Gigabyte X399 AORUS Gaming 7 Works As A Linux-Friendly Threadripper Motherboard

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Gigabyte X399 AORUS Gaming 7 Works As A Linux-Friendly Threadripper Motherboard

For the past few weeks that I have been testing the AMD Threadripper 1950X on Linux, I have been using the Gigabyte X399 AORUS Gaming 7 motherboard. Overall, it's been a pleasant experience and is running fine under Linux. Here's a quick summary.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=25235

[Azrael5]

It seems a very astonishing machine.

[Akiko]

How about trying out PCI-passthrough using KVM/qemu? I promise you, you will be surprised.

[jrch2k8]

Michael can you post the NUMA information with numactl? would be nice to see how the BIOS manage the NUMA nodes

[Adarion]

Interesting, and thanks for the hint about the SuperIO. Does suspend to RAM work on this board? What about ACPI behaviour? Any unusual messages in the kernel's log?

just saw it has some Creative SoundBlaster chip on it, really? They still exist? Once those chips were great... but later... and there probably isn't Linux support for that thing, right?

[Michael]

Michael can you post the NUMA information with numactl? would be nice to see how the BIOS manage the NUMA nodes

Sure next time I got it on.

[Michael]

Interesting, and thanks for the hint about the SuperIO. Does suspend to RAM work on this board? What about ACPI behaviour? Any unusual messages in the kernel's log?

just saw it has some Creative SoundBlaster chip on it, really? They still exist? Once those chips were great... but later... and there probably isn't Linux support for that thing, right?

S2ram worked last I checked but will do some more thorough testing when time allows.

No unusual kernel items in dmesg, compared to some of the Ryzen boards and what not.

[flubba86]

The motherboard features server-level power chokes

What are "server-level" power chokes? Do you mean server-grade? If so, what does that even mean? Sounds like marketing wank. Are they somehow more "server-class" than normal power chokes on a high-end gaming board?

just saw it has some Creative SoundBlaster chip on it, really? They still exist? Once those chips were great... but later... and there probably isn't Linux support for that thing, right?

No, it absolutely doesn't have a SoundBlaster chip. The article states it has a Realtek Sound chip (ALC1120).
The SoundblasterX 720 thing that the product page mentions, is a software layer.
Read more about it here: http://www.creative.com/oem/products...asterx-720.asp
It is a product that Creative sells to OEMs (board makers) to include in their default bloatware package.
It likely has no relevance in a linux-based operating system.

[illwieckz]

I'm myself more interested in the Asrock X399 Taichi, I prefer the M.2 placement. On the Gigabyte x399 Aorus you have to remove the GPU to get access to the first M.2 slot, that's not handy. I don't know why the Taichi one looks hard to find.

By the way, with this Aorus one clamiming “server-level power chokes”, the one from Asus (Zenith Extreme) shipped with 10Gbps interface, the Taichi one shipped with dual Gbps port, and all these motherboards providing ECC memory support, they clearly not only targeting the gaming market : AMD try to re-enter the high-end workstation market via the rear door. And I'm sure some will try to use some of them as custom servers. Since all big manufacturers are stuck with Intel, those “motherboards with led” are in fact targetting more than gaming enthusiasts.

Do you remember between 2003& 2005 when big manufacturers like Dell where in big trouble because customers wanted superior AMD Opteron but they were not be able to supply them without losing the 1 billion per year from Intel received to ensure they not sell computer with CPU from AMD?

So, this time AMD has a fallback : if big manufacturers yet again think Intel's money is still better than “hearts, minds, and wallets of their customers”, there is a motherboard market for Naples-like 16core/32thread CPU, 128GB ECC ram and 10Gbps or dual LAN network interface.

Have you seen the footnote on the dual LAN description in X399 Taichi page? They make a strong advertisement about their motherboard providing dual LAN interface for bonding, but what the footnote says? It says that feature “is not supported with Windows® 10”. So, you got the message : they put on their motherboard some hardware Windows can't fully handle. They thought it would not be a big problem for their customers if Windows can't fully handle that.

If you can't buy a Epyc-based server because Intel holds manufacturers by balls, you can still buy Naples-like ThreadRipper hardware. Don't mind the leds, there is the LAN you need, 16cores/32threads CPU, server graded components and ECC ram support up to 128GB.

[Akiko]

I'm myself more interested in the Asrock X399 Taichi, I prefer the M.2 placement. On the Gigabyte x399 Aorus you have to remove the GPU to get access to the first M.2 slot, that's not handy. I don't know why the Taichi one looks hard to find.

I got exactly that one plus a 1950X, 4x16GiB DDR4-3600 Corsair LPX Vengeance (only 3333 MHz are stable), a Artic Liquid Freezer 240, a Corsair 850i power supply, a RX 460 (for the Linux desktop) and a GTX 1080 for PCI-passthrough all put together in a Cooler Master Cosmos II (only a real tower is able to hold a SSI-MEB mainboard ).

The mainboard is a nice one, no doubt, I like the arrangement of the PCIe slots. The x1 slot is above a 16x slot, so you can put in a sound card without blocking the airflow of a graphics card. The board also have a nice Intel based wifi able to do a/b/g/n, but I don't use it. I also tried 4x16GiB DDR4-2400 registered ECC memory. And yes, that worked.

So much about the nice things. And here is the downside. In the UEFI (last version 1.50) you can turn off wifi, but this has no effect. The board (or the Threadripper microcode? hard to say) has a real PCIe setup fuckup. First, there are very few options in the UEFI, you basically can only switch the main PCIe slots (the big ones) to older, slower modes and it's the same for the southbridge connection, that's all. If the 4x link to the southbridge runs in gen3 mode, Linux spams the kernel logs with PCIe TLP and DTLP messages and the performance goes down. And that seems to be a configuration issue of the whole PCIe subsystem. PCIe power management (PME) seems to be badly broken, for now the bus is unable to properly set power managment modes on PCIe cards, which breaks PCI-passthrough (KVM and Xen) completly. Right now that seems to be a real Threadripper issue affecting all boards out there.