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Using Vmware, and passthrough for the videocard you can achieve this with Linux as the host and Windows as the guest. Not sure if it's possible with OSX. What

by stuaxo 10y ago

Using Vmware, and passthrough for the videocard you can achieve this with Linux as the host and Windows as the guest. Not sure if it's possible with OSX. What we really need are video drivers for OSX, for virtualbox and/or other virtualisation solutons, so OSX as a guest can work really well.

creshal 10y ago
And you can't easily switch between several virtualized machines like that. Windows will bluescreen if you remove a graphics card while in use, and I'm not sure OSX/Linux guests will fare better. Passthrough only really works reliably if you only have one guest active at a time and never try to use the graphics card from the host.
chrisper 10y ago
OS X has official Nvidia drivers.
aruggirello 10y ago
VGA passthrough is also possible with KVM. I wonder if Oracle has any plans to add it to VirtualBox? It seems they have made room for KVM support, so in theory they could. I have seen all OSX versions from Leopard to El Capitan successfully running as a VB guest, but the graphics support has always been bad, since there are no Guest Additions for OSX (BTW this also means no bidirectional clipboard, drag & drop of files, etc..)
- mastax 10y ago
  There's some support: https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#pcipassthrough https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#pcipassthrough
snuxoll 10y ago
Suprisingly OS X actually has decent support for a wide array of video cards out of the box, all of the AMD GCN 1.0 (7000 series and the R7/R9 2XXX rebrands of them) work out of the box as does the R9 290X/390X, along with a bunch of the older HD4000-HD6000 cards. NVidia provides native drivers for all their cards online, and if you're using an Intel GPU that was ever in a Mac it has support as well. Of course, it's in violation of the macOS EULA to run it on non-Apple hardware in the first place, but you'd be surprised just how much hardware it supports.
wila 10y ago
VMware only has passthrough support for ESXi/vSphere. Not for VMware workstation or VMware Player. So unfortunately not with Linux as a host. For the record, VMware Fusion also does not support PCIe passthrough.

by stuaxo 10y ago

creshal 10y ago

And you can't easily switch between several virtualized machines like that. Windows will bluescreen if you remove a graphics card while in use, and I'm not sure OSX/Linux guests will fare better. Passthrough only really works reliably if you only have one guest active at a time and never try to use the graphics card from the host.

chrisper 10y ago

OS X has official Nvidia drivers.

aruggirello 10y ago

VGA passthrough is also possible with KVM. I wonder if Oracle has any plans to add it to VirtualBox? It seems they have made room for KVM support, so in theory they could. I have seen all OSX versions from Leopard to El Capitan successfully running as a VB guest, but the graphics support has always been bad, since there are no Guest Additions for OSX (BTW this also means no bidirectional clipboard, drag & drop of files, etc..)

mastax 10y ago
There's some support: https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#pcipassthrough https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#pcipassthrough

snuxoll 10y ago

Suprisingly OS X actually has decent support for a wide array of video cards out of the box, all of the AMD GCN 1.0 (7000 series and the R7/R9 2XXX rebrands of them) work out of the box as does the R9 290X/390X, along with a bunch of the older HD4000-HD6000 cards. NVidia provides native drivers for all their cards online, and if you're using an Intel GPU that was ever in a Mac it has support as well. Of course, it's in violation of the macOS EULA to run it on non-Apple hardware in the first place, but you'd be surprised just how much hardware it supports.

wila 10y ago

VMware only has passthrough support for ESXi/vSphere. Not for VMware workstation or VMware Player. So unfortunately not with Linux as a host. For the record, VMware Fusion also does not support PCIe passthrough.