• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

IOMMU on 890FX

F

flexcore

Gawd
Joined
Apr 12, 2006
Messages
683
I'm going to be building a box to run VMs using Hyper-V. I been leaning towards going AMD and not sure what advantages IOMMU offers. This will just be a personal box used to learn about virtualization. The reason I ask is I am looking at using an 880g board to save some money compard to 890FX and a vcard.

As long as I am asking. Is AMD the way to go? My thinking is a PII X6 and 880g is very well priced compared to Intel.
 
Is this not the place to ask these questions? Just looking to know how to spend my money for a vmware and hyper-v box. I don't want to kick myself for making an uniformed decision.
 
In another forum I frequent, there is a person who got the following to work with ESXi:
Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD5 with AMD Phenom II X6

According to specs ... supports IOMMU (similar to Intel platform VT-d)
GA-890FXA-UD5

Seems like a perfect platform for learning.

If you aren't going to concern yourself with VMs using other hardware in your machine (IOMMU / VT-d),
then get the cheapest setup that will supports 64bit guests.
 
Last edited:
IOMMU buys you the ability to pass through raw pci/pci-e devices to the guest OS and using native drivers/getting native performance rather than going through emulated hardware.

Xen Supports this very well.
KVM supports this fairly well, but not with video cards.
Virtualbox Might support this but am not sure.
Can't speak for vmware/hyper-v as I don't use them.

What is it useful for?

1) Fast disk i/o networking
2) Using hardware that is not supported in the host os, but is supported in the guest
3) 3d acceleration in the guest (only with xen right now, AFAIK)

With all that being said, I've changed both my desktops to support this:

1090T + Asrock Deluxe4 + 12G ram = desktop1 (IOMMU)
Q6600 + DQ45CB + 8G ram = desktop2 (VT-D)
 
Thanks Robstar! Can you point mee in the right direction on learning/reading about this stuff.

What ram you running in that Asrock D4? I've been unsure about Asrock, how you like that board? I been looking at 2 x 4G ram, not sure what to get. I need stabilty first.
 
Did anyone get the USB ESXi 4.1 to boot properly from this motherboard? I could only install ESXi on a PATA drive :S

If it is not possible, can someone recommend a better 890FX motherboard that supports the full features of IOMMU ( ESXi boot up on a usb stick, PCIe pass-through device, etc.)?
 
LogicWater said:
Did anyone get the USB ESXi 4.1 to boot properly from this motherboard? I could only install ESXi on a PATA drive :S

If it is not possible, can someone recommend a better 890FX motherboard that supports the full features of IOMMU ( ESXi boot up on a usb stick, PCIe pass-through device, etc.)?
Click to expand...

For the USB boot are you trying to install it on USB from that PC, or installing it on another PC and moving the USB drive? I have some ESXi 4.1 servers that I cannot install ESXi on, either the hard drives or to a connected USB, but if I use another computer to install ESXi onto the USB drive, and plug it into the server, works like a champ. Not sure what the issue is, as I deployed about 8 servers before the problem started, and since then, none of the next 6 have worked without this work-around to get ESXi on the USB drive.
 
The motherboard I am using is a GA-890FXA-UD5... some people mentioned ASUS Crosshair IV but is there heating issues?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top