Hey I have a tiny server I build using Ryzen (1600x) with lots of vms in mind.
build:
ab350 pro asrock (micro atx)
gskill trident z 3200Mhz (qvl listed)
1600x
reeven pro ourous (avoid like the plague for am4, bracket fitting issues)
r7 250
2 ssds
2 hdds
Ubuntu 16.04
But stability has been an issue.
The specific combination of the 4.12 kernel, amdgpu-pro, r7 250, 1600x. Has been disastrous.
The server occasionally freezes for no reason. Specific root cause has been really difficult to identify since this happens every ~30 hours and I am never doing anything special. Physical reboot is required. I can’t afford to have this happen when I am not around.
amdgpu-pro can’t be installed. If I do, then I get the login boot loop meaning lightdm crashes. I’e seen every single thread on the matter and nothing works here. So I have to stick to the included drivers which make the tiny 250 fan go haywire, and be 55C at idle. This was not the case on ubuntu + 4790k
Is this even worth it?
If I swap my machines, make the ryzen build windows, and make a 4790k machine linux. Am I missing out on a lot of the performance for web server applications (within vms)?
A 4790K probably doesn’t support hardware pass through if your into that kind of thing (it comes in handy). I haven’t verified this on intels specifications page but it seems like its what intel does. If you go with the non K variant that will most likely support hardware pass through.
I agree Ryzen is not the place to be for super immediate stability but like any new platform it will get better. I believe X79 had its fair share of issues when it came out.
well yeah. amdgpu-pro is only for volcanic island and professional series cards. The card you have is not meant to be used with that. AMD put their drivers in the kernel so you need a distro that ships with kernel version 4.10 or higher and the driver you need is automatically loaded for you.
With Ryzen? What are you nuts? Maybe you haven’t been around the forums here lately, but people have been having lots of issues with Ubuntu. Like I said earlier, you need a distro that ships with 4.10 or higher minimum; 4.12 preferred.
Yeah it totally is, but you need the proper setup. You can’t shoehorn the wrong gpu drivers and expect them to work.
If you do centos, you’re gonna want to activate the mainline kernel with epel(?) and a few other tweaks ootb. Fedora is probably a better choice for ryzen (right now)
It basiclly does support it, 4790K does support vt-x and vt-d.
However going from a Ryzen 6C / 12T back to a intel 4C / 8T is a step back,
wenn it comes to workloads like that.
Ended up ditching ryzen for this application. Maybe in the future I’ll come back to it.
Now the intel cpu has my servers… Took this opportunity to learn more about different distros and I am using Debian 9 since I only had experience with centos/ubuntu/mint. So far I like it a lot…
VT-x and AMD-V are quite different. VT-d and AMD-Vi are also quite different.
And the biggest difference has been developer and enterprise interest. Intel’s virtualization has has 10 years of refinement both in hardware and software. AMD is going to have to catch up. Hopefully the strong interest in AMD jumpstarts development.