Mac – Which graphics cards can VirtualBox emulate

display-drivergraphics cardvirtual machinevirtualbox

I'm trying to install various OSs on virtual machines. Oracle VirtualBox has some limited options about the VM's graphics, and I can't choose which graphics card to emulate. When installing an OS on a VM, it's autodetected as Standard VGA. I can manually make the OS use the generic SVGA driver, which works, but still has rather limited modes: 1024×768 with up to 256 colours and 800×600 with up to 16k colours. But which graphic adapter does it actually emulate?

You can choose to give it up to 128MB memory whereas the SVGA uses more like 1MB (unless you use a ridiculously big virtual virtual display or loads of virtual monitors). I could try to guess which driver to use but the choice is vast – several makes and loads of models each.

So… can I somehow choose which graphics card to emulate? Or if not, which one does it emulate (or is compatible with), and therefore which driver can I use, better than SVGA?

EDIT

I'm trying to run Windows 98 on the virtual machine. It auto-detects it as VGA but allows me to override it by choosing among hundreds of drivers. The best generic one is SVGA but that's not good enough. I know that newer systems, Linux or Windows, can auto-detect it and make a good use of it.

Best Answer

You cannot chose the video card that is emulated in VirtualBox. It does not emulate any physical card. As per the official VirtualBox documentation:

Graphics. The Oracle VM VirtualBox graphics device, sometimes referred to as a VGA device, is not based on any physical counterpart. This is unlike nearly all other emulated devices. It is a simple, synthetic device which provides compatibility with standard VGA and several extended registers used by the VESA BIOS Extensions (VBE).

Related Question