Xen VGA Passthrough Tested Adapters

We only recently started collecting this information and rely on you to let us know how it works for you!

List of tested graphics adapters for Xen VGA Passthrough

Please send an email to xen-devel or xen-users with all the details about your VGA graphics passthru experience. If you are confident that your adaptor works, feel free to just add it to this page.

Please include the following details in the email:

• Xen version
• Dom0 kernel version, and if it's pvops or xenlinux based
• "lspci" output for the graphics card to get the PCI IDs and model information
• Did you passthru all the PCI IDs or just one?
• Was it primary or secondary graphics adapter?
• Motherboard vendor/model and BIOS version.
• Guest OS and driver version.
• How did it work.. did you have some issues?

Xen VGA graphics passthru has been tested to work with these graphics adapters:

Intel display adapters

Xen 4.0.0, OpenSuse 11.2 xenlinux 2.6.31.12-0.2 dom0 kernel. Dell Optiplex 755 desktop. 
Windows XP HVM guest, Dell provided Intel graphics driver. Primary adapter. Passthru for both PCI IDs. 

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82Q35 Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02) 
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation 82Q35 Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)

Nvidia display adapters

Note that Nvidia officially supports only Quadro FX 3800, 4800 and 5800 for graphics passthrough usage (they've tested and verified their binary drivers for these graphics cards in combination with graphics passthrough).

Xen 4.0.0-rc8, pvops xen/stable-2.6.32.x dom0 kernel. Asus P7P55D MB, BIOS 1207, Core i7 860 CPU. 
Linux HVM guest with nv driver. Primary adapter. Passthru for single/only PCI ID. hidden from dom0: xen-pciback.hide=(01:00.0) 

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G92 [GeForce 8800 GTS 512] (rev a2)

ATI/AMD display adapters

AMD sent patch enabling VGA passthrough on AMD/ATI Radeon/FirePro graphics adapters on 2010-10-07: http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2010-10/msg00284.html .

Tested adapters by AMD:

• Radeon 4850
• Radeon 4870
• FirePro V5700
• FirePro M5800

User reported working adapters:

• ATI HD4550
• Radeon 4770 on Fedora 12, WinXP and Win7
• ATI HD5750, using the Catalyst 10-9 driver on Win7 32bit
• ATI HD5850
• ATI HD6770 (tested with pciback under WinXP, xen 4.1.2 and 4.1.3)
• ATI HD6850 under WinXP and Win7
• ATI Radeon HD 6970 under Win7 64bit
• AMD HD7970 under Win7

There are certain user-reports that the Catalyst Control Center (ccc.exe) should be _not_ installed when installing the Catalyst Driver - for unknown reasons it may cause a BSOD. The GPU Driver itself works without problems when not installing CCC.

Xen 4.2-unstable changeset 25099, RedHat6.2 vmlinux-3.1.0-rc7 dom0 kernel. Intel WSM-EP, Integrated graphics. 
RedHat6.2 HVM guest Integrated graphics. Primary adapter. Passthru single PCI ID, hidden from dom0: xen-pciback.hide=(0b:01.0).  

0b:01.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc ES1000 (rev 02)

Xen 4.2 unstable changeset 25167 (Xen 4.1.2, 4.1.3, and many 4.2 changesets as well), Debian Wheezy, EFI grub, Kernel 3.3.2 (and 3.3.0), ATI Radeon HD 6870, with some difficulty installing the Catalyst drivers.

Matrox display adapters

Tested adapters: MGA G200e

Xen 4.2-unstable changeset 25099, RedHat6.2 vmlinux-3.1.0-rc7 dom0 kernel. Intel Romley-EP, Integrated graphics. 
Windows8 Beta HVM guest, RedHat6.2 HVM guest Integrated graphics. Primary adapter. Passthru single PCI ID, hidden from dom0: xen-pciback.hide=(0a:00.0). 

0a:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Graphics, Inc. MGA G200e [Pilot] ServerEngines (SEP1) (rev 04)

Links

See XenVGAPassthrough wiki page for more information about Xen VGA graphics passthru in general.