AMD Ryzen 2 PCI Passthrough with OVMF+VFIO and libvirt on Ubuntu 18.04 to Windows 10
Information for getting PCI passthrough working between Ubuntu 18.04 and Windows 10 using OVMF, VFIO, and Libvirt
Unable to tolerate the significant performance losses I was seeing on my aging i5-2500 desktop, I recently elected to upgrade my desktop to something a bit more powerful that would enable me to work faster and get more done.
While planning out this process, I stumbled up this article from mid 2017 detailing the process of getting GPU passthrough working on Fedora 26 with Ryzen.
Exhausted by the constant performance losses incurred by Spectre and Meltdown I was experiencing on my old i5-2500, and wanting to capitalize on the cost-per-core benefit Ryzen 2 offered, I decided to take the plunge into GPU passthrough and to see if it would be a viable long term solution for me, and my have I been pleased.
This write up details my experiences getting PCI passthrough working through Ubuntu 18.04 to Windows 10 using OVMF+VFIO and libvirt. While this document shouldn’t be considered a comprehensive guide, it will cover what I needed to do to get this working (mainly so I can set it back up again if I ever need to), while also covering a few tips and tricks I’ve learned along the way.