QEMU/Devices/Video cards

Video/Graphic cards can be added to QEMU through the -vga <model> argument.

How to add a video card

You can add a video card with the following:

qemu-system-(arch) -vga <model>

Devices

i386/x86_64

Model	Name	Bus	Description	Minimum OS
std	Standard VGA	ISA/PCI	Virtually every OS has a driver for the "standard" VGA. It is the recommended card to use, since it has universal support. If the guest OS your using supports VESA 2.0 VBE extensions, you can access high resolution modes.	All
cirrus	Cirrus Logic GD5446	ISA/PCI	Cirrus Logic GD5446 video card, from the mid 1990s. Most Linux distributions and all Windows versions from Windows 95 include support for this video card. It is recommended for older guests (operating systems from the 90s), like Windows 9x. There is also a Windows 3.1 driver available on Vogons.	Windows: Windows 3.1
vmware	VMWare Virtual SVGA	PCI	Virtual SVGA II video card, which has some bugs but is usable. It is recommended to use this card on Windows 9x operating systems, because it allows higher resolutions and a True Color (32-bit) mode. Note: This card only supports 32-bit mode and 16 color mode, so anything that strictly requires 256 colors will not run. It also requires a special driver to be installed.	Windows: Windows 95
qxl	Red Hat QXL	PCI	Red Hat QXL graphics card, which comes with support for 2D games and basic 3D animations/games. Recommended if you want very high resolutions. Most Linux distributions automatically detect this card and install it appropriately, but Windows requires installation of a special driver.	?
virtio	Virtio Graphics Card	PCI	The Virtio Graphics Card, which comes with support for 2D and 3D games, and support with 3D rendering. Currently, this graphics card is for Linux only, as a driver for Windows currently is not available.	Linux: Linux 4.2 (4.4 recommended)
ramfb	RAM Framebuffer	RAM (MMIO)	A special device that sets aside a chunk of the guest's memory map for a simple unaccelerated framebuffer. QEMU's fw_cfg is used by the operating system or firmware platform to configure parameters of the framebuffer (it's width/height, for instance). SeaBIOS comes with VGA text mode emulation, but does not do anything more than that.	Depends on firmware platform (UEFI will support anything which uses UEFI GOP, for instance)
none	None	N/A	No graphics card inserted (only QEMU monitor)	All

SPARC

Model	Name	Bus	Description	Minimum OS
tcx	Sun TCX Framebuffer	?	This is the default framebuffer for sun4m machines. It only works on sun4m machines. It allows 8-bit and 24-bit color depths and is set to a fixed resolution of 1024x768.	?
cg3	Sun CG3 Framebuffer	?	Sun CG3, simple 8-bit framebuffer. It only works on sun4m machines. It allows a resolution of 1024x768 (in OpenBIOS) and 1152x900 (in OBP) resolutions. This is useful for running older Solaris versions. It seems also that most SPARC Linux distributions require you to use this driver or it doesn't work properly.	?