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).

In addition, Nvidia lists the following graphics adapters as "Multi-OS" capable: Quadro 6000, 5000, 4000, 2000. "Multi-OS" allows VGA passthrough to fully virtualized guests. Note: The Nvidia Quadro 600 is not supported.

User reported working adapters:

• Nvidia Quadro 2000, as secondary display adapter using Linux Mint 13 with Xen 4.1.2 hypervisor and Nvidia driver release 305.93 for Windows 7

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 .

Remember to install the graphics drivers in the DomU first, before expecting secondary passthrough to work.

Tested adapters by AMD:

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

User reported working adapters:

• ATI Radeon HD4550
• ATI Radeon HD4770 on Fedora 12, WinXP and Win7
• ATI Radeon HD4890 on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Xen 4.2.1, Win Vista x64 (but this card do not support Function Level Reset)
• ATI Radeon HD5750, using the Catalyst 10-9 driver on Win7 32bit
• ATI Radeon HD5770
• ATI Radeon HD5850
• ATI Radeon HD6770 (tested with pciback under WinXP, xen 4.1.2 and 4.1.3)
• ATI Radeon HD6850 under WinXP and Win7
• ATI Radeon HD 6970 under Win7 64bit
• AMD Radeon HD6950 under Win7 64 bit
• AMD Radeon HD7970 under Win7
• AMD Radeon HD7950 under Win7 64bit (Catalyst 12.10), Arch Linux 64bit (Catalyst 12.11) using XEN 4.2 (pciback)
• AMD Radeon HD6870 under Win7 64bit using Xen 4.2 (only with xl tools)

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.

User reported _NOT_ working adapters:

• ATI Radeon x1950 (Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Xen 4.2.1, Win Vista x64)

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.