[SOLVED] Hardware upgrades/changes for running windows gaming VM on linux, and any advice on setting up gaming VM for linux

[widepeeposad]

Hey guys,



So atm I am a Windows pleb and am wanting to change operating systems to Linux and run a windows VM to play games. I was wondering if you guys could give any advice on what hardware upgrades/changes I will need to make to make this happen. The types of games I play at the moment are Modern Warfare, CSGO, League of Legends and Witcher 3. I like to play a lot of everything so I want to make sure I still can on my VM.



Current PC Components:

Motherboard - ASUS ROG Crosshair Hero VIII (Wifi)
CPU - AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
RAM - 2 x 8GB 3200 MHz Corsair Vengeance
GPU - ROG Strix Gaming 11 Gb 2080 Ti
Storage - ADATA SX8200PNP 2TB
PSU - Corsair RM750x



I'd really like maximum performance out of my VM and am not afraid to purchase new components to achieve this.



Thanks guys!

 

[ex_bubblehead]

None of the games you mentioned will run anywhere near acceptably in a VM. You want Windows gaming then build a Windows gaming machine. VM's, for the most part, do not game well.

 

[USAFRet]

Windows games do not transfer well through a VM.

 

[widepeeposad]

None of the games you mentioned will run anywhere near acceptably in a VM. You want Windows gaming then build a Windows gaming machine. VM's, for the most part, do not game well.

Correct me if I'm wrong but are you not able to do hardware passthrough and just have a separate graphics card for the VM?

 

[ex_bubblehead]

Correct me if I'm wrong but are you not able to do hardware passthrough and just have a separate graphics card for the VM?

That still doesn't make a VM suitable for gaming.

 

[TerryLaze]

Correct me if I'm wrong but are you not able to do hardware passthrough and just have a separate graphics card for the VM?

You don't need it to be a separate graphics card unless you need the full performance of the GPU on linux for some reason WHILE you game on the VM.

VMware does have passthrough but the GPU shows up in the "emulated" windows as an generic VM GPU and some games can't deal with that they need to know the exact model of the GPU to run.

The ones that don't have an issue with a generic GPU will run well enough but you will still be limited to,I think,2Gb Vram so don't expect things like the witcher 3 or warzone to play at full potential,games like CSgo and LoL on the other hand should play more than well enough.

There is also steams solution for linux that has a pretty good compatibility.

Do you mind sharing why the heck you want to play windows games with additional steps?

 

[widepeeposad]

You don't need it to be a separate graphics card unless you need the full performance of the GPU on linux for some reason WHILE you game on the VM.

VMware does have passthrough but the GPU shows up in the "emulated" windows as an generic VM GPU and some games can't deal with that they need to know the exact model of the GPU to run.

The ones that don't have an issue with a generic GPU will run well enough but you will still be limited to,I think,2Gb Vram so don't expect things like the witcher 3 or warzone to play at full potential,games like CSgo and LoL on the other hand should play more than well enough.

There is also steams solution for linux that has a pretty good compatibility.

Do you mind sharing why the heck you want to play windows games with additional steps?

I'm interested in changing to Linux as my primary OS as I'd like the additional security and am studying computer science at university. Many of my educators have suggested moving to a Linux OS.

 

[TerryLaze]

I'm interested in changing to Linux as my primary OS as I'd like the additional security and am studying computer science at university. Many of my educators have suggested moving to a Linux OS.

That's fine but all of that is lost if you still run windows,at least it's lost to all files inside the VM and if you connect them to the same network,that's how you get internet inside an VM,you loose the security of linux as well.
At that point you can just as well make a dual boot on different disks hiding the other disk via bios every time you boot one of them to completely separate the two.

 

[widepeeposad]

That's fine but all of that is lost if you still run windows,at least it's lost to all files inside the VM and if you connect them to the same network,that's how you get internet inside an VM,you loose the security of linux as well.
At that point you can just as well make a dual boot on different disks hiding the other disk via bios every time you boot one of them to completely separate the two.

That's what I'm thinking now after doing some more research. Just having two separate drives for each OS, using Linux primarily and Windows whenever I wanna game, it's a little inconvenient having to restart my PC every time I want to change systems but it's a necessary evil