For my new PC I’m switching to Linux. I’m planning to run Windows in a VM with hardware passthrough for the programs that don’t run on Wine or don’t have viable alternatives. I’ve done a lot of research, but I have a few unanswered questions I was hoping someone could help me out with.
I’ve put together a partial PC Part Picker list. Not listed there is 64 GB of RAM (not sure which set yet) and an Nvidia GPU, probably an RTX 2060 or 2070. The 1600 W PSU is overkill, but I intend to upgrade the graphics cards to higher power models and add some extra drives, so I got some spare watts (it’s also on sale ).
Does the Gigabyte X570 Aorus Xtreme support IOMMU? Since both the X370 and X470 chipsets support it I think it must but I can’t confirm. Anyone know?
Does the XFX RX 570 support UEFI? It appears all other RX 570s do, but again I can’t say for certain. Can anyone confirm?
Can I passthrough the AMD card and use the Nvidia card for the host, or do both cards need to be AMD?
Can I use a KVM switch to share one monitor between multiple graphics cards and computers? Specifically I want to share the monitor between the 2 graphics cards, a Mac Mini, and maybe another graphics card or an SBC in the future. Would that work?
Anything else I may have overlooked/missed for virtualization?
How about for Linux? Anything I should know? I read that the issues of newer versions of Linux on Ryzen 3000 have been fixed, anything else noteworthy?
Just so you know, PSUs have an efficiency curve with generally the best efficiency at %50 wattage. So unless you are going to be running 800 watts draw most of the time, maybe get one that has a little less wattage, and possibly a higher efficiency rating for the same or less money.
You could always look in the manual or ask support if it has AMD-vi(AMD version of IOMMU). That being said, it would be shocked if it did not have support.
Having one AMD and one Nvidia is either the same, or a little better then having both the same.
That being said, I think that card(570) has the AMD PCIe function level reset(FLR) bug, so it is not a good choice to passthrough to a VM.
Yes
X570 and Ryzen 3000 still might have some issues for virtualization, I think things are mostly fixed now, but keep a look out for UEFI updates in the next couple months. You also probably will want a PCIe USB card so you can hotplug USB devices to the VM. You will want one with good support for FLR, messaging signal interrupts, and decent power delivery. See- Jack's Hardware: The Ultimate VFIO USB 3.0 Controller
I looked through the manual and didn’t see anything, so I left a question with support.
I was unaware of this bug, thank you for telling me. Do you have any other info? I did some searching and couldn’t find much. A thread, or web page, or list of [un]affected cards, etc.?
Most AMD cards have reset issues with varying severity since at least the r9 series. Sometimes it only needs a host reboot after crashing or a hard shutdown of the guest, others need a host reboot after shutting the VM off normally. I think some of the r9/HD 8000 cards were fixed by a kernel patch, some RX cards(mostly Saphire cards I think) did not have any issues, and in kernel fixes for Vega and Navi are in the works, see-
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