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?
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?