Re: GPU Passthrough on FreeBSD 14.3 (AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT and Windows 10 Pro)

On Thu, Sep 18, 2025 at 2:05 AM Jonathan Vasquez <jon@xyinn.org> wrote:
> Hey all,
> I've done some more testing and improved my post. I pretty much got a full blown gaming set up working. It has it's qwirks but definitely can play games on this VM now. I no longer use RDP at all. Since passthrough is working, I just plugged in my monitor directly into the GFX card. Once you start the bhyve VM, you will get video out at full power (- w/e performance lose we have due to running in a VM). But I'm not getting any lag or stuttering due to RDP/VNC stuff. Since I have a KVM, I was able to pass through my mobo's USB stuff to the VM which means the KVM allows me to use my keyboard/mouse in the VM, and I can even use Ethernet and sound as well since the KVM has a headphone jack. So with all of that, I have everything I need to play games on this VM with the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT. The nice thing is that things are just going to get better on FreeBSD from here :). Please check out the info on my page again and let me know if anyone has any questions.
>
> I'm sure that we will get improvements in the future for:
> - Resizable BAR support
> - Fixing any issues with slowness with some games (probably a byproduct of something else going on)
> - Any weird graphical/artifact issues in - some - circumstances. Although it seems when I do get graphical issues, it's only temporary and doesn't make the game completely unplayable.
>
> @Tomek CEDRO
>
> I'm not against getting this documentation into the handbook, but from my little work on getting some documentation updates into the handbook, there are specific guidelines that need to be followed with language used, structure, etc, and there are a lot of side things that I didn't describe in my document. All of this would probably need to be fully fleshed out and polished before something of this magnitude would be accepted as an official chapter or section in the handbook. Although I agree that it's very valuable information and a highly sought after use case I would think.. at least it was for me. I was thinking this technology would be out of reach for me for many many more years, but I'm happy that the day has finally come, and on my favorite OS, FreeBSD. Let's go!!

Congratz! :-) Nice to see you play Cyberpunk2077 and Witcher3 that are
from Poland where I live! Cyberpunk Not Dead! =)

Jonathan, I did not find detailed information about the monitors setup
for the host and the guest on your blog post:

https://xyinn.org/blog/freebsd/freebsd_bhyve_gpu_passthrough_amd

So you are using two GPUs on the host machine, on-board for the host,
and the PCI-E for the guest?

Is it possible to use both host and guest on the same GPU? I guess not
because BSD uses kernel driver and that cannot be unloaded and then
reloaded on the guest enter/exit and so KVM is necessary?

Another question is why this will not work for Intel and Nvidia GPUs?
I have onboard Intel and PCI-E RTX5070 from Nvidia :-P

You can add video about this setup on your YT channel :-)

Thanks for sharing the success story and hints on how to repeat! :-)

Tomek

ps/2: I really miss the good GPU/GFX support in bhyve, that is we
could reuse existing GPU and screen for the guest with no VNC, RDP, or
Passthrough+KVM :-P

-- 
CeDeROM, SQ7MHZ, http://www.tomek.cedro.info