VGA Passthrough

VGA Passthrough

Requirements

For intel:

CPU that supports Vt-d and Vt-x
Motherboard that supports Vt-d
Vt-d and Vt-x must be enabled in BIOS or UEFI

For AMD

CPU that supports IOMMU and VMX
Motherboard that supports IOMMU
IOMMU and VMX must be enabled in BIOS or UEFI

Video Card

Most Radeon HD cards support vga passthrough
Only the Quatro Nvidia cards support vga passthrough
Some Intel graphics work with vga passthrough

Software Requirements

XEN and KVM both support VGA passthrough, but XEN apparently offers much better performance

Examples

Example XEN passthrough config

# nut sure if really needed
kernel="/usr/lib/xen-default/boot/hvmloader"

builder = "hvm"
name = "win7x64-hvm"

# RAM size in MB
memory = "4096"

# number CPU cores
vcpus = 2

vif = ['type=ioemu']

# boot from cd and hdd
disk = ['phy:/dev/virtual-machines/win7x64,hda,w','file:/home/user/images/WIN_7_PROFESSIONAL.iso,hdc:cdrom,r']
boot="dc"

# boot from hdd
#disk = ['phy:/dev/virtual-machines/win7x64,hda,w']
#boot="c" 

# enable remote vnc access until video card driver is installed
vnc = 1 

acpi=1
sdl=0
serial='pty'

# list your pci devices (HD7950,HD7950,USB)
pci=['01:00.0','01:00.1','00:1a.0']

Sound and USB

Since the physical video output of the passed video card is used there will be no SDL/VNC screen this means that a sound card must also be passed for the vm to have sound
For that same reason as above you will want to pass one USB controller for input

Table of Contents

VGA Passthrough

Requirements

For intel:

For AMD

Video Card

Software Requirements

Examples

Sound and USB

Sources