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virt:vgapassthrough

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

Sources

virt/vgapassthrough.txt · Last modified: 2014/03/22 09:35 by tschulz