[vfio-users] Deciding whether to stick with X399

[Brian Yglesias]

Sorry for the double post.  I keep forgetting to make sure my email client doesn't use html to quote.  What follows is my original message:

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Thanks for the response.

This guy had success with a similar board and ESXi.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/72ula0/tr1950x_gtx_1060_passthrough_with_esxi/


I also found an account of it working on the same board as mine (Zenith).  Note that my IOMMU groups were better than his, possibly due to a bios setting he's missed, im guessing:

https://forum.level1techs.com/t/threadripper-gpu-passthrough-working-with-vega/120594

This guy is using a similar board from Asrock and uses KVM:

https://forum.level1techs.com/t/threadripper-gpu-passthrough-working-with-vega/120594


I didn't get much of a chance to look at the groupings, but I did notice that all three GPUs got their own IOMMU groups, and I was able to bind vfio-pci.  In addition I noticed I had many more groups than on my X58s or than the second post referened above.  It was close to 50.   Perhaps that was down to the "unique IOMMU per IVR (or so) setting in the bios.

Asus tech suppoirt might think of something that I haven't, and could get a chance to test it tomorrow.  It's a great value, especially for this application, so I'm still inclined to keep it if I can.

-Brian

----- Original Message -----
From: "Taiidan" <Taiidan at gmx.com>
To: "brian" <brian at atlanticdigitalsolutions.com>, "vfio-users" <vfio-users at redhat.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 6, 2017 3:55:59 AM
Subject: Re: [vfio-users] Deciding whether to stick with X399

FYI the X58 is very old and Intel didn't really make a proper IOMMU for 
that generation of CPU's - no Interrupt Remapping and most boards lack 
IOMMU-GFX support so you can't attach a video card. Don't let it color 
your experience and future endeavors.

I would RMA your X399 board, assuming it has proper IOMMU groups and 
enough slots you can easily do multi seat.

While I do not have a Ryzen (I didn't want a system with ME/PSP) I play 
games in a VM on my KGPE-D16 and AMD Opteron 6274 "Bulldozer" setup so 
it does work with AMD stuff - for the end user the intel/v/amd IOMMU 
technical details don't really matter they both work fine.

They've solved the Ryzen IOMMU bugs just *make sure* you get a board 
where the vendor releases BIOS updates, properly implements IOMMU (most 
don't, which is why I bought my coreboot board) and doesn't make five 
different revisions of the same board with slightly different features 
and issues.