Can Windows 8's Hyper-V use the full power of the host hardware?
Solution 1:
Hyper-V does not let you use the full power of the host hardware.
There is a performance hit and screen update problems that makes it unusable for games that rapidly update the screen. On the other hand it may work for encoding videos or turnbased games. I personally used it to play the city builder Zeus, and it seems to work find.
However, by physically installing a video adapter card in the server running Hyper-V 2008 R2 SP1 this issue is solved. A new feature called RemoteFX provides graphical processing unit (GPU) accelerated video within a virtual machine. It delivers a rich user experience for session-based and virtual desktops to a broad range of client devices.
From http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/hh278966.aspx
The raw benchmarks give the following result
Root partition:4541
Guest partition:3299
But these folks note that
the videos are perciptibly jerky whereas on the root partition, they are fluid.
From http://community.futuremark.com/forum/showthread.php?169530-Maximising-3DMark11-score-on-a-Hyper-V-VM&highlight
Solution 2:
It should be noted first off that Hyper-V
was being developed solely for server virtualization
and therefore is mainly for developers or IT admins looking to test out multiple environments.
However, it appears that there are advances in this especially with the use of RemoteFX.
Microsoft introduced RemoteFX, an enhanced graphical capability which enabled virtual desktops, running Windows 7 SP1, to harness the power of physical graphics cards, GPUs, installed in the Hyper-V hosts.
The choke hold on this situation is going to be with two major issues:
- Hyper-V is "emulating" the GPU
- The Guest OS is limited by it's own technology
Emulation issues
Since the Host OS is emulating the devices onto the Guest OS, there are lots of issues to be found. This "Software GPU" are too general for 3d games to be working properly.
Guest OS Limitations
Running Call of Duty Black Ops 2 on a Windows 95 machine isn't possible. You'll run into the same issues with comparability within each OS that you virtualize.
Solution 3:
Depending on the older games. I was able to virtualize a few servers for Diablo II LOD. Each instance (4 total) ran around 20-40 frames per second. Definitely workable. However, it will greatly depend on the hardware you're using and the available resources.
Solution 4:
I haven't tried it, but the closest you'll most likely get is RemoteFX
Before looking it up I'd have told you that Windows 8 didn't support RemoteFX anyway, but it seems that I'm wrong and it does.
However, at best this would let your guest OS use your current GPU, and chances are pretty bad that Windows 9x etc. will support your GPU if your GPU is new enough to be supported by RemoteFX. A quick check of Nvidia.com only shows drivers for their most recent cards going back as far as Windows XP, and that's all.