Graphics Acceleration ('use host GPU') is a feature of the Android SDK, and is not the same thing as HAXM. You can tell if HAXM hardware acceleration is active when an Android Virtual Device starts up in the emulator, and you see the message 'HAX is working and emulator runs in fast virt mode', You can see more about setting up an Android Virtual Device with HAXM in this post. HAXM is hardware based acceleration for the emulator, and runs independently from Host GPU acceleration. HAXM is not the same as Host GPU acceleration. I think we're talking about two different things here.