3 Gamers 1 PC?

[Harry]

Hi,

I’m hosting a lan for me and my friends in August however we’re down 2/3 computers.

After watching LinusTrchTips ‘7 gamers 1 CPU’ I’m very interested in doing this on a smaller scale (2 or 3 Players) - weee not looking for max settings crisis, more like stable Dota 2 and Garry’s mod.

I just have a couple questions for anyone with experience with this.

Can you do the same thing with Nvidia Graphics cards?

Also do I need to upgrade? I have a decent budget if so.

Specs:

Intel Skylake i7 6700k 4.ghz
RAM: 16GB
ASU’s z170-a
GTX 1080
Couple of SSDs/Hard drives

Thanks for any help in advance

[tacoshy]

Well it is only possible by emulating 3 computers on 1 computer through VM's. However the VM's are going to be RAM hungry and will have its touble to seperatly bring the GPU to render 3 games apart from each other.
Even thos that those are not some msot demanding games you'll have to read into VM's and will proberly have some performance issues as running VM's is core and RAM hugnry and you not have the best setup to start with for that.

[Omega]

If I remember right Linus did some form of GPU passthrough to get this working.

Nvidia is evil and if their drivers detect they are running in a VM they will refused to work correctly. So unless you are "hacker man" AMD would be the best option.

Also you will need to be experienced with either Linux or Windows Server to set this up.

Every player will need his own GPU. And you would need 64gb or 128gb of RAM combined with some crazy 10+ core CPU.


So just forget this, it's not feasible.

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

No expert on this, and going give the best logic I can recommend AFAIK.

1. I wouldn't recommend doing more than 2, quad core CPU, HT only help so much, best to just do 2, not 3.

2. You're going to want a little more RAM, so pop like 8GB / 16GB more, whatever you want, so you won't run into issues, as you be splitting RAM, and might be good idea to have more sticks working across, instead of just two sticks in this case.

3. Grab a 2nd GPU, you thank yourself, doesn't need be beef of a monster at all, can be a GTX 1050 Ti, and you're all set for anything.

4. At this point you're half way to building a 2nd PC, which you can grab cheap CPU, motherboard, PSU, lend one of your spare SSD/HDD, with a case, and you're done. So you probably should have realized this, the project was silly to begin with, and would of been better building a 2nd PC. But You can still follow steps 1, 2, and 3, if you really just want to do this for the ♥♥♥♥♥ and giggles.

[Arya]

Originally posted by DivineDuck:

Also do I need to upgrade? I have a decent budget if so.

Thanks for any help in advance

At this point there's nothing you can upgrade. You're at the top of the tech-tree, there's nothing currently on the market worth upgrading to.

Your CPU is still one of the very best money can buy. Intel K-Series last a very, very long time before losing performance, especially the i7s. Your CPU will still be a top performer five years from now. An i7 8700K would be a tiny perfromance increase.

Your GPU is the second-best on the market, only the GTX1080Ti performs better. But since the 1080 can max-out virtually any game ever made at 100+ FPS at 1440P resolution, there's no point spending $700+ on a Ti. You're already at peak performance.

16GB of RAM is more than enough, and extra RAM wouldn't give any performance benefit - your system wouldn't actually use it. So there's no point adding more.

And since you already have an SSD, there's no point fitting another one. You're already at peak loading performance.

[tacoshy]

Originally posted by Dr.Shadowds 🐉:

No expert on this, and going give the best logic I can recommend AFAIK.

2. You're going to want a little more RAM, so pop like 8GB / 16GB more, whatever you want, so you won't run into issues, as you be splitting RAM, and might be good idea to have more sticks working across, instead of just two sticks in this case..

more sticks doesnt help as it is a dual channel paltform and not a quad channel paltform that would be needed for best performance in VM's.Capacity however does.

But the point you pointed out is corrected. Upgrading this PC to do VM's would be pretty much a new PC.


Imo the cheapestw ay would to buy a PSU with 2x MB and 2x CPU cable support and run with that 2x Ryzen 2200G APU's on it with each 8GB RAM. you dont even need a case if you know what you do and are carefull and could run both with a small HDD or SSD.

However IMO planning a LAN with 3 guys where only 1 person has a PC seems a bit strange. Also you need a motherboard that has at least 6 slots for mosue and keyboard. USB hubs not always work for that.

Originally posted by Wolfie:

Originally posted by DivineDuck:

Also do I need to upgrade? I have a decent budget if so.

Thanks for any help in advance

At this point there's nothing you can upgrade. You're at the top of the tech-tree, there's nothing currently on the market worth upgrading to.

Your CPU is still one of the very best money can buy. Intel K-Series last a very, very long time before losing performance, especially the i7s. Your CPU will still be a top performer five years from now. An i7 8700K would be a tiny perfromance increase.

Your GPU is the second-best on the market, only the GTX1080Ti performs better. But since the 1080 can max-out virtually any game ever made at 100+ FPS at 1440P resolution, there's no point spending $700+ on a Ti. You're already at peak performance.

16GB of RAM is more than enough, and extra RAM wouldn't give any performance benefit - your system wouldn't actually use it. So there's no point adding more.

And since you already have an SSD, there's no point fitting another one. You're already at peak loading performance.

Wolfie I think the original question is, if he needs to upgrade to run 2 additional VM's to run that 3 gamers on 1 PC setup. Which he does. Basically a X299 Motherboard with at least a 7800X CPU, 4x8GB RAM for quad channel and simply 16GB is not enough to run multiple VM's and 2 more GPU's for the 3 different monirots which need to work indepently...

[Monk]

Unless you REALLY like your mates, it simply isn't worth it, hell, it would be cheaper to buy 2 basic extra pcs running 1050ti's than the cost of making your system viable, you'd need more cores for one, atleast 2 per VM, ideally more, RAM would be very tight on 16GB so probably need to go to 32GB, so, to house the new CPU you'll need to change platform, so either an 8700k minimum on z370, x299 7800x from intel or a ryzen 7 1700, perhaps a TR 1920x 12 core or the i9 7900/7920x, the better of those options, x299 or TR, don't expect much change out of 1000, then you'll want extra GPU's with the crazy inflated prices, that'll be another 500-1000.
Naturally with such high power draw you'll want a 1000w+ PSU so set aside another 2-300.
Hear will be an issue in such a rig, as will size, so you will likely need a new case and fans, so allow an extra 2-300 there.
I mean once your done, you'll have a monster, but buying a pair of cheap pcs for 500ish bucks each would be better value, or, get them to fix their systems.