Raptor Computing Systems Community Forums (BETA)
Third Party Hardware => GPU Compute / Accelerators => Topic started by: vikings.thum on August 11, 2020, 10:39:47 am
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We're aiming to build desktop/workstation computers in Europe based on RCS hardware and we're looking to offer a selection of 3D GPUs that are close to the user/market for needs beyond the 2D AST2500.
Basically we're looking for an entry solution for office/daily driver use (incl. ≥ two non-4k display setups) and a mid-level solution (which can do at least 1x 2160p@60Hz). More high-end than that will be available on request (pointers still appreciated).
- What do you as an existing/aspiring user of Talos II (Lite) or Blackbird currently use and for what purposes?
- For which technical aspects would you choose AMD over NVIDIA and vice-versa?
- Do you have a personal recommendation/preference for specific GPUs and if so for what reason(s)?
I'd appreciate any additional data you can give us!
thum
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I personally would go with AMD.
I'm currently running a Radeon RX580 in my Blackbird with the open source drivers.
It has been working beautifully without any hassle or extra config.
The drivers being open source a big bonus for me.
I've been soured on too many issues dealing with Nvidia's proprietary drivers and licensing that I have replaced all my Nvidia cards with AMD in all my systems.
I don't have any specific recommendations.
I know the RX580 works great, outside of OpenCL support still lacking.
Something from that line would probably work well though, like the RX540 for a lower end card.
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I would also pick a Polaris. Maybe a SAPHIRE PULSE RX 570 8G G5 HDMI DP (https://www.sapphiretech.com/en/consumer/pulse-rx-570-8g-g5-hdmi-dp) or a RX 580. I wouldn't buy a Navi again.
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AMD Polaris, largely because of familiarity, and it seems to have the best track record right now. Doing just fine on the Raptor BTO WX7100, so either that or the RX equivalent should be spiffy.
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I put some of my own observations and preferences in the thread about Radeon Pro vs regular Radeon (https://forums.raptorcs.com/index.php/topic,137.0.html)
Part of the answer depends on what everybody else is using: for example, if a lot of people use a particular card and actively contribute bug fixes to the driver then that makes it compelling.
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As there are multiple threads about this, I felt it would be useful to create a wiki page about GPU selection criteria (https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/GPU_Selection)
Feel free to improve it. A shortlist of products tested by Raptor and other experienced users might be useful too.
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I would also pick a Polaris. Maybe a SAPHIRE PULSE RX 570 8G G5 HDMI DP (https://www.sapphiretech.com/en/consumer/pulse-rx-570-8g-g5-hdmi-dp) or a RX 580. I wouldn't buy a Navi again.
Excuse me, why wouldn't you take a Navi anymore? In any case, they represent the most prestigious production of the AMD GPU line ...
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Too many drawbacks.
A Polaris GPU causes far fewer problems. The performance between RX 580 and RX 5500 is almost identical. Performance/price ratio between RX 580 and RX 5700 is also better.
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A Polaris GPU causes far fewer problems. The performance between RX 580 and RX 5500 is almost identical. Performance/price ratio between RX 580 and RX 5700 is also better.
On power consumption/heat output, they are both similar too, 30-35W idle
Are all RX 580 variants considered reliable or is there one particular OEM model that people have tested more than others?
Do you consider all Navi to be bad right now, or once again, does it depend on the specific OEM model chosen?
One strategy in my mind right now: Scavange any spare Radeon GPU for 12 months as a stop-gap measure, skip over the new Navi in November and wait for them to release a card supporting AV1
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That sounds like a good strategy.
But I'm afraid that the new Navi-GPUs will have the same problem as the old one.
With Navi-GPUs, fast-reset must be disabled. Which is quite annoying.
I still have kernel problems (https://pastebin.com/pe4ePJzS). The GPU does not crash, but that's probably where my sound problems come from. I dunno if it depends on the model, but I guess that it concerns all Navi-GPUs.
Regarding RX 580 I would buy either a Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB or a PowerColor Radeon RX 580 Red Dragon V2 8GB. But this is a question of taste. Performace/ noise-wise these are pretty good, IMO. Each costs approx. €170.
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And for Navi you need at least Kernel 5.6.13 or these patches (https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/amd-gfx/2019-December/043682.html).
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The Wikipedia article on the Radeon RX series has a nice table (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_RX_500_series)
A key point that jumps out at me there: some of these are 8x cards, e.g. RX 560. Most manufacturers produce cards that have the same size connection as a 16x card but in fact they are only wired for 8x. Some people talk about cutting open the end of their 8x slot and using it for one of these cards.
As these cards are very cheap and as people only have 2 slots in their Blackbirds and Talos II Lite, this could be an interesting hack to keep the 16x slot free for some other application.
As a bonus, those cards use a lot less power, generating less heat and noise.
I suspect modifying the slot will void the warranty, maybe Raptor could consider supplying motherboards with a slot that is modified before delivery.
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Another observation I made when installing the Sapphire Radeon RX 580 Pulse: this particular card has heatsink on the back of the card
In a Blackbird, the 8x slot is on the fan side of the GPU, so the rear heatsink on the RX 580 will not clash with another card.
In a Talos II Lite, there are only two slots and the 8x slot is behind the 16x slot, opposite of the Blackbird layout: therefore, if you put something like a HBA with a front heatsink into the 8x slot, it may be too close to the rear heatsink of the GPU
I tried putting the LSI 9207-4i4e behind the Sapphire Radeon RX 580 Pulse and I found they don't touch but the gap is less than 2mm
The only way around that appears to be choosing another RX 580 variation or using one of the other strategies described above, e.g. a PCIe riser or an 8x GPU
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News sites are reporting that AMD will announce details of the Big Navi cards (Navi 2, RX 6000, Sienna Cichlid) on 28 October (https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/9/21429127/amd-zen-3-cpu-big-navi-gpu-events-october) and it looks like they might reach the shops in November. The news doesn't really include any specs.
Personally, I can get by using an old GPU for a couple of months longer to see if Big Navi is a worthwhile buy.
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Yes, as cards they will be excellent and will also have a good price, the problem is that you will have to wait months before they make drivers to be able to use them with Power ...
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They already made some contributions at the kernel level.
Does anybody know if AMD provides any prototype boards to the X developers or if there is any way to explore that with them?
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I was now reading information on the Polaris MPC talks about but they are cards in any case old as a conception. They have the manufacturing process still at 14 nM among other things. Even if they give less problems, they are still old cards compared to the Navi so I personally always prefer the Navi. Or sooner or later they will have to solve those small bugs and then to me the 5700 XT is fine, the fault in our case is the Kernel that from version 5.7.X unfortunately has taken steps backwards as regards the reading of Navi 10/14. They are the ones who have to search for the bug and fix it ... We hope they do it as soon as possible because it is a long time now that we have been moving forward with this bug ...
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I built backports of all the necessary components for Big Navi (llvm, mesa) on Debian buster. The kernel requires gcc-9 or greater but I hope to have that sorted out too.
In theory, this means I can just plug the card in and it may work
Online shops are starting to list it for ordering on Wednesday.
Here are the latest specs in a useful comparison table (https://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2020/11/16/amd-radeon-rx-6800-and-6800xt-revealed-stunning-cards-to-battle-nvidia-and-offer-liquid-cooling-at-launch/)
Key things that jumped out at me:
- yes, the AV1 codec hardware support is apparently included, this will allow playback at 4K even if we don't have optimized media stacks on POWER
- the 16GB RAM will be good for multi-monitor or multi-seat, this is a priority for me and one of the main reasons I'm putting some time into testing it
- the XT card appears to offer 30% higher pixel fill rate, probably worth the extra $70 for anybody with multiple monitors/users
- the biggest sacrifice with the XT is the extra half slot it consumes. Not an issue if you have Talos II Lite or a PCIe 4 riser kit for vertical mounting.
I couldn't find details about idle power usage. Personally, my GPU is almost always idle, I don't do gaming. I'm hoping that it shuts off the fans when idle as with some of the predecessors.
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FWIW, there is absolutely no problem to playback 4K on Navi14
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At this point - assuming I build a Power9 machine in the next few months - which GPU is more likely to behave itself with a contemporary install of Ubuntu? A Radeon FirePro W7000 (GCN 1.0), or an XFX Radeon R9 390 (GCN 1.1)? And is amdgpu likely to work if I force it with kernel parameters? And while I'm at it, how is Navi support at this point?
These are things I wonder before hearing that Intel's Arc is coming early next year... Here's hoping they manage solid OSS drivers like they have for their IGPs so far, and that they'll work on non-x86 architectures in due time.
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I assume you already have these GCN1.0 GPUs? They should work. Just try them out.
Price-wise, all GPUs are bad at the moment. The best is still a GCN4.0 RX550.
Navi is more or less well supported since kernel 5.6.13.
RDNA GPUs are not supported at the moment.
Here you can find a good overview:
https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/POWER9_Hardware_Compatibility_List/PCIe_Devices#AMD
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Here you can find a good overview:
https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/POWER9_Hardware_Compatibility_List/PCIe_Devices#AMD
How up-to-date is the GPU list? A few of the items have wording like "May need at least linux 4.16", or "A compatibility mode is expected to be included in Linux 5.4 and above that will resolve this issue. ", or requires kernel patches from 3 years ago. I'm considering a Talos II build, but am worried about the GPU issue. Is the 580 still the best working non-pro Radeon? I'm also not familiar with AMD cards, I've always been an Nvidia person, but won't be using one for the Talos due to the many obvious reasons... I'm assuming Void Linux is the best way to go to side-step the 64k kernel page issue, and that this issue is still a problem today?
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How up-to-date is the GPU list? A few of the items have wording like "May need at least linux 4.16", or "A compatibility mode is expected to be included in Linux 5.4 and above that will resolve this issue. ", or requires kernel patches from 3 years ago. I'm considering a Talos II build, but am worried about the GPU issue. Is the 580 still the best working non-pro Radeon? I'm also not familiar with AMD cards, I've always been an Nvidia person, but won't be using one for the Talos due to the many obvious reasons... I'm assuming Void Linux is the best way to go to side-step the 64k kernel page issue, and that this issue is still a problem today?
Hey there! I'll go through these questions in order and give the answers I've found so far.
- The support list is pretty up to date by now. Don't worry about warnings about kernel versions prior to 5.10, you're unlikely to run into a current distro shipping with one. The 5.4 error in particular had to do with DMA handling mostly applicable to Radeons, but that's a settled issue from everything I've heard. Kernel patches are also irrelevant. Everything from PCIe Radeons going back to the Radeon HD 2000 series through pre-Polaris Radeons should be handled by the radeon driver, and everything from the Radeon RX 400 on up should be handled by amdgpu. There are only two caveats: currently nothing newer than the Radeon RX 5500/5700 currently works with ppc64le, and the Radeon HD 7000 series through the Radeon R9 series may work with the amdgpu driver.
- The Radeon RX 500 series should work fine - if you want something a little faster, an RX 590 should also not be problematic. The state of Navi/RDNA1 is also reliable. Consumer Radeon RX 5500 and 5700 cards also reportedly work well, I just wanted a safe bet and lucked into my Radeon Pro W5500 at MSRP during the worst part of the GPU shortage.
- You can always set up your machine with a distribution which uses 64KB kernel pages by default while using the integrated video, recompile your kernel for 4KB pages, install and boot that, and then set to working with 4KB kernel pages. For broader adoption's sake I hope Intel gets up to speed in Linux soon and works better with non-4KB kernel pages, but I am happy with Void despite an initial learning curve.
I'm starting to think there should be a General GPU Troubleshooting thread here, now that Blackbirds are going into a lot of hands. People need a central place to compare notes and discuss procedure and results.
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for the least headache, should one go with a wx7100 currently, or would i be okay with an rx 580 or vega 64? looking for the easiest gpu solution. this is for desktop/games not so much workstation stuff.
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for the least headache, should one go with a wx7100 currently, or would i be okay with an rx 580 or vega 64? looking for the easiest gpu solution. this is for desktop/games not so much workstation stuff.
I wouldn't worry too much, then. RX 580 or Vega should be fine with the amdgpu driver at this point, so long as you're running a 4KB page size kernel. I slapped a little info into a thread that could be useful if you want to boot with integrated skiroot graphics and then switch to your GPU within X/Wayland. Do post in the game thread with whatever results you have - I'm keen to start testing games myself, and will start posting some resources and results there soon.
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Any of these cards should working. What is your concern? 64K issue is solved since Kernel 5.10.101. I have a RDNA1.
Do you own one of these cards already?
The only cards aren't working are RDNA2. But Raptor is working on it.
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No I don't own any of these cards yet. I've never owned an ATi or AMD gpu in my life (always used nvidia, never had an issue with it on linux which is the only OS ive used for quite a bit now).
However I'm shopping for a GPU currently anyways, so one i can use in a power9 helps.
I'm waiting to sell a few things off before picking up a basic blackbird mobo and 4 core.
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Unfortunately Nvdia, using proprietary drivers, does not get along very well with our Power9 machines and therefore consequently the resulting operation is never very good. For example, the old 2070 works but has limitations such as 3D acceleration which does not work. The only cards that are good and can be fully exploited are AMD at the moment ...
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If you're using a 64K page kernel (Fedora, for example), I can attest that the WX7100 works fine with amdgpu. I haven't had a need to try something newer.