[vfio-users] Hardware recommendation?

[Tobias Geiger]

Hi,

great suggestions - thanks so far!

Seems i have the choice between
- this really good price/value E5-2670 Dual Xeon and this board: 
http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=EP2C612D8#Specifications 
(the Supermicro one is at least here in Germany much more expensive - 
and the Asrock has more SATA3 Ports... - do you see any difficulties in 
comparison with the Supermicroboard you mentioned?)

oooor
-  i7-6700K Intel Skylake with a board like this : 
https://www.asus.com/de/Motherboards/Q170M-C/specifications/ (Q Chipset 
should ensure VTD funcionality i hope!)


so basicaly the choice between 16 cores with the dual xeon but with a 
max of 3.3Ghz - or 4 cores "only" with the Skylake i7 but 4.2Ghz...
puh. hard one. games rarly scale well on multiple cpus, but OTOH this 
is/will be changing with time and newer games... but a rapid 
single-core-performance is always handy for the tasks that are not 
threadable...

now im really stuck in my descision-finding-process :)
i'll think about it for the weekend

if you see any omg-dont-buy-that-it-wont-work issues - please tell me!

Thanks and Greetings
Tobias




Am 12.05.2016 17:23, schrieb Ryan Flagler:
> Yep, that's the one. Dirt cheap! I was able to snag a used SuperMicro
> X9DR7-LN4F dual-socket motherboard and threw 2 of them in there. I
> don't have much of an issue giving my VMs enough CPU. :) ECC DDR3
> Registered memory is relatively cheap on ebay too.
> 
> On Thu, May 12, 2016 at 10:21 AM Alex Williamson
> <alex.l.williamson at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, May 12, 2016 at 9:14 AM, Ryan Flagler
>> <ryan.flagler at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> I know Alex has recommended the E5 series processors/motherboards
>>> for the best compatibility. There are 2 versions of motherboards
>>> that support that right now. Socket R and Socket R3. Obviously E5
>>> series processors are not very affordable brand new; however, the
>>> market is currently flooded with server pulled E5-2670 CPUs. They
>>> can be easily found for $60 on ebay. These CPUs work on Socket R
>>> motherboards. Additionally, these motherboards will still support
>>> DDR3 memory which is cheaper to acquire than DDR4 as well.
>>> 
>>> That's where I'd start if I was you. Obviously there could always
>>> be issues with 1 manufacturer to another, but hopefully that's a
>>> starting place.
>> 
>> Nice tip!  You're referring to Sandy-Bridge EP, right?
>> 
>> 
> http://ark.intel.com/products/64595/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-2670-20M-Cache-2_60-GHz-8_00-GTs-Intel-QPI
>> 
>> 8-core, hmmm that's tempting.