MAC: Renderslave in virtual Machine with GPU pass-through

[namshubffm]

Good Morning Octanians,

i am wondering, if anybody here has experience in using a virtual machine with GPU pass-through as a render slave on a Mac.
As NVIDIA and Apple probably never return to a state of peace and with the ongoing lack of drivers for Mojave or Catalina, i am looking for alternative ways to add an RTX card to my setup - without having the requirement to keep my Windows Systems running. Maybe AMD cards will be a proper option when Big Navi comes around, but for now the NVIDIA options are simply more attractive to me.

My primary system is a Macbook Pro 16" - i9 2,3gz - Radeon Pro 5500M.
With Octane X and Metal support around the corner, which would solve at least any view port issues on the main system, i am considering an additional 2080 in an external enclosure and using direct pass-through to a Windows Virtual Machine, in vmware fusion, to use it as directly-connected slave. (note: vmware fusion has AFAIK no official egpu support, however i saw some workarounds to make it accept removable devices as GPU - so at this point this setup idea is a wild guess to me)

I am aware that using a Intel NUC or any other micro build and just using it as normal slave, will be less problematic and probably having better performance.

Any thoughts? I tried the search function but i am either blind or this topic was indeed never discussed

Kind regards
nams

[bepeg4d]

Hi,
the easiest way is to install Win 10 via Bootcamp, then you can use an eGPU box with Nvidia inside, without custom scripts, and totally plug and play.
I don’t think that virtual machines can work with CUDA
I have done this to be able to work with my MacPro, while waiting for OctaneX.
Btw, OctaneX beta testing is just started:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=74511

ciao Beppe