[Xen-users] Asrock X79 Extreme9 + Intel i7-3820

[Oleg Stepura <lists.xen.org@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi!

I decided to build a new virtualization PC instead of two regular PCs being used currently. The purpose is to create a XEN-based setup on Gentoo, planning to have Dom0 for Media-center (on XBMC) and domU with VGA-passthrough for Gaming.

Searching through all possible options I found that the best chipset with huge data throughput currently is x79, and there are some motherboards with reported successful VGA passed through on this chipset as well as x79 is listed on Intel as supported for Vt-d (http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/CS-030922.htm).

The motherboard I stopped at is Asrock X79 Extreme9 (http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/X79%20Extreme9/index.asp). This MB is cool since it has lots of SATA ports and several PCIex16 slots thus theoretically allowing multiple VMs to work with VGA passed through. Also it's good in terms of future upgrades since it supports up to 64Gb of RAM so maybe in future I will just buy extra memory if needed. And 4-channel memory should be faster that the regular 2-channel on Z77 chipsets.

Since all the CPUs for LGA2011 are still too expensive the only one I can afford is Intel i7-3820Â(http://ark.intel.com/products/63698/Intel-Core-i7-3820-Processor-10M-Cache-up-to-3_80-GHz). Both the MB and CPU are advertised to support VT-d (the MB has Vt-d in BIOS according to manual).

According to history here:Âhttp://wiki.xen.org/wiki/VTd_HowTo someone named MansÂaddedÂon 4 dec 2012 Asrock X79 Extreme9 as a supported motherboard for VT-d. But I cannot find any success story for passing VGA through to DomU VMs with this motherboard. Since the whole amount of money spent for the new rig is big, I need your help.

- Can anyone confirm that this motherboard (or better this MB with this CPU) work for VGA Passthrough with XEN?

- Is this motherboard somewhat compatible with XEN in the sense that all required drivers are already in kernel?

- Can anyone tell if this motherboard allows inserting PCIe x1 cards into it's lower PCIex16 slots (WIFI card and audio card in my case)? (Maybe any MB allows, just don't know)

Thanks a lot!

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