No. Our vServers do not have a graphics card. DirectX 11, GPU passthrough and vGPU are not available, and we do not offer a vServer plan with graphics acceleration. Games, 3D rendering, CAD or GPU computing will therefore not run on a Windows vServer, or only with severe limitations.

What does DxDiag show on my vServer?

The display device is listed as ?Virtuozzo WDDM QXL controller?. This is a pure display driver (display-only). It makes sure you get a picture via VNC and RDP, nothing more. There is no 3D acceleration, which is why DxDiag reports Direct3D as not available. This is not a fault of your server, and it cannot be changed by installing other drivers.

Why is there no GPU on vServers?

With GPU passthrough, a physical graphics card is permanently assigned to exactly one VM. On a host that runs many customer VMs, this makes sense neither technically nor economically.

Shared virtual GPUs (vGPU) add another interface between the VM and the host that can be attacked. This is exactly why Microsoft disabled RemoteFX vGPU in 2020 due to security vulnerabilities and later removed it completely. As with nested virtualization, our rule is: every additional layer between your VM and the host is a risk for all other customers on that host.

Is there a workaround?

Windows can partly calculate simple Direct3D calls in software on the CPU. Some applications will start this way, but they run very slowly. For games, video editing or 3D work, this is not a solution.

What about game servers?

They run without any problems. A game server does not need a graphics card, it only calculates the game world and runs without a display. You play on your own PC. For games with a high load per core, the Ryzen VPS is the better choice (Linux only).

Graphics unit on a dedicated server

On a dedicated server, the entire hardware is yours, including any graphics unit built into the processor. Whether there is one depends on the installed CPU. Many server CPUs have no integrated graphics.

You can check this yourself before ordering: look up the CPU model of the configuration you want on the manufacturer’s website (Intel or AMD). It states whether integrated graphics are available and which DirectX version they support. Also check whether drivers for Windows Server exist for these graphics, as many manufacturers only provide them for desktop Windows. Our dedicated servers do not come with a dedicated graphics card.