Intel® Ethernet 700/800 Series
Windows Performance Tuning Guide
PCI Express (PCIe) Passthrough
The PCIe passthrough feature is commonly used in virtualization setups to assign dedicated hardware to virtual machines (VMs). This can be for improved performance or to run applications that require direct access to specific hardware.
To setup PCIe passthrough in Windows:
- Ensure that the hardware supports IOMMU (Input/Output Memory Management Unit), Intel® VT-d, or Intel® AMD-Vi (AMD) virtualization technology.
- Enable virtualization support (Intel® VT-x or Intel® AMD-V) in server BIOS/UEFI settings.
- Install hypervisor on Windows host system.
- Create virtual machine (VM) in hypervisor and allocate resources (CPU, RAM, storage) to the VM.
- Identify the PCIe device to pass through, such as the network card or any other PCIe device, and associate it with the VM.
- Inside the VM, install the necessary drivers for the assigned PCIe device.