graphics cards

[Plagrö]

Hello,

I know, that in a virtual machine all hardware is imitated.

But I am interested in this particular question:
Are graphics cards imitated through the graphic card of the host or are graphics cards imitated through the CPU of the host?

Thank you.

[socratis]

As far as I know, most of the calls are simulated by the CPU. The only difference is if you have the Guest Additions (GAs) installed and you have 3D acceleration enabled, the GPU calls are "translated" into OpenGL calls that go directly to the GPU. With a lot of limits of course, not everything can be translated.