Ryzen vs LGA1366 dual cpu vs 8 core LGA2011

[Rowanh]

Hello, I was looking at building a desktop with a Ryzen 3 1200 to use as an unRaid NAS with a Windows 10 virtualisation for HTPC/Gaming pc. 

 

I have been reading about the problems with Ryzen which seem to pretty much be resolved now though I am a little concenred about having to be messing around with changing lines in files etc when things are not working. I have never used Linux before, I wouldnt have a clue where even to look for these things. 

 

Anyway I came across people using older Xeon cpu's for gaming and getting fairly good results, it seems like it would be more suitable for me if I am running a virtualisation and can have some cores for the NAS and some for w10. 

 

From what I can tell the best options are, 

 

Micro AXT B350 board with Ryzen 3 or 5, this would cost around to depending on the cpu and board. 

 

A Dual socket LGA166 board and two six core Xeon 5650s & a SuperMicro X8DTI-F or Asus Z8NA-D6, this would be around two hundred and fifty euro.  

 

A Lga2011 board and a 2660 cpu this would also be around . 

 

It seems like if it was just a Windows 10 gaming pc then the Ryzen option would be the best but maybe using unRaid the Xeons would be better and possibly easier to get going. They (xeons cpu's/boards) would all be second hand with no warranty or very limited warranty so that is also a negative.. 

 

Any suggestions or information would be very welcome. 

 

Rowan

Edited November 6, 2017 by Rowanh

[phbigred]

I’d go the Ryzen route. Most of the work for tweaking has been fixed. The “line work” you mention you just go to the Main tab, click on flash, and add in a command string after the word “append” on all lines. That line work my be fixed in the next pre-release. The rest is pretty easy. I get ~130fps with my 1080 passed through for gaming now. 

[tdallen]

The older Xeon dual socket boards can be good for Plex where you need a lot of cores, but if you want to get into gaming on unRAID I'd go with something newer, an E5 or Ryzen.  You'd likely be buying the E5 on eBay, though.  By the way - gaming via virtualization is definitely "enthusiast" level system building.

[Rowanh]

3 hours ago, phbigred said:

I’d go the Ryzen route. Most of the work for tweaking has been fixed. The “line work” you mention you just go to the Main tab, click on flash, and add in a command string after the word “append” on all lines. That line work my be fixed in the next pre-release. The rest is pretty easy. I get ~130fps with my 1080 passed through for gaming now. 

 

Thanks, that sounds straight forward enough. 

 

1 hour ago, tdallen said:

The older Xeon dual socket boards can be good for Plex where you need a lot of cores, but if you want to get into gaming on unRAID I'd go with something newer, an E5 or Ryzen.  You'd likely be buying the E5 on eBay, though.  By the way - gaming via virtualization is definitely "enthusiast" level system building.

 

Ok maybe Ryzen is the way to go, I just got a little discoureged seeing all the problems people were having but it does seem like they are all being solved and by the time I have everything bought maybe the new build will be out. 

 

"gaming via virtualization is definitely "enthusiast" level system building." Well I have already learned a good bit in the last couple weeks, it sounds like fun getting it setup though perhaps frustrating too. Is it naive to expect it to be stable and problem free once its properly up and running? I would prefer something that have constant problems.. 

 

[phbigred]

I’m assuming you meant didn’t have continued problems. Youtube SpaceInvader One has some great videos on building VMs. Other than minor tweaking here and there while Ryzen was still new my VM has been untouched for settings for months. Big thing for gaming make sure your board has 2 pci-e slots second one running 8x at minimum (B350 or x370). That’s so you don’t have to mess with the PCI-E passthrough workaround in the 1st slot. Big thing with ryzen make sure your bios are up to date! Rest of the VM setup is clicking drop downs. Give unraid at least 2 cores (1st set) and of you go with Ryzen pay the extra little bit for a 1400 (4C/8T) or ideally a 1600(6C/12T) if you want more threads. Overclocking the chips is pretty easy too. 1400 get up to about 3.7-3.8 and 1600 around 3.8-3.9 on air. 

 

Also so if you use steam the use of a mapped drive for your gaming repository on Unraid works very well. There’s some topics in the announcement forums with that info.

Edited November 6, 2017 by phbigred
Edited for comment on Steam from network drive

[Rowanh]

15 hours ago, phbigred said:

I’m assuming you meant didn’t have continued problems. Youtube SpaceInvader One has some great videos on building VMs. Other than minor tweaking here and there while Ryzen was still new my VM has been untouched for settings for months. Big thing for gaming make sure your board has 2 pci-e slots second one running 8x at minimum (B350 or x370). That’s so you don’t have to mess with the PCI-E passthrough workaround in the 1st slot. Big thing with ryzen make sure your bios are up to date! Rest of the VM setup is clicking drop downs. Give unraid at least 2 cores (1st set) and of you go with Ryzen pay the extra little bit for a 1400 (4C/8T) or ideally a 1600(6C/12T) if you want more threads. Overclocking the chips is pretty easy too. 1400 get up to about 3.7-3.8 and 1600 around 3.8-3.9 on air. 

 

Also so if you use steam the use of a mapped drive for your gaming repository on Unraid works very well. There’s some topics in the announcement forums with that info.

 

 

Cool, thanks for the tips, i will get a 1600. 

 

 

 

[John_M]

On 06/11/2017 at 4:52 PM, phbigred said:

Big thing for gaming make sure your board has 2 pci-e slots second one running 8x at minimum (B350 or x370).

 

I believe you need an X370 if you want to have the option of being able to choose between a single graphics card running at x16 and two running at x8. I don't think the B350 supports that option - the best you can achieve is one at x16 (directly connected to the Ryzen, so PCIe v3) and one at x4 (PCIe v2) via the B350. At least, that's the case with the Gigabyte motherboards (GA-AX370-Gaming K5 and GA-AB350-Gaming 3) that I've used.

Edited November 7, 2017 by John_M
typo

[phbigred]

Big difference between the 2 boards is SLI compatibility. I think you are right, x370 boards can be gotten pretty cheap.  Trick will be looking for “multi-gpu” support. Now technically a second pci-e 3.0 running at x4 is the same amount of lanes as pci-e 2.0 x16. For future proofing pay the extra $ if you can afford it. 

[Rowanh]

On 07/11/2017 at 11:43 PM, John_M said:

I believe you need an X370 if you want to have the option of being able to choose between a single graphics card running at x16 and two running at x8. I don't think the B350 supports that option - the best you can achieve is one at x16 (directly connected to the Ryzen, so PCIe v3) and one at x4 (PCIe v2) via the B350. At least, that's the case with the Gigabyte motherboards (GA-AX370-Gaming K5 and GA-AB350-Gaming 3) that I've used.

 

Right, the problem is I want a Micro Atx board and it seems B350 is the only option really. 

 

The only X370 Micro Atx board is the Biostar X370GT3, it has the following info on its PCI slots, 

 

1 x PCI-E x16 3.0 Slot(x16 for Ryzen CPU only, NPU/APU run at x8 speed)
1 x PCI-E x16 2.0 Slot(x4)(share bandwidth w/ PCI-E x1 slot, when PCI-E x1 is occupied, PCI-E x16(x4) will run at x1 speed)
 

So it seems to be the same (or worse) 

 

Just so I understand this, I need to put my main card in the second slot so I can assign the first slot to unRaid as to avoid having to have the "PCI-E passthrough workaround in the 1st slot" 

 

So then the question is how much does putting a card into a x16 2.0 slot running at x4 effect gaming FPS. I have heard people saying that the x16 pci-e 3 is not really taken advantage of, yet at least. 

 

Assuming that it effects it enough that this is not a good solution, is the workaround such a big problem? I guess I will try and find out more on this. 

 

Rowan

[unrateable]

Has anybody information on proper IOMMU grouping for the RYZEN builds ? I am considering to switch from 2011-3 to AMD but worry about IO isolation for add-on cards. Mostly people discuss use of 2 GPUs but what about the other use cases such as adding a TV card, HBA and addional USB slots ?

 

I am thankful for any hints. thanks 

cheers

[david279]

2 hours ago, unrateable said:

Has anybody information on proper IOMMU grouping for the RYZEN builds ? I am considering to switch from 2011-3 to AMD but worry about IO isolation for add-on cards. Mostly people discuss use of 2 GPUs but what about the other use cases such as adding a TV card, HBA and addional USB slots ?

 

I am thankful for any hints. thanks 

cheers

 

I have a gpu and a usb 3.1 card passedthru to my VMs. Both in there own groups using the first 2 PCIe slots. If i throw something in the third slot it gets thrown in a group with a bunch of other devices though. Not sure if the acs patch would clear that up.

[unrateable]

3 minutes ago, david279 said:

 

I have a gpu and a usb 3.1 card passedthru to my VMs. Both in there own groups using the first 2 PCIe slots. If i throw something in the third slot it gets thrown in a group with a bunch of other devices though. Not sure if the acs patch would clear that up.

thanks for the feedback. thats what i am worrying about. i cant find anyone who has more than 2 properly isolated groups for passthrough available. passing through a gpu, tv card, usb card and maybe a hba to several vms and or dockers at the same time seems not (yet) possible. neither for ryzen nor for threadripper (similar root port architecture?)  I suspect. what a pity