sarahjey
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OP
- Joined:
- Jul 2024
- Posts:
- 149
- From:
- Ottawa, Canada
I have a €50/month dedi from Contabo with a Xeon E3 and 32GB ram. Can I run a gaming VM with GPU passthrough?? I dont need 4k just 1080p for some lighter games. I saw SR-IOV mentioned somewhere but im not sure if thats the same thing. My budget for a GPU is $50 maybe $60 max. Is this possible or am I dreaming haha
Thanks everyone!!
learning on $5 VPS and prayers
uma
Member
99.99% or bust
- Joined:
- Jun 2024
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- 324
- From:
- Dublin, IE
I saw SR-IOV mentioned somewhere but im not sure if thats the same thing
SR-IOV and full passthrough are different beasts. SR-IOV splits one GPU into multiple virtual functions. Good for VDI, bad for gaming. : you will see frame time spikes that make games unplayable. Full passthrough dedicates the entire card to one VM. That is what you want for 1080p gaming. At $50-60 you are hunting used enterprise cards. Watch the power draw. My status page for my home lab shows a
75W TDP card pulling 89W at the wall. Alert fatigue is real; set thresholds before you buy.
436 days. reboot is surrender.
pieter_rtm
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- Joined:
- Jul 2024
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- 195
- From:
- Rotterdam, NL
SR-IOV: AMD FirePro S7150x2, ~$45 used. 265W TDP. Split into 16 VFs. Gaming performance: poor. As said, frame pacing issues.
Full passthrough options under $60:
- AMD Radeon Pro WX 4100: 50W TDP, 4GB, fits single slot
- NVIDIA Quadro P400: 30W TDP, 2GB, avoid for gaming (too slow)
Specs that matter for passthrough:
- UEFI GOP support (required)
- FLR reset capability (saves headaches)
- Single slot if your dedi has no extra space
OVHcloud stocks WX 4100s at €55 — https://www.ovhcloud.com. We have sold 200+ for exactly this use case. Zero complaints that were not cable-related.
Containers before it was cool
