Intel A380 GPU, no R-BAR, VMWare passthrough for Plex?

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Asvod

New Member
Oct 5, 2020
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I have an older Intel Xeon 1240v3 on a SuperMicro X10SL7-F running VMWare 7, with Plex running in a Windows VM. It's been rock-solid for about 8 years but can't handle 4K video at all and struggles with more than one 1080p video. Intel's A380 GPU is mediocre as a 3D accelerator, but it does have the newest implementation of Quicksync, which is a great hardware AV codec, and it's only $140, is low-power, and doesn't have NVidia's restrictions on simultaneous number of decodes, like their consumer and low-end Quadros. I don't care about 3D performance, but would love to put one in pass-through and let Plex use it for hardware decodes.

However, Intel lists that "Above 4G Decoding" and "Resiseable BAR" are requirements for the card to work (4G Decoding is a prerequisite for ReBAR). My motherboard does not support ReBar, and VMWare does not allow above 4G decoding to work via passthrough, so both of those are no-goes.However, reviews online (Intel Arc A380 Review) seem to indicate the card takes a performance hit without these, but it does work. Since I'm not planning to use it for gaming, I don't care about that as long as it doesn't impact the AV codec as much, but I've seen no reviews testing that functionality with and without R-Bar.

Has anyone here used this card in passthrough with VMWare? Any experience that you can share, please?
 

AlphaG

Active Member
Jun 8, 2017
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I have a similar setup and the Arc GPU in hand. Planning on plugging it in this weekend or next week to see if it will work.
 
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Asvod

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Oct 5, 2020
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Cool! I'm eager to hear about your experience. Can you post your HW and SW specs?
 

AlphaG

Active Member
Jun 8, 2017
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Supermicro H12SSL-CT in a 24 bay SM chassis, Epyc Milan 7313 16-core, ESXI 7 with windows VM for Plex and passed through nVidia P2000. Unraid is running in another VM for data storage.
 

Wasmachineman_NL

Wittgenstein the Supercomputer FTW!
Aug 7, 2019
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ReBAR and 4G Decoding are only for the PCIe address space, it's not related to PCIe passthrough.

Or at least that's the theory.