eGPU not being utilised within VMware

[ShaneMeck]

I have an eGPU that's not being recognised within VMware Fusion using an existing Boot Camp partition. It's recognised in both macOS and Boot Camp (non-VM ). I have "Prefer External GPU" in VMware settings checked, and "Prefer eGPU" checked under Get Info for VMware's mac app. The eGPU never gets utilized within VMware, nor does it appear in Device Manager.

Did I miss something?

I went with VMware in the first place because I read that eGPUs are supported.

My System info:

MacBook Pro 2.3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7

eGPU: AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB

Mantiz Saturn Pro enclosure via Thunderbolt 3

[ShaneMeck]

I tried enabling IOMMU, but it causes the VM to hang on startup. With IOMMU enabled, it never gets past the Windows logo.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Fusion uses the eGPU for it's rendering, but it remains virtualized.  It does not get exposed to the guest as a device.  Don't install or use GPU specific utilities inside the guest (e.g. AMD drivers)

You'll notice it with substantially improved framerates if you run benchmarks inside the guest.

[ShaneMeck]

Thanks for the help, ColoradoMarmot. I'm not sure what it means for the eGPU to be used but remain virtualized. The game I'm trying to run within Fusion is definitely not using the eGPU, and it has a blazing 1 fps with the lowest quality settings. Am I just out of luck?

Edit: I also tried adding these settings to the VMX, but it didn't make any difference.

[ColoradoMarmot]

If it's an apple supported video card, in a supported enclosure, and you have the monitor where fusion runs plugged in to the enclosure (not the mac), it should just work if you turn on eGPU support in Fusion (I don't have an intel machine to check anymore).  You should have to do anything special in either windows 10 or the mac host.

I went from unplayable to nicely playable when mine activated, but that wasn't on a boot camp partition.  Maybe that's the issue?  Have you tried making a regular VM?  That could easily be it if you've installed AMD tools directly in the guest.

BTW what machine and host OS is that?  If it's one of the older ones, it's going to be anywhere from marginal to impractical to run games in VM's on it.

Here's the general rules of thumb for maximum guest config:

For Big Sur and earlier: no more than N-1 (in your case N=4) cores to any individual guest.  Leave at least 2GB free for the host (4GB recommended after Mojave).

For Monterey and Ventura: no more than N-2 cores to any individual guest.  Leave at least 4GB free for the host.

If you exceed those values, or have other applications running on the host you could starve it for resources.

[ShaneMeck]

It's Ventura on a 2020 Macbook Pro 2.3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 with 32GB of RAM. Video card and enclosure are supported— they work perfectly in macOS and Windows when I run Boot Camp normally without VMware.

I haven't tried making a regular VM, since it seems redundant if I already have a Boot Camp partition. I'll try it though.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Yeah, that machine should be fine with only CPUs to the guest.  Maybe the game needs more than 2 to work well?  You could try moving up to 3 or 4, but Ventura really wants to own two cores for itself.

Boot camp is the wild card, please let me know if that turns out to be it.  I don't have the exact stats (posted the in an old thread if you want to dig), but I remember more than doubling my framerate.  it still wasn't enough to run Dragon Age Inquisition at a decent resolution, but I could run Origins pretty well.

[ShaneMeck]

I tried a regular VM and performance was the same as it was with the Boot Camp partition. I still see no eGPU utilisation. In both cases it's set to 4 cores and 8GB.

Edit: I created the VM by importing my Boot Camp drive, could that be the issue?

[ColoradoMarmot]

4 cores is definitely too many for that machine.  Absolutely no more than 3, and 2 would be better.

Importing from boot camp, still virtualizes boot camp install.  You'll need to build a whole new one from the original windows install media as a standalone guest.

[ShaneMeck · Accepted solution]

SOLVED. I didn't have VMware Tools installed! Now I see mksSandbox using the eGPU and the game runs with acceptable frame rates.

Going through our thread, I see you wrote "if you've installed AMD tools directly in the guest" but I didn't know what that was ... is AMD tools something else, or did you mean VMware Tools?

Thanks again your assistance, it would've taken me much longer to find the solution without your help!

[ColoradoMarmot]

Of all the obvious things I didn't think of, that's a nice catch!

Some people have tried to install the actual AMD drivers or control panel inside the VM and get it connect to the eGPU - that won't work because the actual hardware isn't exposed to the guest.