Pro GPU? - Gentoo (used) workstation build

[Zucca]

This is a bit like a continuation to my earlier topic of if I should choose dual CPU or not.

I chose to go with dual CPU. For the base, I bought a used Dell Precision Tower 7810.
This is good opportunity to learn the possible quirks of such system. I stuffed it with 8x32GB of RAM.
I also found a pair of Xeon E5-2697 V4s just for 70€ (about the same in USD). I'll install them later. It now has Xeon E5-2620v3s (Which I probably move to my server later... that's another story).

I plan to use at least two 4k displays with the workstation. I'll maybe add third display there (1600x1920).
I've been looking at used Radeon Pro GPUs, but also non-pro.

Now... If I buy, say Radeon WX9100, will it work just fine with amdgpu drivers? Can I utilize GPGPU just like if it was a "consumer" GPU?

Any suggestions for a (better) gpu for my setup? PCIe in this workstation is 3.0 and the setup can generally accept a GPU of around 300W of power.
I don't want to fight with nvidia GPUs. I use wayland and it seems nvidia isn't there yet. I also don't like to use their closed source drivers. So the other ones would be Intel GPUs. But does my PCIe 3.0 bottleneck them?
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..: Zucca :..

[NeddySeagoon]

Zucca,

Before your topic sinks to oblivion, I'll post what I know.

When I put together my bucket list PC at the end of 2021 I looked at second hand AMD Pro graphics cards.
Consumer graphics cards were like hens teeth and stupid prices at the time.
I was not considering a second hand consumer graphics card, as they tend to be thrashed within an inch of their lives by 'miners'.
In the end, I kept my old graphics card for a while.

None of the rest of this is tested.
My research suggested that the Pro cards use consumer GPUs. They are not supposed to support gaming. So that's OK.
The inference is that they will work with AMDGPU, but as I say, I did not put my money on that.

Some supporting cirumstantial evidence can be found on cateee.net

[Zucca]

Thanks Neddy.
I already bought Radeon Pro 320V, which is a data center GPU, but it's also same as WX 8200, I believe.
The price was around 170€ with postage. It's pretty the same as WX 9100, but has half the VRAM - 8GB. I may regret this choice.
Oh well.. I can put it on my server if I were to buy WX 9100...

I'll update this topic when I have tested the GPU.
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..: Zucca :..

[ian.au]

[Zucca]

[ian.au]

[Zucca]

This build has been a workstation from the start. But, yes, I do plan to run all kinds of containers and VMs in there, mainly to test out different programs etc on different environments. Also (when up) it could serve binaries.

But I'd like to have as much VRAM as possible (preferably HBM2), because I have two 4k displays.
Anyway... If I find myself in a need for more VRAM I can always upgrade later. V320 will suffice until that time comes.
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..: Zucca :..

[NeddySeagoon]

Zucca,

A 4k display is 3840 × 2160 pixels, each pixel requires 4 bytes of VRAM. That's a total of 33,177,600 bytes.
For double buffering of a single display, that's 66,355,200 bytes.
Twice as much for two displays or just over 128MB. Say 256MB for cash and some leg room.

What will you use the rest of the VRAM for?
Not textures unless you do 3D gaming.
Some extra VRAM is good so that the GPU can compose 'tiles' outside the pixel buffers then 'blit' them into the right place,
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[Zucca]

[NeddySeagoon]

Zucca,

Even HDR 10bit, fits in four bytes. The Alpha channel is reduced to two bits.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[Zucca]

Wait?
Alpha channel?

I always thought that

• SDR is 8-bits + 8-bits + 8-bits == 24-bits per pixel
• HDR is 10-bits + 10-bits + 10-bits == 30-bits per pixel

... So yes. HDR is just two bits off of full 4 bytes. But then SDR would be exactly 3 bytes.

... at least when we're speaking of RGB. I'm not too familiar with the other pixel formats and how much memory they take.
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..: Zucca :..

[NeddySeagoon]

Zucca,

For 8 bit colour you have 8 bits per pixel, plus 8 bits for transparency, also known as Alpha. That gives 32 bits per pixel
For 10 bit HDR 30 bits are used for the colours 10 bits each) and only 2 bits left for transparency. Its the same 32 bits per pixel.

The 80x6 range of CPUs have never had any instructions to work with 3 byte wide data elements, so pixels have always been 1, 8, 16 or 32 bits.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[Zucca]

[NeddySeagoon]

Zucca,

RGB and the like waste the 'spare' byte or two bits, in every pixel.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[wanne32]

The problem will be not so much the FirePro part than its age. While CGN 2 is the first officially supported Generation of the amdgpu-driver and AMD Radeon FirePro W9100s pci-device code 67A0 is explicitely listed as supported I would expect some hick ups. amdgpu was not around when the W9100 was released and AMD still recommends the old AMD Pro drivers. (It is very common for AMD that they support one GPU in 2 or 3 different drivers and the recommendations are often not very accurate.) On the other hand even the even older W4100 is reported to work unofficially but fine with amdgpu.

[Zucca]

wanne32,
Thanks for your input, but It seems I've typoed the model I mentioned in my first post. I meant WX9100 not W9100 (AMD is really bad at naming its products).

I'll fix this in the original post.
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..: Zucca :..

[wanne32]

[Zucca]

[Zucca]

Oh boy what a ride it has been for the last two days...

So at first I didn't get any display output, no matter what. Did a CMOS reset and all.
After a bit of digging around the internet I found several clues to what's been going on: I've accidentally bought a Google Stadia developer workstation GPU.
Normally these GPUs are part of a (customized for Google?) Lenovo P520 ThinkStation. One source for this claim.
I believe this GPU doesn't differ from WX 8200 in any other way than BIOS/firmware being slightly different.

I fitted my workstation with R7 250E to get some display output. And it worked fine. I Adjusted few setting in the BIOS and specifically set PCIe slot 2 as the main "VGA slot". Then swapped the V320 back.
Then after a lot of troubleshooting I realized that SATA0 port needs to be populated or else the PC won't boot very far (I believe there's a fix for that If update the BIOS).
Ok now I finally see the GRUB menu with the V320. But I only see the very first kernel message and then the screen freezes. The boot process continues and I can see it getting an ip.
So back goes the R7 250E.
Then booting into Gentoo Live and I get past the GRUB. Yay! Things are working now, but... V320 is now on the shelf. :D

I've encountered this kind of incompatibility before.
A HP prebuilt - If I changed the GPU from the original I couldn't get any display output until kernel had loaded the drivers. So to access bios I needed to swap the original GPU back.

After inspecting the output of lspci -k I saw that Gentoo live media doesn't include amdgpu (why would it, really). So I have hopes that when I get to load amdgpu things that to work.
One thing that was interesting is that the boot up to GRUB (before kernel) I could get 4k signal out of the V320. But after kernel loads the display output freezes. So If I could keep the graphics as-is after kernel loads, I could be using the V320 already now.

Now. Enough rambling. I think I'll try some graphical live iso to test out if amdgpu can bring the display output back.

Now if anyone has any experiences with issues like this... please speak up. Or even if you have some sort of guesses what might solve the screen freezing... please seak up. ;)

P.S. If all fails, I might as well try to flash WX 8200 firmware onto V320.
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..: Zucca :..

[NeddySeagoon]

Zucca,

Missing firmware?

amdgpu built in and not as a module?

What does

[Zucca]

Neddy,

Currently I have the R7 250E installed. V320 on the shelf. :)
Anyways:

[NeddySeagoon]

Zucca,

Its the V320 we need the lspci -nnk from. Or more exactly, is it listed on cateee.net

The amdgpu driver and all its various firmware is huge. Hence its not on a minimal ISO.
However, EFI_FB should work on on EFI system or VESA_FB on a BIOS system.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[Zucca]

[NeddySeagoon]

Zucca,

Fit both GPUs with the console on the R7 250E. Just so you can get the lspci?

grub has a GRAPHICS_MODE option, or something like that. If you set it to "keep" grub passes its framebuffer onto the kernel, so that the kernel can use SIMPLE_FB. That's not to say it will, just that it can.
That may not be there though.
I've only ever used grub on arm64. Its horrible there. It beats EFI stub ... just.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[Zucca]