[vfio-users] Laptop Feasibility Query - Dell XPS 15 9550

[Ethan Schoonover]

Alex, thanks. That's very useful feedback. I prefer 13" laptops in general
so unless this is a probable home-run on passthrough, I'll likely skip it
and stick with building a desktop system (it's just for running adobe apps
in a vm).

On Sat, Oct 10, 2015 at 9:56 AM Alex Williamson <alex.williamson at redhat.com>
wrote:

> On Sat, 2015-10-10 at 16:13 +0000, Ethan Schoonover wrote:
> > I've been meaning to build or buy a gpu passthrough capable system for a
> > while and would like to get some advice on whether the new Dell XPS-15
> > (9550) laptop is likely to support this.
> >
> > The specs are here: http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-15-9550-laptop/pd .
> > Relevantly, the new XPS-15 comes with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M which
> I'd
> > be using as the passthrough GPU for a windows VM running on an Arch host
> > (which would thus be using Intel graphics). Additionally, it's a skylake
> > mobile cpu and according to the Intel site does have vt-d support.
> >
> > I've reviewed the spreadsheet here:
> >
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LnGpTrXalwGVNy0PWJDURhyxa3sgqkGXmvNCIvIMenk/edit#gid=2
> > and
> > find that there are some working configurations with mobile nvidia GPUs,
> so
> > I'm assuming that this is in the realm of possibility.
> >
> > I know it's impossible to say without hardware in hand, but do you think
> > it's likely that the new Dell unit will (potentially) support my desired
> > GPU passthrough? Are there any obvious show stoppers you can imagine?
> >
> > I know this is a broad, vfio-noob type question. I do appreciate any
> advice!
>
> Possible, yes.  Likely, no.  If you look carefully at the raw data in
> the spreadsheet, there are many more failures with laptops than there
> are successes.  If you would get the laptop anyway and want to try this
> on it, great, but if getting this working is a requirement for that to
> be a good laptop choice for you, your chances of success are slim.
> Thanks,
>
> Alex
>
>
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