Tag Archives: PCIe Passthrough

How-tos, Linux, LLMs

Proxmox VE GPU Passthrough on an AMD RX 560

This guide walks you through every step required to expose an AMD RX 560 graphics card to a Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE) virtual machine. The same procedure applies to other AMD GPUs such as the RX 570, RX 580, RX 7600, RX 7700, RX 7900 XT, and many others.

1. Pulling the ROM from the GPU

  1. Install the GPU
    Insert the card into any PCI‑e slot (some systems require it not to be the first slot).
  2. Boot Proxmox VE
    Log into the console.
  3. Locate the device
    Run lspci -nnk and look for a line similar to:
   01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Baffin [Radeon RX 460/560D / Pro 450/455/460/555/555X/560/560X] [1002:67ef] (rev e5)
     Subsystem: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd Device [1458:230a]
     Kernel driver in use: amdgpu
     Kernel modules: amdgpu
   01:00.1 Audio device [0403]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Baffin HDMI/DP Audio [Radeon RX 550 640SP / RX 560/560X] [1002:aae0]
     Subsystem: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd Device [1458:aae0]
     Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
     Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel

The PCI bus address of the VGA controller is 01:00.0. To form the sysfs path, prepend 0000::

   /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/
  1. Extract the ROM
   cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000\:01\:00.0/
   echo 1 > rom
   cat rom > /usr/share/kvm/RX560-4096.rom
   echo 0 > rom

The file /usr/share/kvm/RX560-4096.rom now contains the GPU ROM.

2. Configuring the Proxmox Server for PCIe Passthrough

  1. Load required kernel modules
    Edit /etc/modules and add:
   vfio
   vfio_iommu_type1
   vfio_pci
   vfio_virqfd
  1. Blacklist the native driver
    Edit /etc/modprobe.d/pve-blacklist.conf and add:
   blacklist amdgpu
  1. Create VFIO configuration
    Create /etc/modprobe.d/vfio.conf with:
   options vfio-pci ids=1002:67ff,1002:aae0 disable_vga=1
   softdep amdgpu pre: vfio-pci

The IDs come from the lspci -nnk output: 1002:67ef (VGA) and 1002:aae0 (Audio).

  1. Enable IOMMU in the kernel
    Edit /etc/default/grub and add either intel_iommu=on or amd_iommu=on to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT line, e.g.:
   GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet intel_iommu=on"
  1. Apply changes
   update-grub
   update-initramfs -u -k all
  1. Reboot
    Shut down the Proxmox host. If necessary, move the GPU to the first PCI‑e slot before powering on again.

3. Configuring a VM for PCIe Passthrough

  1. Create the VM
    Use the usual VM creation flow in Proxmox, but set the Machine type to q35.
  2. Add the GPU as a Raw Device
    In the VM hardware list:
  • Type: PCI Device
  • Bus address: the same as the GPU (e.g., 0000:01:00)
  • Enable ROM‑Bar, PCI‑Express, and Primary GPU
  1. Edit the VM configuration file
    For a VM with ID 101, edit:
   /etc/pve/nodes/pve/qemu-server/101.conf

Add or modify the hostpci0 line to reference the ROM file:

   hostpci0: 0000:01:00,pcie=1,x-vga=1,romfile=RX560-4096.rom
  1. Start the VM
    The guest will now use the passthrough GPU.

Following these steps will give you a fully functional AMD RX 560 passthrough in Proxmox VE, and the same methodology works for other AMD GPUs such as the RX 570, RX 580, RX 7600, RX 7700, RX 7900 XT, etc.

Sources