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Picking a workstation platform for VT-d / IOMMU - PCIe Passthrough

BYgle
Beginner
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While "C i9 + Asus MB" may seem like the obvious answer, I was hoping someone with experience could weigh in, as my experience is that it can be fickle.

I've been trying to get multiseat working for some time. Unfortunately, my previous platform was LGA1366/X58, which seems like it cannot be made to work beyond a single instance/seat (multiple instances crash each other's GPU driver, except in single disk configuration, meaning OS and all VM disks on sda). AMDs new platform looked good on paper, but GPU passthrough is completely broken on Linux for almost all configurations. RMA'ing a CPU or MB can be a hassle or impossible, so I want to be sure before I pull the trigger.

Generally speaking, the requirements are pretty straightforward, but the last one is tricky:

  • A lot of cores
  • Good per core performance
  • Workstation motherboard (might as well be able to boot into windows and use SLI)
  • Properly implemented (i.e. no allow_unsafe_interrupts, proper ACS support so that my sound card does not write to my disk from time to time)

Core i9 is certainly the best candidate on paper, however 90% of the time there will be only one instance running, so in the worst case scenario, a lower core count with better per core performance relative to i9 (if such a thing exists) would be an unfortunate by acceptable trade off.

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idata
Employee
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FuriousGeorge: Thank you very much for contacting the Intel® Processor communities. We will do our best to provide the information you are looking for.

 

 

In order to provide the most accurate response, could you please explain what do you mean by multiseat?

 

 

You mentioned the Intel® i9 processor, could you please provide the specific model of the processor?

 

 

Any further questions, please let me know.

 

 

Regards,

 

Alberto R

 

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idata
Employee
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FuriousGeorge: I just wanted to check if you saw the information we requested previously and if you need further assistance on this matter?

 

 

Any questions, please let me know.

 

 

Regards,

 

Alberto R

 

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