Yeah that GPU passthrough sounds pretty awesome. As for the environment reload solution, your solution sounds like the best one for most people, and probably t

Yeah that GPU passthrough sounds pretty awesome. As for the environment reload solution, your solution sounds like the best one for most people, and probably the best one for me in practice, to be honest. But there is some value the scripted solution serves which snapshots cannot. Updates to the snapshots require some planning. If a wacky software is tried and uninstalled, it is no longer safe to run updates to the snapshot until implementing another refresh. My scripting solution is just a code mod and git push and I can freely test wacky software and update my configuration in any order I like. I guess you could say image snapshots have an accumulation cost. A refresh is not a refresh to new but a refresh to old on a certain date. When I have a failure, I want to isolate issues as soon as possible. Determining whether it's a hardware issue or software issue can cost a lot of time and distraction. The fastest and surest way I know to do this is with an OS reinstall from the distributed source (Original Windows ISO). Image snapshots only theoretically isolate from system changes made since original OS install, and that level of isolation is getting harder to confirm as software deliveries get more common. These probably qualify as edge cases, but edge cases are most of what this is about. Edge cases are notorious for undermining production deadlines in an environment not prepared for them. A funny thing about that is they are also one of the hardest for people to admit or understand. Telling a non-technical client the job won't be done in time because of a software bug carries a burden of understanding hard to put into words. Of course, studios are prepared. But freelancers are generally not. A particular pain point with GPU rendering has been depending depending on driver/hardware/OS compatibility which has different needs than the priorities of gamers. That is changing, thankfully. But, the value of isolating software issues from the hardware is big to me. I juggle hard drives like nobody's business as it is, so I'm not opposed to that. And while it's nice, source control might be overkill for something I might not even need for months on end.