Xen users - Jul 2013 - ASRock B85M Pro4 micro-ATX Motherboard Supports VT-d!!!

Hi,

I have just upgraded my computer to Intel Core i5-4430 Quad Core @ 3.0 
GHz (supports VT-d), ASRock B85M Pro4 micro-ATX LGA1150 motherboard 
(supports VT-d), 8 GB Kingston DDR3-1600 memory and Cooler Master Elite 
311 ATX casing (all for SGD$501).

I made my computer upgrade on Independence Day 4th July 2013.

I have also flashed the UEFI BIOS of ASRock B85M Pro4 motherboard to 
version 1.50.
In the UEFI BIOS, I have set VT-d to Enabled.

I hope this information is useful to all Xen users.

-- 
Yours sincerely,

Singapore Citizen Mr. Teo En Ming (Zhang Enming)

Nice to hear confirmation about this. I have been spending many months gathering
data regarding both Hardware and Firmware/BIOS support for both Intel VT-d and
AMD-Vi, and I was waiting to get confirmation on Haswell Chipsets/Motherboards
before getting one.


There was a Thread one month ago of a guy that speaked to AsRock support, and
they said that they provide support for VT-d in all current Haswell Desktop
Chipsets-based Motherboards, specifically B85, H87, Z87, and Q87:

http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-users/2013-06/msg00083.html

You confirmed that B85 works. AsRock seems to be currently the vendor that is
providing the best support for VT-d in Desktop Motherboards.



Supermicro also mentions prominently in the Manual of the Z87-based C7Z87 and
C7Z87-OCE Motherboards that it got VT-d support:

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Core/Z87/C7Z87.cfm
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Core/Z87/C7Z87-OCE.cfm

While not tested, I believe it should work due to Supermicro reputation in the
Server market. Besides, while on Manuals from other Motherboards brands they
just say that they have an option to enable or disable VT-d (Something like
"Turn on this option to enable Intel virtualization technology"), the
Manual from those two Motherboards actually do makes mention of what VT-d is
for, and talks about the ACPI DMAR table, adding to their credibility that they
know what they''re talking about.


ASUS on the other hand, told me that they don''t support VT-d on
anything else but Q-series Chipsets because it fails some tests they do, but
without information about what tests those are, I can''t take them
serious considering that there are a lot of people that successfully used VT-d
on all the other Chipsets:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?286345-ASUS-Z87-Motherboards-Overview-Guides-and-Official-Support&p=5191955&viewfull=1#post5191955

He also mentioned somewhere on other forum that there is a official Intel
utility to verify VT-d support, but doesn''t seem to be available to the
public, because is nowhere to be found:

http://communities.intel.com/thread/35685

Besides that, ASUS got mediocre support for AMD-Vi last time I checked. 890FX
and 990FX Chipsets had the required IOMMU, but the BIOS ACPI IVRS tables of most
BIOS from ASUS Motherboards were usually broken. They can''t blame the
Chipset on those ones, is simply that their BIOS developers don''t even
care about spending time to implement this feature.


Finally, Intel has a webpage where they say that in order to have VT-d support,
you only need Processor and BIOS support for it. It doesn''t mention
requiring a specific Chipset. It also says that Intel got a B85 Motherboard that
supports VT-d:

http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/cs-030922.htm

However, the issue comes from Intel Ark data. If you check the Chipsets:

http://ark.intel.com/products/codename/37530/Lynx-Point

It says that only Q87, C222 and C226 have VT-d support, with a no for all the
others, including B85. Not only that based on experience this data seems to be
wrong, but is also wrong on previous generations Chipsets specs, because VT-d
was reported as working in many Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge Chipsets that Intel
Ark said they does not work with it (Yet Intel also claimed VT-d support on some
Intel branded Motherboards using those Chipsets, from the previous link). It
also doesn''t make sense, because the IOMMU was moved from the Chipset
to the Processor itself at Nehalem era.
This info from Intel Ark is what has been misleading people all along. I would
love to get a official word from Intel about what should work, and what should
not, and that after no less than three years, they fix those specs and
contradicting info.



At least, after spending several months trying to get real facts about what you
need to get working support for this feature, now I could say that I can
purchase either AsRock or Supermicro with confidence that they will work with
VT-d.
 		 	   		  

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I have an interesing update.

Yesterday Supermicro replied me to an E-Mail I send a week ago


My E-Mail:

****************************

Subject: Intel VT-d support on LGA 1150 Motherboards



I have been interesed in purchasing a LGA 1150 Motherboard for a Haswell
 build, possibily with a Xeon E3-1245 V3. One of the requisites is that 
it supports VT-d, so I can use the IOMMU feature to do VGA passthrough 
with the Xen Hypervisor. There are many consumer Desktops Motherboards 
from other brands that usually does NOT support VT-d due to the lack of a
 proper ACPI DMAR table in the BIOS, rendering the feature useless even 
through there seems to be Hardware support. This is the reason why I 
started to pay attention to Server oriented Motherboards like yours.



I started to look Supermicro X10SAT Motherboard, that claims in the 
manual VT-d support. However, one of the reasons why I don''t find
Server
 Motherboards convincing is that while I believe they would do the job 
properly, I will miss all the BIOS arsenal of options to run it 
out-of-spec (Overclocking/underclocking,  overvolting/undervolting the 
Processor, RAM Timmings, etc), that are very rare to see on a Server 
Motherboard. There is also another Motherboard similar to the X10SAT, 
the C7Z87-OCE, which seems to have all those options that I want to 
have, and also claims VT-d support in the manual, so it seems like a 
better choice.



However, Intel Ark site says that the Z87 Chipset does not support VT-d, while
C226 Chipset does:



http://ark.intel.com/compare/75013,75522



Can Supermicro confirm if VT-d works on the C7Z87-OCE and if that Chipset info
is wrong on Intel part?





Besides, accoding to photos, the X10SAT and C7Z87-OCE seems to be based 
on the same PCB, so they should be very similar. Are there any more 
feature that doesn''t prominently appear on the specifications page that
I''m missing by going to one choice against the other, like the BIOS 
options
****************************


Supermicro response:


****************************
Since Z87 chipset does not support VT-d,  onboard LAN will not support 
it either because it is connected to PCH PCIe port.  One workaround is 
to use a VT-d enabled PCIe device and plug it into CPU based PCIe-port 
on board.  Along with a VT-d enabled CPU the above workaround should 
work per Intel.  As for X10SAT, although it shares the same PCB as 
C7Z87-OCE, will not have overclocking options enabled in the BIOS since 
that was not what it is designed for. 

****************************




This is extremely interesing. Basically, what I understand is that they say that
you DO need Chipset support for VT-d, but only for devices connected to the
Chipset PCIe lanes, while Processor PCIe lanes should work independently. What I
didn''t understand is if the workaround is to make the Chipset devices
work with VT-d using the Processor support instead of Chipset.


I still insist that it will be very useful if someone gets a Intel guy that can
explain in-depth this.

 		 	   		  

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