Popular operating systems include: Linux, Windows, and macOS
VFIO stands for Virtual Function Input Output. Is a part of Linux that allows virtual machines to communicate directly with hardware like sold state drives and graphics cards.
This is all awesome because it can let us play games (or other graphics intensive programs) that are available on almost any operating system without needing to reboot. It also allows us to add new operating systems without needing to modify our hardware settings (partition tables, etc)

Its hard to boil these definitions down so if it still doesn't make sense let me know in the comments and maybe I can make a video like "VFIO in simple terms"

Benchmarks in this video:

Thanks for watching/reading!

you can find my other creative endeavors at:

[kloakovalimonada]

Definitely interested in the latency tests

[Steve-lzvv]

I have been thinking about trying vfio for a while and all this is really inspiring and helpful. So yeah thank you for posting these and please post more if you like :P

[stefmyt]

Great video! This is EXACTLY what I was looking for. Thank you man, I seriously don't understand how you don't have over 100k subs. Your videos are high quality, educational, informative, etc...

[anotherfiz]

This is a fantastic video, with fantastic questions!

[SE]

Definitly earned a sub there! Thanks for this video. I would love to see a latency test.

[zalavadiaridham]

Great content!! I would definitely like more in-depth explanations of what is happening when using VFIO.

[futuregootecks]

This is exactly what I was lokoing for, thank you

[jono]

I like these videos. Downloading Fedora now :) Keep it up! Keen to see more.

[SHELBY]

Thanks a lot for this super interesting and helpful video!

[HellGoodDoogz]

Great channel already, mate!
Keep it up... you'll do very well!

[bawonos]

Kuddos, awesome explanation. In terms of the gaming performance review is more scientific than the others. At last, someone (and it's u) considers latency test.

[codewalters]

Thanks for sharing . Very interesting.

[futuregootecks]

BRO! YES, OMG you're the only one talking about latency in gaming VMs!!!!

[Ryan-hpxt]

Awesome content, thanks. I was actually setting up a Retro gaming NUC with linux earlier today and seeing how amazing that experience was I started thinking: "Why am I still developing on windows for work and the very little windows gaming I do?" And I started mauling over if I could just run windows in kvm on Arch Linux and custom tailor my own Arch image, and yeah, this confirms that, on top of other findings.

In the process of building out Arch now, and Chat GPT is AMAZING and helping me breeze through any questions I have about linux, linux commands, what packages to add, how to configure said packages, and on and on.

So much so that I'm thinking about making an AI driven documentation website that will help people learn linux and master it much faster and if we can get large amounts of the gaming community to go to linux, we can drive a shift for developers to start focusing on linux and mac osx for game dev.

I would love to see windows become irrelevant outside of the enterprise office space and legacy application code bases.

[CapsAdmin]

I'm also interested in the latency tests. In your bucket analogy you are adding a 1 second latency for each person you add, even though the rate is same.

[Jvkz]

alright, you've convinced me, time to set this up for the third time in the last like 7 years

[PoeLemic]

Love this topic. I do plan to put Windows into a VM for Gaming. This only happens every so often, but Windows has messed up my Install after an Update. It's really BORKED this time. I've dealt with it for half-year or more, because I just didn't have time to deal with it. The things that are messed up is the ALT+TAB button, seeing and switching between virtual desktop, etc. It all works but there are significant delays -- like 15 to 30 seconds for stuff, which shouldn't take any time. I have a top-notch systems with NVMe's and no hard drives. And, my taskbar will sometimes come up (it's on autohide) and sometimes not, then I have to go to TaskManager and kill all Windows Explorers (if they haven't crashed already), restarting W-E then most of the funtionality comes back. But, it's hell. So, I knew I was gonna get a newer PC, so I've just waited until I got it assembled. My long-term goal is to split my PC into a Gaming VM and into a separate productivity machine. Because, like wife says, when you're playing a game, you don't want to be paying bills or something like that.

So, it'd be interesting if you made more videos on these topics. Many people are very interested in virtualizing their gaming PCs. With the newer hardware, it's gonna be so much more capable and faster. But, your comparisons surprised me. I expected a lot less performance.

[badder]

GREAT CONTENT I'M NEW ON YOUR CHANNEL I ALREADY LOVE IT

[kreator]

Excellent information and video. Thank you very much

[cyber]

Love the video ❤️, would love to see more. 🙂