Steam streaming from a virtual machine?

[mooo]

Has anyone tried this setup yet?

I'm thinking of building a gaming Windows VM on a VMware ESX headless server and I'm hoping that I can use VT-d passthrough to assign a GPU to the VM and stream the output to a Mac.

The reason for this madness is that my ESX server is currently the most powerful machine in the house and I would like to be able to stream to my older 2009-2010ish Macbook Pro for gameplay.

That way I get the best of both worlds (for me). Windows games etc played on a Mac. This way I also get to avoid having to upgrade any more equipment for the near future.

Thanks.

[eric]

It doesn't "say", but I tried and it does not work. If you select an onboard device for passthrough in 5.1, it is de-selected upon the required reboot. 5.5 allows the selection and they persist after reboot, but a VM that is given one of these devices will not boot and returns an error like the device is in use.

The differing behavior between 5.1 and 5.5 leads me to believe VMware may intend for this to work eventually. If I spent some time on it, I might be able to figure out how to get 5.5 to work. 5.5 has no RAM limits, so it would be nice. I don't know if it's the order in which modules are loaded, or if the limitation is inherent to the kernel without some serious digging.

I will be testing an Intel onboard GPU once I can afford the VTD capable i5 for the mini itx board in my kids steambox. You could certainly use 5.0, the RAM limit is 32G - are you really bumping up against that?

[mooo]

Not bumping against the 32GB limit. Heck, I only have 16GB in that box.

Have you tried the 6.0 beta? Right now I'm on 5.5 U1.

[eric]

I DL'd it, haven't had time to play yet.....

[x-Timmey-x d-.-b]

Hello,

i have also some problems with gpu passthrough
Maybe someone can help me

My system:
AsRock Z97E-ITX/AC
Intel Xeon E3-1245v3
16GB Kingston DDR3 RAM
MSI R9 290 4GB OC
Samsung 256GB SSD and two 3,5" SATA drives

I installed ESXi 5.5 (costumize iso with SATA and NIC support)

Later i create a new VM with
8 vCPU cores 1 socket
4GB RAM
60GB HDD
and the PCI devices (ATI audio, ATI R9 290 Hawai graphic card)
I installed Win8.1 Pro and installed the drivers step by step
1. Bios Setting: Only PCI graphic adapter is selected, multigpu is disabled.
2. I haven't disabled integrated audio.
3. I'm installing VMware tools before Catalyst.
4. I have monitor connected with my passthrough VGA card.
But my R9 290 is not working code43 in the windows control panel and the monitor get no signal.

Any solutions?
Is it possible to stream the VM over the internal network to an other PC/Mac. The PC/Mac connected via VMWare Fusion, VMWare Workstation to the ESXi or alternativ with RDP RemoteFX or Splashtop.
I didnt want any monitor on the ESXi hypervisior. It will stand in the future in an other room.

I write in the vmware community too
https://communities.vmware.com/thread/461404?start=15&tstart=0

[UnReal-4-Life]

well they are doing it on the shield portable and i can strream it to the same devise now to plus the steam machine lots to choose from now.nothing works better then the steam machine but they need to catch up with the sheild for the online stream they got it going on.