Should I just go ahead and do a build based around the 1231v3? or wait on Zen and hope like hell support is there for either win7 or linux gaming as started taking off by then
Apparently Zen will only support Win10 on the Windows side.
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Those mother.. guess that answers that question. Really do hope linux gaming takes off soon. Since Microsoft doesn't wanna give the power users control anymore
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Yeah since you don't want to move to windows 10. Your option is Linux or Mac.
Keep in mind you could do gpu pass through on Linux and play windows only games in a windows VM.
Also what games do you play? There are a lot of Linux games these days. You might find it less of an issue than you thought.
Lately Deus EX HR. Since I'm waiting on funds for Mankind also kinda wanna have the PC built for that game. Batman Arkham games. Postal 2 for just shits and laughs. Battlefield BC2. Saints Row series. Those are the big ones, also looking to get into some of the heavier emulators like Gamecube/PS2
EDIT: Also I thought about going the VM route but remember Wendell saying he had issues with his gfx card in one of the Teks
According to the steamdb there is a Linux port of Deus Ex MD in the works. If you can hold out buy the Linux port when it's released not before.
HR doesn't have a Linux port unfortunately.
Some of the saints row games are on Linux.
You should also be able to find emulators for LInux there are a tonne.
You'll have to look up the others I'm not sure off the top of my head.
I have an issue with pass through in that if I use a second gpu I can't use the rest of my pcislots . I think it just depends on your build. But generally it works well.
Wendell did a video on it maybe someone can link. And maybe @wendell might share his thoughts on pass through if he gets a spare moment.
Nvidia cards do not support passthrough unless they are a quadro or you emulate uefi.
Yeah cause I'm trying to remember he was talking about having trouble getting a gfx card to pass through to VM on one of the Teks.
It really would be cool to do that with Zen and a RX480 just dedicate like 90% of streamers, almost all VRAM, 6 cores then good to go. Since I mainly only use linux for media stuff (kodi, firefox, things like that)
That's what it was. He said he managed to do it but it was a pain in the ass
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IMO pass-thru is just a fun project, it is not a proper longterm solution as it can be easily broken by updates or component upgrades etc.
You either need to accept that for gaming you need Windows 10 or take your chances that Linux ports will appear or Wine will be compatible. My main system is now dual boot system for this reason with seperate disks for Win 10 and Fedora 24 - I rarely boot Windows.
Same except replace 10 with 7 and Fedora with Ubuntu Mate. I wouldn't mind using 10 for just strictly gaming like I do with 7 now but I don't trust MS not to brick me with updates (granted they took away auto updates) and all the other crapware they include now
Of you could get a Broadwell-E system. That will support Windows 7.
Don't really have the PSU for that only have 650w. Wasn't really planning on getting a new one
I guess that depends on the definition of "long term" I've been running mine 18 months, have upgraded the OS from Fedora 22 to 23, minimal disruption to the KVM in upgrading (a update has never affected the KVM as long as it's not running during the update of key files)(yeah update QEMU with the KVM running and it might break lots of things), if Zen is everything they promise I'll upgrade once the prices stabilize and build a new system and incorporate the hardware pass through into it, it just works too well (on the right hardware) to do without it, at least for me......
And yes component upgrades will require you to reconfigure the KVM or build a new one, but if your doing this you know that going in and it should come as no big surprise.
with 650w you could run a dual socket xeon e5-2699v4, motherboard, several hard drives, and a gtx1080.
Passthrough has become pretty stable, for the most part, on modern hardware. I even had good luck with it on the older e5 2670 hardware but I never bothered to get windows fully on there yet so there may be stability issues/niggles.. but the machine posts ok
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It's only gonna get better over time. Some development houses as well as game engine developers are working on integrating the Vulkan API into their newer games. Which will probably increase the amount of Linux games by a tad bit eventually. Linux support for gaming has made quite the amount of leaps in the past 5 years, so that's nice at least.
I have not had any issues with my passthrough, and I have been using it for nearly a year. I run anything that I can natively or in wine though, because I have my more powerful GPU dedicated to GNU/Linux. I have never had an update break it after I set it up the first time. I used to dual boot, but I have not run Windows natively on my computer since November of last year. When I play single player games I use a KVM switch connected to my bottom left monitor. I rarely have to do this though, because most of the games that I like will run directly in GNU/Linux. The passthrough helped me to use Windows a lot less, because I do not have to reboot to play any games.
I also have it set up so that I can play games in GNU/Linux as my friend plays in the VM. We usually play multiplayer games like Garry's Mod, Terraria, and Chivalry. I pass through a dedicated monitor, keyboard, mouse, speaker, etc. to the VM for him to use.
Also, here the script I use to start it. It was useful to look at examples as I was setting mine up:
#!/bin/bash
OPTS=""
# CPU Configuration
OPTS="$OPTS -cpu host,kvm=off"
OPTS="$OPTS -smp 2,sockets=1,cores=2,threads=1"
OPTS="$OPTS -enable-kvm"
# RAM
OPTS="$OPTS -m 6000"
# UEFI
OPTS="$OPTS -drive if=pflash,format=raw,readonly,file=/usr/share/edk2.git/ovmf-x64/OVMF_CODE-pure-efi.fd"
# QEMU Monitoring
OPTS="$OPTS -monitor stdio"
# Optical drive
#OPTS="$OPTS -cdrom "/path/to/iso""
# Emulated video device
#OPTS="$OPTS -vga qxl"
# 240GB SSD
OPTS="$OPTS -hda /dev/sdc"
# R9 270
OPTS="$OPTS -device vfio-pci,host=06:00.0,multifunction=on"
OPTS="$OPTS -device vfio-pci,host=06:00.1"
# PCI Gigabit NIC
OPTS="$OPTS -device vfio-pci,host=05:00.0,rombar=0 -net none"
# USB DAC
OPTS="$OPTS -usb -device usb-host,vendorid=0x0d8c,productid=0x000e"
# Gamepad
OPTS="$OPTS -usb -device usb-host,vendorid=0x1532,productid=0x0111 "
# USB Hub connected to KVM switch
OPTS="$OPTS -usb -device usb-host,hostbus=3,hostport=13.1.1 -usb -device usb-host,hostbus=3,hostport=13.1.2 -usb -device usb-host,hostbus=3,hostport=13.1.3 -usb -device usb-host,hostbus=3,hostport=13.1.4 -usb -device usb-host,hostbus=3,hostport=13.1.5 -usb -device usb-host,hostbus=3,hostport=13.1.6 -usb -device usb-host,hostbus=3,hostport=13.1.7"
OPTS="$OPTS -usb -device usb-host,hostbus=3,hostport=10.1.7 -usb -device usb-host,hostbus=3,hostport=10.1.6"
# USB hub on monitor
OPTS="$OPTS -usb -device usb-host,hostbus=2,hostport=5.1.1 -usb -device usb-host,hostbus=2,hostport=5.1.2 -usb -device usb-host,hostbus=2,hostport=5.2 -usb -device usb-host,hostbus=2,hostport=5.1"
# Start VM
sudo qemu-system-x86_64 $OPTS`
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Linux gaming is only going to get better, but that's going to happen in the course of years, not months.
Windows 7 support is decreasing every day, so I'd recommend you to stop hoping for Win7 support in any field from any company.
If you're that desperate about gaming, just get a Win10 machine and use it for gaming only. There are tons of de-crap-ify guides on Win10 disabling telemetry and disabling FPS locks and whatnot.
OK, getting some disagreement here to some level on my statement that Linux pass-thru isn't a long-term solution. That's cool it just wasn't for me, but for those of you who have it working and are getting what you want from it, great, I'm glad it works for you.
I will add that when I did this it was a while ago now, probably before you guys had set yours up. I was using pre-Sandybridge hardware - Intel X5650's in a HP Z800. Getting it running with my old GTX 770 was impossible, it did work after much tinkering on Ubuntu 14.04 with an R9 280X, although I had problems getting the sound out from the GPU and getting the AMD drivers installed in the guest at first too. The windows guest was also somewhat flakey; I didn't keep it long enough to figure out why.
Before I did that I did briefly have it running under VMware ESXi. This worked really well with the AMD cards, and if I had wanted to keep this kind of set up long term is probably what I would have gone back to as it seemed more stable.
Right now I have no desire to retry. why? Because I like the simplicity of my GTX 980Ti being availble all the time to Linux and I can use Windows VM's for non-game stuff :-)
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