Can I use my Nvidia graphics card in the Windows guest OS?

R

RanYakir

Bit poster
Hello,
I am running a Windows geust OS from Parallels on Mac. I have a thrd party windows application that runs OpenGL. This application runs on the built-in Parallels graphics adapter. However, not all the advanced OpenGL features (e.g. shaders) are supported.
Is there a way for the guest OS to recognize the Nvidia board on my Mac and be able to install Nvidia drivers?

Regards
Ran
 
Thanks for the sad news...
Is there a plan to allow access to the graphics card in the future? Alternatively, is there a plan to support shaders in the Parallels graphics adapter?
 
If the same card is being used both on the Host and the Guest OS you can't give the Guest OS full access to it, the Guest is oblivious of the Host OS and the card drivers do not support the virtualization setup, so a special kind of drivers has to be made that support this setup, hence you have the Parallels Graphic Adapter.

These drivers have been evolving and supporting more and more features.

The only product that allows direct access to a graphics card is Parallels Workstation Extreme: http://www.parallels.com/products/extreme/
This is a very different product (for PC) and technology, geared at workstations you can assign graphic cards to independent Guests (obviously requires having more than one graphic card, as at least one has to run on the host). It's geared at specific workstations, requires specific Xeon processors, and specific graphics cards.
Uses VT-d to access the graphics adapter (not all CPUs have this). This is the technology that allows the direct access of a virtual machine to a graphics adapter or network card, this not something that can be implemented via software. the CPU has to support it:
http://software.intel.com/en-us/blo...tel-virtualization-technology-for-directed-io
 
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Specimen said:
If the same card is being used both on the Host and the Guest OS you can't give the Guest OS full access to it, the Guest is oblivious of the Host OS and the card drivers do not support the virtualization setup, so a special kind of drivers has to be made that support this setup, hence you have the Parallels Graphic Adapter.
Click to expand...
I am planning to buy the new Mac Pro End-2013 with two graphics card.
I use many Boinc app that do calculation on Graphics Cards.
Sadly most app that use Graphic Card are Windows Only.
Could I keep one card for Windows Guest OS and one for the Mac Host OS ?

Thank you
 
FrancoB said:
I am planning to buy the new Mac Pro End-2013 with two graphics card.
I use many Boinc app that do calculation on Graphics Cards.
Sadly most app that use Graphic Card are Windows Only.
Could I keep one card for Windows Guest OS and one for the Mac Host OS ?

Thank you
Click to expand...

No, there is no such possibility right now. It would have to use VT-d, please read my VT-d explanation, PDM 9 doesn't have VT-d support.
 
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