It Looks Like The Raptor Blackbird Open-Source Motherboard Will Sell For Just Under $900

[edwaleni]

Anyone seeking to purchase this should check Raptor's hardware wiki and check on their graphics card testing. It is not universal and legacy cards don't work as well as more recent ones.

Also remember these are PCIe v4.0 slots on the POWER9. Bus timing is critical and Raptor has made many notes on how many older PCIe adapters are junk due to the poor or lesser quality components used.

Buyer beware, this is truly a development board.

[CochainComplex]

If you don't already know your software is available for Power 9 don't buy it.... unless you intend to port it.

This would be great! ...btw somehow emulating Xbox360 and PS3 Games should be a bit easier on Power9.

[cb88]

If you are buying this machine it should be obvious what Graphics card to get... Yes there are Power9 drivers for Nvidia hardware but it is binaries and chances are in a few years you'll be left without support, the open source driver NVidia support is abysmal, kudos to those guys for reverse engineering it though. While if you stick with a recent AMD card in there you will have open source support for a long time..... that is both well integrated with Linux unlike the blob drivers and almost as performant. At the high end a Vega FE/WX9100/Vega 64 or Vega56/WX8200 would suite the machine, or failing that a Polaris card, the upcomingPolaris 30/RX590 refresh will probably be a good option once we know it works on the open source drivers (should be a non issue).

x86 games won't run on this period don't even waste your time the best you'd get is emulating windows 95 level stuff at Pentium/Pentium II speeds as there isn't an x86 emulation acceleration in IBM Power 9 if this were Loonson MIPS or ELBRUS that might be a different story.

If you don't already know your software is available for Power 9 don't buy it.... unless you intend to port it.

[rdeiriar]

I am interested in getting this. The price seems about right I think. The best comparison is probably the Amiga machines X1000 and X5000/20.

I am not sure what graphics card to get though. Since I am probably not playing too many games on this I only need something for a decent desktop. AMD's offerings are not that impressive lately. It would be nice if an older cheaper card worked.

mattmatteh see the HCL below.

Michael, if you can find the time, could you please do a basic functionality test (needs not be a benchmark session) of some popular AMD cards on your Talos II ?

[rdeiriar]

US$ 600 would be fantastic, but, as schmidtbag points out, might not be economically feasible. Sure, an equivalent Intel MATX server motherboard with ECC support retails for about US$ 200, but these are made by companies who serve a huge market (Supermicro shipped 1.2m units last year)

[schmidtbag]

I am not sure what graphics card to get though. Since I am probably not playing too many games on this I only need something for a decent desktop. AMD's offerings are not that impressive lately. It would be nice if an older cheaper card worked.

You do realize this isn't x86, right? Although you could use QEMU to run x86 applications, I wouldn't treat gaming as a priority, especially if you care enough about detail level to get a high-end Nvidia card. That being said, you're probably going to get some major overhead issues if you went for something like a 1080Ti with the closed-source drivers. At least with AMD you can get native PPC drivers.

[mattmatteh]

I am interested in getting this. The price seems about right I think. The best comparison is probably the Amiga machines X1000 and X5000/20.

I am not sure what graphics card to get though. Since I am probably not playing too many games on this I only need something for a decent desktop. AMD's offerings are not that impressive lately. It would be nice if an older cheaper card worked.

[CochainComplex]

Mhh I was also expecting something in the range of 600$. I totaly understand that it is still a niche product and that it is not possible to sell such a thing at a pricepoint of around 300$. I'm really curious to such an extend that i would spend some money to test this plattform but spending around 2K in total just for fun...still a bit difficult at least for me. And also knowing that e.g. gaming is not foreseeable possible in the near future. I hope that more people with larger budget will buy it to push it to the massmarket. Since x86 is adding more and more "security features" it is necessary to have this well developed architecture as alternative. So bottomline the raptor blackbird is pointing to the right direction but still not below the enthusiast threshold to excite "normal" x86 users.

[schmidtbag]

Pricing for a product like this is difficult. This is a very niche market, even more so than ARM development boards. Unlike ARM boards, something like this is a lot more complex to design. If they sold it for a more reasonable price like $600, they'd definitely get more interest, but that's still a high enough price tag that it might not actually make enough of a difference in increased sales (and therefore they'd be more at a loss).

[rdeiriar]

The price seem OK to me, small scale electronics manufacturing is expensive. Allow me to do a quick calculation for a minimal setup for home/hobbyist use (i'm actually thinking of assembling one)


Motherboard: US$ 875
Quad-Core Sforza CPU: US$ 375 ( https://raptorcs.com/content/CP9M01/intro.html )
3U Cpu cooler: US$ 110 ( https://raptorcs.com/content/TL2HS3/intro.html )

For the memory, i am assuming that what works on Raptor II works on Blackbird, so DDR4 Registered ECC,
2x Crucial CT8G4RFS8266 8Gb PC-21300: US$ 102.57 each (B&H)

What else?
A decent micro-atx case with a PWM fan and a quality 400W PSU (Something like the Supermicro 731i-403b) US$ 120
A Samsung 970 EVO 512 MB costs US$ 117.99, but we need a PCIe to M2 adaptor for US$ 14.39 (newegg)
Accelerated video would be nice to have, so lets set aside US$ 150 for some sort of AMD Radeon card (RX 560? something else?)

Grand total: US$ 1967.52

Not bad, methinks. It would be great if some readers could step in and tell me how they would spec such a 'hobbyst' system and/or what to upgrade