Ryzen's IOMMU groupings w/AGESA 1006 "will be very happy"

Check this out, the twitch video starting at 34:03.

Looks like this is the BIOS revision that GPU passthrough people have been waiting for!

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Thanks for spotting this @SpitFire !
I was holding off on a Ryzen build because of the unusable IOMMU groupings. Very glad I decided to do a final search for updates before going with an Intel build instead.

Has anyone had the opportunity to check how the groupings have changed with an AGESA 1006 mobo? I read elsewhere that various vendors have already released betas using the new microcode.

And, of personal interest, are there any recommendations or guesses as to which motherboard (vendor) will have a stable BIOS with AGESA 1006 available in reasonable time?

For what it is worth, AMD said that the end of May is when people should see it being pushed out.

ASUS C6H are one of those mobos that have the BETA 1006, but, I don't know anyone with that, that could run tests.

I am sure Wendell either has this patch for one of his boards and will let us know shortly, though, he might have been under NDA until the end of the month.

"If wendell is watching, he just got really excited" mh ok :smiley:

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Ah so my AMD 'informant' might have been correct to say that a big Agesa update was coming in May. :smiley:
From April 15th

Heavy Breating Heavy Breathing, Must stay Calm Cant contain excitement for IOMMU on Ryzen

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Time to go all in my boys.

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Hey, @wendell if you have been testing the beta of AGESA 1006 and the reason you haven't talked about any information about it is because of some NDA, I vote (as I am sure a lot of other forum members would too) you make a video talking about your findings on AGESA 1006. I am sure there are a lot of forum members that have put off updating their computers to Ryzen hoping we can once and for all give the evil Empire (Microsoft) either give the boot or run Windows on a virtual machine, and we will finally be able to run any game without going through hoops or praying to the gaming gods like you have to do now when running Linux.

I was holding off on a Ryzen build because of the unusable IOMMU groupings. Very glad I decided to do a final search for updates before going with an Intel build instead.

I am too waiting holding off on a Ryzen build until we can run our games on a virtual machine under Linux. Anyone else have an opinion is AGESA 1006the only thing that is holding us Linux users from truly gaming on Linux.

Its still a lot of work well money too have two GPU's and the PSU to use IOMMU to pass through a dedicated card for gaming. The real future is when you can share the one GPU in your system with a VM and game A.K.A SR-IOV.

AMD is putting in code for SR-IOV into the linux kernel open source driver. The big BUT is will they let consumer cards use it or will we be able to patch enable it for consumer cards. Traditionally this has been a enterprise feature that companies pay a lot to have. From what I have read there will still be one last closed source opengl component (from memory) bit of code to make it work. That may be how consumers get locked out.

Is it time for us consumers to get this feature enabled as well. Im hoping so.

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I don't mind the work or the money, I just want to have Linux and just have the evil Empire's operating software running in a virtual machine for games and have my games work. What do you mean by PSU?

Only if it is needed. I have a gaming card in my system for linux gaming. Adding another gaming card for dedicated VM gaming may need a better PSU. If not for power for the PCI cables.

Oh so I might need a larger power suppy than the current one I have.

If you are referring to the IOMMU situation, then no, I don't think that. Because at the end of the day you are still gaming on Windows, not native on Linux. So Microsoft still gets the money for the license, they still get to claim you as part of their userbase and so on. We can talk about actually gaming on Linux when it's about games that run native on Linux, no virtualization/emulation of any kind required.

This is what those of us who work in support call a workaround. It's something to tide you over, allow you to work, while a real fix for whatever bug you encountered is in the works. A band aid.

Now this band aid is actually a pretty good one, once you get manage to get it to work, but it's still not the 'real thing'.

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Passing through your primary (only) video card has worked out for quite a few people by now. Here's a guide to overcome the bios/rom issue for nvidia cards: https://www.reddit.com/r/unRAID/comments/61jrdl/video_guide_how_to_easily_passthough_a_nvidia_gpu/

Of course, if you want two OSs to have simultaneous access to dedicated video cards, you will need multiple cards until you can get something like SR-IOV to work. In my case, my host OS will not need video output. I would like to be able to run a game in a Linux VM or Windows VM but never simultaneously.

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I have checked the IOMMU groups on my Crosshair VI Hero using Beta Bios 9943 and my GTX 980 has it's own group. I sadly don't have a second GPU laying around so I can't test if it works properly and if each GPU gets its own group.
Here's a screenshot of the IOMMU groups: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAjMkOQXYAAF9Lp.jpg

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Yes I was referring to the IOMMU situation, while I agree with you it would be nice if all games ran natively on Linux, I don't think this will ever happen unfortunately. For games to run on Linux, the whole world of Linux would have to be turned upside down. Instead of several different distros of Linux there is only one. Software developers aren't and won't be willing to write several different versions of their software just to accommodate different version of Linux.

I know a lot of my fellow forum members will advise, if Linux is such a pain (I know I am probably off topic, but bare with me for a second, I want to make a point.) why completely abandon or try to abandon the evil Empire (Microsoft) operating software. I have two very good reason to try and tell the evil Empire to **** off. First my main reason to try and give the evil Empire the boot is the fact there is a key logger built into the kernel of Windows 10 it doesn't matter which version of windows 10 you use, the key logger is still there. In my opinion Windows 10 just to high of a security risk to use as a operating software. Second the information Microsoft collect from its customers.

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So are you saying, I would have better luck accomplishing my goal with Intel instead of AMD, because the only advantage Ryzen gives over Intel is more cores per CPu and cheaper CPU's and motherboards everything else would cost the same in a computer build. What is the opinion of my fellow forum members, should I stick with Intel or make the switch to Ryzen.

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First things first.

Ryzen is an entirely new platform and architecture compared to any previous AMD CPU's.

This means there's a lot of early testing and development of features which are being first trialed on Ryzen that will make it into later enterprise hardware too.

Some things to consider:
1. We already have ECC on consumer boards with Ryzen. Traditionally reserved for expensive Workstation systems.
2. Unlocked Chips across the entire lineup.
3. AMD actually considering/discussing opening up their platform security processor code (PSP) on Ryzen.
4. Many more AGESA & UEFI updates yet to come.
5. Vega being very closely aligned with the Prosumer/Enterprise hardware.
6. AMD focusing their efforts primarily on enterprise but using the technologies in the consumer market for cost savings.

In light of everything AMD has done so far we can pretty much throw out much of the rule book written based on AMD's prior behavior.

With the next AGESA update (1.0.0.6) you can expect crazy high RAM speed support as well as cleaned up IOMMU groupings (Already seen on a Beta 1.0.0.6 Asus C6H).

That aside If you are a simple man who mainly uses his setup for gaming and not any sort of intense Video encoding/ Virtual Machine crazyness/servers/massively parralel computation. You should be pretty well served with a standard 4C/8T Post Ivy-Bridge Intel CPU for atleast the next Year or atleast until the majority of games catch up.

And when you upgrade then, it'll be just in time for Ryzen 2 Probably.

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:o

ASRock is announcing their AM4 ITX motherboard May 31st.

COINCIDENCE? I think not.

Yeah, let's pretend people who will use GPU passthrough for gaming on a Windows VM on their Linux machine are going to bother buying a license when Windows 10's only concessions for unactivated copies are a lack of personalization and a "activate windows" watermark.

I mean... define that for me. Suddenly, are any old games that require DOSBox not counted as "playable on Linux?" Or do you mean "anything that requires effort beyond just installing and going."

Not necessary really. You could just do this:

Way better imo. Though I guess "have a separate computer entirely" kind of seems to put a damper on bothering to virtualize Windows.

Not sure about the "retail" version, but the Insider Preview starts throwing BSODs if you don't keep it activated (don't ask how I know :3 ).

Eh simple. Take any recent AAA game and try running it natively on Linux. Good luck with that. And no, Wine does not count. There are people that don't play just "old games". Because that's the use-case for the whole Windows in a Box thing to begin with... Old games run perfectly fine on Linux even with Wine or whatever.

Though to be fair, the games running natively on Linux have become WAY more since Valve started pushing SteamOS like crazy.

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