Gaming on a NAS? You better believe it!


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For someone like you Gary, I could see you being interested in simulation games or strategy games.  There are some really good ones out there if you want some recommendations.

Sim City! heh! I can't get enough of Sim City Buildit for android.

So much so,  that I have tablet(s) and Blue Stacks emulator running my cities all day.

 

 

I'm in the definitely-not-a-gamer camp ... but this technology has got me interested in perhaps trying it anyway !!  :)

While not a game, I'd love to see a tutorial on a slackware environment for devs.

It's got me interested to try it out for that.

I know.. boring, but then I can build & compile the packages directly on the platform and it's unRAID centric.

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Just did!

Cool vid!

 

Couple nits. Not all of us have gigantic screens, it would have been easier to follow if your screen resolution was set a little lower for the video capture. The unraid vm config screens were hard to read with the text so small in the center. Second nit, windows 7 will let you skip the serial number as well, and you can run it for 30 days before activating it. A legal ISO for windows 7 is a little more difficult to come by, so your overall point stands, this is the first version that you can easily evaluate for free.

 

The post install VM optimization info is gold, I'll definitely be bookmarking that.

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Cool vid!

 

Couple nits. Not all of us have gigantic screens, it would have been easier to follow if your screen resolution was set a little lower for the video capture.

 

Check the description. I know the video was messed up but wanted to get what I had uploaded since it was done. I'll be redoing it next week since I now know what the problem was during capture.

 

Second nit, windows 7 will let you skip the serial number as well, and you can run it for 30 days before activating it. A legal ISO for windows 7 is a little more difficult to come by, so your overall point stands, this is the first version that you can easily evaluate for free.

 

Yes, I am aware that some Windows 7 installs didn't require a key to install, but when there was a public download available, you would be forced to enter a CD key before you could obtain the media.  Same with Windows 8 and 8.1. Windows 10 is the first OS (maybe ever) that Microsoft released like this where both the install media and installation process could forego CD key entry.  I covered my bases ;-)

 

The post install VM optimization info is gold, I'll definitely be bookmarking that.

 

Awesome!  Glad it was helpful.  Like I said, I know the video quality / resolution was off, but it didn't look that bad in editing, only once rendering was complete.  It was because I had my resolution set to 4k but because I used shadowplay to record, it tried to downsample to 1080p, which caused the issue (just shocking that it didn't show up like that in raw footage).

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If I understand this correctly, this 'Gaming on a NAS' concept is aimed at people who are running a NAS on their desktop, correct?

Or rather have whatever is running unRAID in the Office/near where gaming would happen.

 

In my case my nice multipurpose (currently headless) server big(!) box hums away in the corner of the family shared office; which is also why apart from power consumption, noise and heat is also important.. ;)

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Ordered a Kill A Watt last night and should be here next week.  I'm actually very curious now to test this for myself and see what we can do to make this even more power efficient.  My tests will also include comparing a two system setup (where a lower power NAS is left on 24/7 and a separate gaming rig is powered on for a few hours at a time) against a consolidated system that can do both (but where the gaming VM is only booted up for a few hours at a time).

 

Got the Kill A Watt today and already ran through some tests that have revealed some good things.  Have a lot more testing to do, but from the "quick-n-dirty" tests we did today, it definitely seems as if the GPU is entering in a low power state as expected when the VM is shut down or set to hibernate.  On my test system, it appears that the idle power consumption with no VMs / Containers running was around 70-76 watts.  With a VM turned on that also passed through a GPU and an Avermedia capture card, power consumption (with the VM idling) was jumping around the 90 watt range (would go as low as 88 watts and as high as 95 watts).  Powering down the VM (or setting to hibernate from within the guest) would return the idle power consumption to the same 70-76 watts as after first boot.

 

Like I said, lots more testing to go, but it does appear that my GTX 780 is managing power as efficiently as it can.

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...it does appear that my GTX 780 is managing power as efficiently as it can.

 

You might need to pull it for one test without vm's to get a baseline.

 

I believe part of the question is, how much power does the bare insertion of the GP cost.

If it really is only 3 watts, then effin aye,  lil usb power transformers pull that much sitting at the wall socket.

If it's 0, even better!

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...it does appear that my GTX 780 is managing power as efficiently as it can.

 

You might need to pull it for one test without vm's to get a baseline.

 

I believe part of the question is, how much power does the bare insertion of the GP cost.

If it really is only 3 watts, then effin aye,  lil usb power transformers pull that much sitting at the wall socket.

If it's 0, even better!

Yeah, thought that would be desired, but tough to pull this particular one because I have a custom water cooler mounted on it.  I might be able to make that happen, but even if I can't, I have other test systems I could do this with. Like I said, "quick and dirty" :-)

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I have other test systems I could do this with. Like I said, "quick and dirty" :-)

 

 

Might be better on the other one.  Base line without GPU and water cooler. The air cooled GPU idle, air cooled GPU full throttle.

In the end it might not really matter, but it sure would strengthen the case for a combined machine.

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I have other test systems I could do this with. Like I said, "quick and dirty" :-)

 

 

Might be better on the other one.  Base line without GPU and water cooler. The air cooled GPU idle, air cooled GPU full throttle.

In the end it might not really matter, but it sure would strengthen the case for a combined machine.

Totally. The kill a watt works really good. I got a steal of a deal on it ($17 when normally $39.99). Looking forward to doing more testing and reporting results. Going to try to be very scientific about it all.

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... hypothetically speaking, on a 10GB network?

 

The network's not the issue -- the video connection is.  As mr-hexen noted, you'd need to run an HDMI cable to the monitor.  With the right cables, these can easily be run 100' or more, so it's just a matter of the topology of the cable run as to just how difficult it might be.    You also need a keyboard/mouse run, which is more problematic, as USB cables can't be that long ... but you can get Ethernet adapters for those.

 

 

I mention network because instead of a super long hdmi and USB cable, I was envisioning a remote desktop connection over the network into the vm that had enough bandwidth to support the data stream that gaming would require.. That would be something that would appeal to me... Then you could access the gaming rig from any wired terminal in the house...

 

Again, this is just me dreaming... :-)

 

I think that was the concept of Steve Perlman's OnLive (which I beta tested) and Gaikai, both companies now belong to Sony. The servers (cloud) would handle the CPU and GPU functions and did all the heavy work. The client just receive keystrokes, mouse clicks, and joystick inputs passed to the server then downloaded video to display client side. If you had a good connection, there was very little lag.

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So after reading the post I reconfigured my gaming VM from 4 passed-through cores to 3 and experienced bad problems with Steam in-home streaming. The encoder couldn't keep up with gameplay over the network. The on screen fps display showed one thread available for encoding and the streaming bandwidth suffered. Went from a paltry 10Mbit to 250Mbit+ (and two utilized threads) after adding back the 4th core.

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So after reading the post I reconfigured my gaming VM from 4 passed-through cores to 3 and experienced bad problems with Steam in-home streaming. The encoder couldn't keep up with gameplay over the network. The on screen fps display showed one thread available for encoding and the streaming bandwidth suffered. Went from a paltry 10Mbit to 250Mbit+ (and two utilized threads) after adding back the 4th core.

Why did reading the post prompt you to reduce to three?

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So after reading the post I reconfigured my gaming VM from 4 passed-through cores to 3 and experienced bad problems with Steam in-home streaming. The encoder couldn't keep up with gameplay over the network. The on screen fps display showed one thread available for encoding and the streaming bandwidth suffered. Went from a paltry 10Mbit to 250Mbit+ (and two utilized threads) after adding back the 4th core.

Why did reading the post prompt you to reduce to three?

 

I figured one less core wouldn't hurt as there wasn't much of a difference between 8, 6, and 4.  ;D

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So after reading the post I reconfigured my gaming VM from 4 passed-through cores to 3 and experienced bad problems with Steam in-home streaming. The encoder couldn't keep up with gameplay over the network. The on screen fps display showed one thread available for encoding and the streaming bandwidth suffered. Went from a paltry 10Mbit to 250Mbit+ (and two utilized threads) after adding back the 4th core.

Why did reading the post prompt you to reduce to three?

 

I figured one less core wouldn't hurt as there wasn't much of a difference between 8, 6, and 4.  ;D

 

I see.  Yeah dropping to less than 4 cores will have a non-linear affect and result in pretty abysmal performance for high intensity apps like in home streaming. The reason for the lack of substantial gains between 4 and 8 assigned cpus is that gaming can't do the greatest job of making good use of multithreading to increase performance. So while multithreading does help, its only up to a point and then the law of diminishing return kicks in hard and fast.

 

But when you add in home streaming tech into the equation, you are adding even more work to the CPU, so while dropping below 4 cores will cause lower performance in general, add in home streaming to the mix and its bound to put a hurting on you CPU.

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  • 1 month later...

Using unRAID, is it required that each independent video card be a different type or will cards of the same model work as well? This wasn't explained in the video, they just showed using two different cards.

 

Also, this may be company secrets, but was it easy to get around Nvidia's drivers that halt themselves when they detect they're being loaded in a VM?

 

This is something that I would like to do with my current rig, but I feel that maybe I could only really get two useful machines out of this. My current system specs as follows. i7-4790k, 8GB of RAM(Plan on Going to 32GB), ASUS Z97-A, 1 SSD, 1 HDD, 1 980 Ti. I do plan on purchasing a second video card. My motherboard BIOS does have options for both VT-x and VT-d Enable/Disable.

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Using unRAID, is it required that each independent video card be a different type or will cards of the same model work as well? This wasn't explained in the video, they just showed using two different cards.

 

It depends on your exact setup and use case, but generally speaking, no, they don't have to be different.

 

Also, this may be company secrets, but was it easy to get around Nvidia's drivers that halt themselves when they detect they're being loaded in a VM?

 

No company secret at all.  It was very easy to get around the NVIDIA Code 43 issue.  In fact, we will be getting Hyper-V support back for NVIDIA devices pretty soon too thanks to a new QEMU build we'll be getting, so performance could get even better.

 

This is something that I would like to do with my current rig, but I feel that maybe I could only really get two useful machines out of this. My current system specs as follows. i7-4790k, 8GB of RAM(Plan on Going to 32GB), ASUS Z97-A, 1 SSD, 1 HDD, 1 980 Ti. I do plan on purchasing a second video card. My motherboard BIOS does have options for both VT-x and VT-d Enable/Disable.

 

You have the same processor I do (love it) and you could definitely build a dual-headed system using those parts.  That said, I would recommend doubling up on the SSD so you have redundancy, but it's not a requirement if you accept the limitation.

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  • 1 month later...

Is there a way to get around the 1 VM per video card restriction?

 

Hyper-V doesn't have this - see http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/16652.remotefx-vgpu-setup-and-configuration-guide-for-windows-server-2012.aspx

 

I have a MSI H87M-E33 mainboard with a single PCI-E x16 slot, i5-4440, Sapphire R7 250 2G with boost

 

Thanks

But you can't output to a monitor with vgpus in Hyper-V and you need a enterprise grade GPU to utilize it that way I believe. No support for NVIDIA GTX GPUs from Hyper-V either.  We don't see vgpu as an important feature.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi,

 

I'm a little late to the party but after reading all posts in this thread i have one more specific question.

Does unRaid support ULPM on never AMD GPU's ? Ultra Low Power Mode is activated when two AMD GPU's are used in Crossfire mode and the 2nd GPU is not used. In this usage case the dedicated GPU is not in use when the VM is turned off and could switch to ULPM mode. If the Kernel supports it.

 

Greetings,

Haldi

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've just installed 2 VMs on a system VERY similar to what you tested. An i7-4790 (non-K, I didn't know this series of K processor could use VT-d. Live and learn), 16gb of RAM, a Gigabyte Z87 motherboard and a GTX 780.

 

I'm getting horrendous performance in World of Tanks (the only game I've tested so far), while my GF is getting pretty decent performance on her GTX 960 playing Alice Madness Returns.

 

When I was running bare metal, my FPS in World of Tanks would hover around 70 fps for most maps, with everything maxed out. Running my VM, I get 24-30 FPS if I'm lucky. CPU utilization is at around 40% for my 4 cores (2 physical, 2 virtual), going to about 50%. So I think it's something with my GFX, which is in the 16x PCI-E slot on the motherboard.

 

Can you help me identify what might be causing problems? All drivers are up-to-date.

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I've just installed 2 VMs on a system VERY similar to what you tested. An i7-4790 (non-K, I didn't know this series of K processor could use VT-d. Live and learn), 16gb of RAM, a Gigabyte Z87 motherboard and a GTX 780.

 

I'm getting horrendous performance in World of Tanks (the only game I've tested so far), while my GF is getting pretty decent performance on her GTX 960 playing Alice Madness Returns.

 

When I was running bare metal, my FPS in World of Tanks would hover around 70 fps for most maps, with everything maxed out. Running my VM, I get 24-30 FPS if I'm lucky. CPU utilization is at around 40% for my 4 cores (2 physical, 2 virtual), going to about 50%. So I think it's something with my GFX, which is in the 16x PCI-E slot on the motherboard.

 

Can you help me identify what might be causing problems? All drivers are up-to-date.

 

So do you have hyper threading turned on or off?  How many and which specific CPUs do you have assigned to each VM?

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I've just installed 2 VMs on a system VERY similar to what you tested. An i7-4790 (non-K, I didn't know this series of K processor could use VT-d. Live and learn), 16gb of RAM, a Gigabyte Z87 motherboard and a GTX 780.

 

I'm getting horrendous performance in World of Tanks (the only game I've tested so far), while my GF is getting pretty decent performance on her GTX 960 playing Alice Madness Returns.

 

When I was running bare metal, my FPS in World of Tanks would hover around 70 fps for most maps, with everything maxed out. Running my VM, I get 24-30 FPS if I'm lucky. CPU utilization is at around 40% for my 4 cores (2 physical, 2 virtual), going to about 50%. So I think it's something with my GFX, which is in the 16x PCI-E slot on the motherboard.

 

Can you help me identify what might be causing problems? All drivers are up-to-date.

 

So do you have hyper threading turned on or off?  How many and which specific CPUs do you have assigned to each VM?

 

Hyperthreading is on. Both VMs have 4 cores assigned, core 0-3 for the first and 4-7 for the second, along with 7GB of RAM.

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I've just installed 2 VMs on a system VERY similar to what you tested. An i7-4790 (non-K, I didn't know this series of K processor could use VT-d. Live and learn), 16gb of RAM, a Gigabyte Z87 motherboard and a GTX 780.

 

I'm getting horrendous performance in World of Tanks (the only game I've tested so far), while my GF is getting pretty decent performance on her GTX 960 playing Alice Madness Returns.

 

When I was running bare metal, my FPS in World of Tanks would hover around 70 fps for most maps, with everything maxed out. Running my VM, I get 24-30 FPS if I'm lucky. CPU utilization is at around 40% for my 4 cores (2 physical, 2 virtual), going to about 50%. So I think it's something with my GFX, which is in the 16x PCI-E slot on the motherboard.

 

Can you help me identify what might be causing problems? All drivers are up-to-date.

 

So do you have hyper threading turned on or off?  How many and which specific CPUs do you have assigned to each VM?

 

Hyperthreading is on. Both VMs have 4 cores assigned, core 0-3 for the first and 4-7 for the second, along with 7GB of RAM.

Hmm, if you turn her VM off and play, how is it?

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