[merb]

Basically you need relativly new hardware. IOMMU is a must. (for intel)

Here is a guide from some other user: https://github.com/saveriomiroddi/vga-passthrough was really helpful but I needed to give up since my mainboard was too stupid and my graphic card didn't worked as I wanted. I could install the OS but it bootlooped after installing any driver.

I used an asus b350-m mainboard with a AMD Ryzen 5 1500x + a radeon r9 280 (thaiti based basically the same as an hd7970) and it didn't worked since my mainboard only had one pci express 16x which meant that the "better" card needed to be used for the main os. You can use the first slot card for the os but it might not always work (hardly hardware dependant). Having a good mainboard is way more important for it to work.

[willtim]

This is a neat solution, but why is OVMF required (according to the guide)?

[merb]

well you just need an efi firmware and I guess ovmf is the only one that the guy knew of (I actually do not now of any other aswell). if you boot qemu without any firmware it would emulate a real mode device which probably make it impossible to access the device correctly. (not verified or tested, since my rig never worked). but you can install OVMF on any new linux distribution. and you probably don't need to patch it (at least on ubuntu 17.10, fedora 27+, arch linux...)

Edit: Arch wiki (the best) writes something about it: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVM...

> OVMF is an open-source UEFI firmware for QEMU virtual machines. While it's possible to use SeaBIOS to get similar results to an actual PCI passthough, the setup process is different and it is generally preferable to use the EFI method if your hardware supports it.

[lreeves]

OVMF is what QEMU uses for it's virtual guest UEFI to facilitate PCI passthrough, you don't have to flash your physical motherboard or anything.