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Xeon L5518 + VT-d?

I

intlhouseofdan

n00b
Joined
Aug 16, 2011
Messages
19
Hello,

I am curious if anyone has experience with these processors. I can not find any information saying if these do or do not support VT-d. I am still somewhat confused about whether or not the cpu has to support vt-d along with the motherboard for passthrough or just the motherboard itself.

Thanks in advance!

_iHOD
 
I don't think any of the Gainestown (dual-core Nehalem-EP) chips support VT-d, just VT-x.
 
Does the chip and motherboard need to support it to pass through an LSI 1068e card for example? It just seems so odd, the boards support it but not the processors. I was looking into AMD as well but its just the 6000+ series Opterons that support it and those are still way too expensive for me.
 
Yeah Opt will support PCI pass through all day long on the 6k series for sure. I think there are a few lower core models, i.e. 8 cores that are around the 250 price range. Is that too much?

edit... here http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819105266 Is this more in your price range. Thats actually a very nice chip for a server.

These 6000 series Opt's have AMD-V vers 2.0 which supports PCI-e passthrough. Also all G34 socketed motherboards fully support AMD-v to my knowledge. Also these chips support quad channel ram and full on ECC support in all modes as far as I am aware also. Kinda pointless to shell out double to triple the price for a Xeon if you want just blockbuster VM performance. If you were gaming or something like that with the processor then Intel might have a little higher IPC.

Also Xen, Parrallels Workstation, and VMware ESXi 5 support VTd/AMD-v 2.0, all the other ones like virtualbox VMware workstation etc... only support AMD v1.x and VT-x

I know the last Opteron system I got to play with in a data center had insane benches on it's LSI raid card across all OS's in ESXi due to pci-e passthrough. From a workstation point of view GPU performance will be maximized as well as add in NIC's i.e. 10gbps/1gbps quad port/dual port/fiber optic/ whatever due to pci-e passthrough.
 
Last edited:
tangoseal said:
Yeah Opt will support PCI pass through all day long on the 6k series for sure. I think there are a few lower core models, i.e. 8 cores that are around the 250 price range. Is that too much?

edit... here http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819105266 Is this more in your price range. Thats actually a very nice chip for a server.

These 6000 series Opt's have AMD-V vers 2.0 which supports PCI-e passthrough. Also all G34 socketed motherboards fully support AMD-v to my knowledge. Also these chips support quad channel ram and full on ECC support in all modes as far as I am aware also. Kinda pointless to shell out double to triple the price for a Xeon if you want just blockbuster VM performance. If you were gaming or something like that with the processor then Intel might have a little higher IPC.

Also Xen, Parrallels Workstation, and VMware ESXi 5 support VTd/AMD-v 2.0, all the other ones like virtualbox VMware workstation etc... only support AMD v1.x and VT-x

I know the last Opteron system I got to play with in a data center had insane benches on it's LSI raid card across all OS's in ESXi due to pci-e passthrough. From a workstation point of view GPU performance will be maximized as well as add in NIC's i.e. 10gbps/1gbps quad port/dual port/fiber optic/ whatever due to pci-e passthrough.
Click to expand...

You are a god. Thank you very much for the information! That processor is a perfect start. I plan to have dual cpu's but for now 8 cores is plenty. Motherboards are pricey though http://www.ebay.com/itm/ASUS-KGPE-D...otherboards&hash=item2c61b1a68e#ht_4388wt_905
 
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intlhouseofdan said:
You are a god. Thank you very much for the information! That processor is a perfect start. I plan to have dual cpu's but for now 8 cores is plenty. Motherboards are pricey though http://www.ebay.com/itm/ASUS-KGPE-D...otherboards&hash=item2c61b1a68e#ht_4388wt_905
Click to expand...

Well do your research your-self, check out benchmarks, new egg and amazon reviews, read review sites. There are also some other opterons in that range that have a little higher clock speed for a little more price. Also research AMD-v tech to make sure it has all the stuff you are looking for. If it doesnt atleast you didnt go into this blindly.

I am but one person with one opinion and limited to what I know.
 
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I checked out the benchmarks against my Dual E5345 Xeon's and it blows them out of the water. I cant come anywhere near the price range of a sandy bridge based system and from what I have read, physical cores are better than virtual cores for virtual machines because of scheduling.

The scalability of the platform is also attractive to me, I can have up to 256GB (not that I ever would) and down the road if I find $800 on the side of the road I can upgrade to dual 12-core cpu's.
 
intlhouseofdan said:
Does the chip and motherboard need to support it to pass through an LSI 1068e card for example? It just seems so odd, the boards support it but not the processors. I was looking into AMD as well but its just the 6000+ series Opterons that support it and those are still way too expensive for me.
Click to expand...

Hit ebay for cheap 6xxx chips - the guys in the distributed computing sub forum have been buying them like crazy, they have also been offloading a few of their slower chips
 
intlhouseofdan said:
Does the chip and motherboard need to support it to pass through an LSI 1068e card for example? It just seems so odd, the boards support it but not the processors. I was looking into AMD as well but its just the 6000+ series Opterons that support it and those are still way too expensive for me.
Click to expand...

There are two levels of support for passthrough:

Simple whole device passthrough to a VM which needs:
VT-d CPU and motherbnoard
Hypervisor / Host that supports it (AFAIK NOT HYPER-V)

Virtual Device Passthrough for multiple VMs:
VT-d CPU and motherboard with SR-IOV support
Device with SR-IOV support (1068e does not support this, Intel ET Gigabit cards do for example)
Hypervisor / Host with SR-IOV support (Limited to recent version of VMWare and Xen)

4000 Series Opterons DO SUPPORT Pci Passthrough and SR-IOV. Even Socket F opterons can support PCI Passthough if combined with the relatively rare motherboards that used the AMD SR56XX chipset (All dual 4000 series boards use this chipset).

The big advantage of SR-IOV is multiple VMs can use one device without any additional overhead.
 
tangoseal said:
AMD supports software and haradware virtualization across the board no matter what. I am tending to want to swing to AMD opteron for all my future VMware needs
Click to expand...

Unfortunately not accurate.

My E-350 has AMD-V, but not IOMMU support.

Since I want to keep power use down, my plan is to replace it with a Supermicro server board coupled with an Ivy Bridge based 17W Xeon E3-1220L V2 when they are launched.

I would go the opteron route, but their power saving solutions all have too many cores for me, and the non-power saving ones use more power than I'd like.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038418780 said:
Unfortunately not accurate.

My E-350 has AMD-V, but not IOMMU support.

Since I want to keep power use down, my plan is to replace it with a Supermicro server board coupled with an Ivy Bridge based 17W Xeon E3-1220L V2 when they are launched.

I would go the opteron route, but their power saving solutions all have too many cores for me, and the non-power saving ones use more power than I'd like.
Click to expand...

Were not discussing desktop products. This thread was about server space products hence why I used the words Opteron in my reply earlier.
 
tangoseal said:
Were not discussing desktop products. This thread was about server space products hence why I used the words Opteron in my reply earlier.
Click to expand...

There is no reason an E-350 or Athlon or Phenom can't serve as a server, even an corporate one.

Server Product = Enable ECC, charge lots more money for virtually nothing :p
 
Zarathustra[H];1038419327 said:
There is no reason an E-350 or Athlon or Phenom can't serve as a server, even an corporate one.

Server Product = Enable ECC, charge lots more money for virtually nothing :p
Click to expand...

Go back and read all the post in order to figure out why these comments were made.

p.s. I do agree that a Desktop processor is more than enough for a server. It all depends on what you need. All socket 939 Phenom II processors support ECC. But this conversation was about VT-d and AMD V 2.0 on server processors. Not desktop.

These threads get derailed so quickly when people do not read a little before the last post in the thread chain.
 
tangoseal said:
Go back and read all the post in order to figure out why these comments were made
Click to expand...

Just because OP was discussing his Xeon, does not mean that if he were to consider AMD he'd get an Opteron.

I would have agreed with the statement if it were written as "AMD Supports IOMMU accross the board in their Server products" or "on recent opterons" or something like that.

There is nothing about this thread that makes it a strictly Opteron/Xeon thread, and in order to avoid leading people astray, I added a comment regarding my experiences with an AMD product and IOMMU (or the lack thereof). Nothing wrong with that.
 
I am so confused on this IOMMU stuff. I cant afford to buy a 5500 series board (VT-d) and Xeon L5518 (no VT-d) to not have it pass through my 1068e card.

Poking around NewEgg and FleaBay the price of a single Opteron 6128 w/16GB memory and a dual socket board is close to that of the 5500+L5518 setup I was originally looking at.

The thing that sticks out at me the most is the fact that Mangy-Cours is a little newer than the 5500/L5518 combo and it supports IOMMU.
 
intlhouseofdan said:
I am so confused on this IOMMU stuff. I cant afford to buy a 5500 series board (VT-d) and Xeon L5518 (no VT-d) to not have it pass through my 1068e card.

Poking around NewEgg and FleaBay the price of a single Opteron 6128 w/16GB memory and a dual socket board is close to that of the 5500+L5518 setup I was originally looking at.

The thing that sticks out at me the most is the fact that Mangy-Cours is a little newer than the 5500/L5518 combo and it supports IOMMU.
Click to expand...

Do not be confused.

All Opteron 6000 series processors will support it. If you super duper confused then an easy phone call to AMD sales dept. will really clear things up.

So many people forget that a telephone exist. Not being sarcastic either!

I call companies all the time when I am confused. I would rather call the source of information direct rather than have blind lead me when I am blind.
 
tangoseal said:
So many people forget that a telephone exist. Not being sarcastic either!

I call companies all the time when I am confused. I would rather call the source of information direct rather than have blind lead me when I am blind.
Click to expand...


I don't think people forget telephones exist, I just figure most people have had so many bad experiences with the people on the other line being complete idiots unable to answer anything not written in there 25 page help manual that they find it pointless to even bother these days.


Here I go myself, further derailing this thread lol.
 
Oh I know the 6000 series support IOMMU, what I am confused about is if the cpu is DEFINITELY required to pass through my 1068e.

The hardware is already purchased bit I would love to find out, for piece of mind, what the definite answer is. I read back and some say yes some say no but I think what troubles me the most is why the hell would intel put vt-d in their chipset if the cpu is required to have it as well. Maybe a planned release that was never realized?

Thank you all for your responses.
 
intlhouseofdan said:
Oh I know the 6000 series support IOMMU, what I am confused about is if the cpu is DEFINITELY required to pass through my 1068e.

The hardware is already purchased bit I would love to find out, for piece of mind, what the definite answer is. I read back and some say yes some say no but I think what troubles me the most is why the hell would intel put vt-d in their chipset if the cpu is required to have it as well. Maybe a planned release that was never realized?

Thank you all for your responses.
Click to expand...

AFAIK Intel can only enable/disable VT on the CPU, if the CPU supports VT then I dont think they can stop VT-D working if the board supports it so yes the L5518 should work for passthrough. If you use Xen there is an unsupported patch to pass through a single device on ANY platform.
 
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