5 ms·

There is at least one motherboard that I know of with Thunderbolt on it for AMD processors, the X570 Taichi. It does have some limitations though.

Fnoord 7y ago
What are the limitations you're on about? I'm in the market for Ryzen 3900X + X570 + TB3.
- eightysixfour 7y ago
  Wake issues with some devices, external GPU solutions do not work.
  - Fnoord 7y ago
    Will external GPUs never work? As in, physically impossible? That'd be my main purpose.
    - devonkim 7y ago
      Physically impossible, no, but external GPUs definitely work right now with Intel processors but even they have their limitations related to usability moreso than technical issues. I have one now with a 1080 Ti off of an Intel NUC and not being able to see my BIOS without switching to the iGPU can be cumbersome when troubleshooting. Once in a while when I reboot (this is very frequent actually because my eGPU's PSU's power limiter cuts out if I forget to throttle the power usage) the GPU doesn't come back unless I hard cycle a couple times. The annoyances are such that I'm waiting for a 3900X to be available in-store so I can build my full workstation finally after sitting on a NUC + eGPU setup for over a year.
      - Fnoord 7y ago
        I don't want to buy Intel CPUs, nor Nvidia GPUs. Exception being an Nvidia Shield. You'll be going for 3900X + X570 Taichi? Or another board? Ideally I'd also want ECC RAM.
        devonkim 7y ago
        I got a 3900X and the Asus X570 workstation board to make sure I'd be able to support ECC RAM within basically a couple hours after I made that post. My needs are video encoding and virtualization setups needing lots of cores so this makes a lot more sense for me than any comparable Intel setup for my money. I'm slightly cheaping out by not going with ECC RAM but in the era of catering to overclocking gamers over professionals I'd rather pay more for a workstation board.
- steve19 7y ago
  Does the X570 support ECC RAM?
  - lhl 7y ago
    ECC support is built into the IMC (on the CPU) so de facto, every single Zen chip (except the non-PRO APUs) usually have support, but official support is still on a per motherboard basis (and you'd probably want to check the memory QVL as well) if it's important for you (it was for me) so it's best to check each board model's specs. The Asrock X570 board mentioned definitely has support, as do the other high-end X570s I looked at like the Aorus Master, Asus C8H, Pro WS, etc. Based on X570 BIOS updates so far (and their overkill VRMs this gen), I think the Gigabyte/Aorus boards would be my pick atm (I went w/ a C8H and I'm somewhat unhappy w/ the CPU/memory voltage wonkiness when tweak, but it does give me 30 IOMMU groups, so I'm able to do GPU passthrough via VFIO to a Windows VM w/o any issues).
    - steve19 7y ago
      Thanks for the information. Does GPU passthrough to Windows allow high-end gaming from Linux (running a windows VM)? What specs would I need to look for in a motherboard to support that?
      - mastax 7y ago
        Yes, that works. The motherboard doesn't need to do anything special so any should work, unless they did something silly like forget to put the IOV toggle in BIOS. Caveats: - Anti-cheat systems used in multiplayer games generally don't like running in VMs. - Consumer Nvidia cards don't get reset on VM reboot, you need to reboot the machine. - IIRC Nvidia cards need a KVM hack to get the driver to work.
        lhl 7y ago
        Actually, it's AMD Vega cards that have a PCI reset issue that doesn't work well with VM cycling. There's a new kernel patch just the other week that fixes this: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/vega-10-and-12-reset-application/145666 https://forum.level1techs.com/t/vega-10-and-12-reset-applica... Nvidia cards do require a config workaround for VM detection but the workaround is relatively straightforward (and works w/o further mucking).

Fnoord 7y ago

What are the limitations you're on about? I'm in the market for Ryzen 3900X + X570 + TB3.

eightysixfour 7y ago
Wake issues with some devices, external GPU solutions do not work.
- Fnoord 7y ago
  Will external GPUs never work? As in, physically impossible? That'd be my main purpose.
  - devonkim 7y ago
    Physically impossible, no, but external GPUs definitely work right now with Intel processors but even they have their limitations related to usability moreso than technical issues. I have one now with a 1080 Ti off of an Intel NUC and not being able to see my BIOS without switching to the iGPU can be cumbersome when troubleshooting. Once in a while when I reboot (this is very frequent actually because my eGPU's PSU's power limiter cuts out if I forget to throttle the power usage) the GPU doesn't come back unless I hard cycle a couple times. The annoyances are such that I'm waiting for a 3900X to be available in-store so I can build my full workstation finally after sitting on a NUC + eGPU setup for over a year.
    - Fnoord 7y ago
      I don't want to buy Intel CPUs, nor Nvidia GPUs. Exception being an Nvidia Shield. You'll be going for 3900X + X570 Taichi? Or another board? Ideally I'd also want ECC RAM.
      - devonkim 7y ago
        I got a 3900X and the Asus X570 workstation board to make sure I'd be able to support ECC RAM within basically a couple hours after I made that post. My needs are video encoding and virtualization setups needing lots of cores so this makes a lot more sense for me than any comparable Intel setup for my money. I'm slightly cheaping out by not going with ECC RAM but in the era of catering to overclocking gamers over professionals I'd rather pay more for a workstation board.
steve19 7y ago
Does the X570 support ECC RAM?
- lhl 7y ago
  ECC support is built into the IMC (on the CPU) so de facto, every single Zen chip (except the non-PRO APUs) usually have support, but official support is still on a per motherboard basis (and you'd probably want to check the memory QVL as well) if it's important for you (it was for me) so it's best to check each board model's specs. The Asrock X570 board mentioned definitely has support, as do the other high-end X570s I looked at like the Aorus Master, Asus C8H, Pro WS, etc. Based on X570 BIOS updates so far (and their overkill VRMs this gen), I think the Gigabyte/Aorus boards would be my pick atm (I went w/ a C8H and I'm somewhat unhappy w/ the CPU/memory voltage wonkiness when tweak, but it does give me 30 IOMMU groups, so I'm able to do GPU passthrough via VFIO to a Windows VM w/o any issues).
  - steve19 7y ago
    Thanks for the information. Does GPU passthrough to Windows allow high-end gaming from Linux (running a windows VM)? What specs would I need to look for in a motherboard to support that?
    - mastax 7y ago
      Yes, that works. The motherboard doesn't need to do anything special so any should work, unless they did something silly like forget to put the IOV toggle in BIOS. Caveats: - Anti-cheat systems used in multiplayer games generally don't like running in VMs. - Consumer Nvidia cards don't get reset on VM reboot, you need to reboot the machine. - IIRC Nvidia cards need a KVM hack to get the driver to work.
      - lhl 7y ago
        Actually, it's AMD Vega cards that have a PCI reset issue that doesn't work well with VM cycling. There's a new kernel patch just the other week that fixes this: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/vega-10-and-12-reset-application/145666 https://forum.level1techs.com/t/vega-10-and-12-reset-applica... Nvidia cards do require a config workaround for VM detection but the workaround is relatively straightforward (and works w/o further mucking).