Contemplating my next build

[jpenguin]

The "instructional" YouTube videos I prefer are the ones made by authors who write out a complete script and follow it, edit and merge multiple clips to be sure to include everything, removing the blunders, mis-speakings, mistakes, etc..., making a fine video. One example of how to do it is by a member of this forum, Hallergard.

I finally have a decent gaming machine but the only game I play is Minecraft, and that with my grandsons. Most of my "gaming" is running physical simulations using Orbiter, Stellarium, Sandbox Universe^2, and similar titles.

You ever picked tried Pingus? He kinda started a story mode that only has the tutorial, but some of the other levels are pretty good...
I used to play bzflag & vdrift, still some supertuxkart & lincity-ng

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[GreyGeek]

Pingus looks like a game my grandson might enjoy! I'll pass it on to him. If he likes it we'll play it!

One game I really liked was "RobotWar", a multi-player game which I used on my Apple II+ between 1978 to 1981 to get my son hooked on programming. He was 13 in 1978. When I moved to Linux in 1998 I found a console version of it but with no one to play against it wasn't any fun. Initially, the game was written in Turbo Pascal 3.02A. Now, a version of it called Robocode uses Java or .NET. I think my grandson would like Robocode because it is a form of shoot', up but one he can control by coding.

[GreyGeek]

P.S. - Robocode is in the repository!


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[mr_raider]

Anyone have experience with ryzen builds on Kubuntu? Specifically with b350 boards and compatibility with either the 4.4 or 4.8 kernel. I'm looking at mobos from the big three makers.

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[dequire]

Anyone have experience with ryzen builds on Kubuntu? Specifically with b350 boards and compatibility with either the 4.4 or 4.8 kernel. I'm looking at mobos from the big three makers.

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Just a guess, but from what I can loosely recall, you'd probably want to run the latest stable kernel you can, regardless of distribution. So, for now, you'd likely want to run a 4.10.x kernel. The 4.11 kernel is supposed to have more Ryzen stuff in it as well, and that's currently in Beta, so you could try that as well. Eventually these Ryzen optimizations would likely get backported but that will of course take some time.

Otherwise I have no direct experience as I'm running a relatively recently-purchased AMD 8370 on an MSI 970 gaming AM4+ mobo.

[mr_raider]

Just a guess, but from what I can loosely recall, you'd probably want to run the latest stable kernel you can, regardless of distribution. So, for now, you'd likely want to run a 4.10.x kernel. The 4.11 kernel is supposed to have more Ryzen stuff in it as well, and that's currently in Beta, so you could try that as well. Eventually these Ryzen optimizations would likely get backported but that will of course take some time.

Otherwise I have no direct experience as I'm running a relatively recently-purchased AMD 8370 on an MSI 970 gaming AM4+ mobo.

Pretty sure you mean am3+.

That's what I have with no issues.

I upgraded to the 16.10 hardware enablement stack, which installs kernel 4.8 only. I can manually install the 4.10 series but I'm afraid it will break my Nvidia drivers.

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[dequire]

Pretty sure you mean am3+.

Yupp!

I upgraded to the 16.10 hardware enablement stack, which installs kernel 4.8 only. I can manually install the 4.10 series but I'm afraid it will break my Nvidia drivers.

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It might. I'm all open sauce AMD drivers except for running the amd-microcode package, so I do not worry about GPU driver breakage. If you're going Ryzen, why not pick up a rx 470 or 480? It's really hassle-free and even games like a champ now that AMD has gotten serious with their RadeonSI open sauce drivers.

[mr_raider]

Yupp!

It might. I'm all open sauce AMD drivers except for running the amd-microcode package, so I do not worry about GPU driver breakage. If you're going Ryzen, why not pick up a rx 470 or 480? It's really hassle-free and even games like a champ now that AMD has gotten serious with their RadeonSI open sauce drivers.

I have a gtx 970. That's almost a sidegrade.

At any rate, I haven't bought the hardware yet. I have the RAM and CPU cooler already, but I'm waiting for the 1600x to see if it's gooud enough. I have yet to select a mobo, but phoronix seems like the MSI b350 tomahawk. Personally, I'm more partial to the Gigabyte ab350 gaming 3 due to the extra 2 SATA ports.

[oshunluvr]

i'm all open sauce...

lol

[dequire]

I have a gtx 970. That's almost a sidegrade.

Agreed. I've just soured personally a bit on NVidia for their closed-source nature, and subsequent issues that arise when upgrading a kernel, Mesa, or other graphics-related changes. But that alone may well not be reason enough to consider switching. I plan to go to Ryzen at some point, but these are still early days as far as Linux optimization goes.

I've had a lot of luck with MSI boards and relatively little experience with Gigabyte, so I'll withhold comment there. It'll be interesting to hear your report after you take the plunge!

[GreyGeek]

... I've just soured personally a bit on NVidia for their closed-source nature, and subsequent issues that arise when upgrading a kernel, Mesa, or other graphics-related changes. But that alone may well not be reason enough to consider switching. ....

That's why, after I installed NVidia-375.13 I locked it and all of its associated files down so that they are not upgraded.

[dequire]

Smart man that Jerry is

[jpenguin]

@Mr_raider

It cant be too llong before the RX500 GPU's have good Linux support

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[mr_raider]

Does Nvidia 378 compile on 4.10?

That seems to be the zesty kernel.

[mr_raider]

Agreed. I've just soured personally a bit on NVidia for their closed-source nature, and subsequent issues that arise when upgrading a kernel, Mesa, or other graphics-related changes. But that alone may well not be reason enough to consider switching. I plan to go to Ryzen at some point, but these are still early days as far as Linux optimization goes.

I've had a lot of luck with MSI boards and relatively little experience with Gigabyte, so I'll withhold comment there. It'll be interesting to hear your report after you take the plunge!

So far so good:

mr_raider@HK47:~$ inxi -Fx
System:    Host: HK47 Kernel: 4.8.0-46-generic x86_64 (64 bit gcc: 5.4.0) Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.5.5 (Qt 5.5.1)
         Distro: Ubuntu 16.04 xenial
Machine:   Mobo: Micro-Star model: B350 TOMAHAWK (MS-7A34) v: 1.0
         Bios: American Megatrends v: 1.30 date: 04/10/2017
CPU:       Octa core AMD Ryzen 7 1700X Eight-Core (-HT-MCP-) cache: 4096 KB
         flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm) bmips: 54398
         clock speeds: max: 3400 MHz 1: 3400 MHz 2: 3400 MHz 3: 3400 MHz 4: 3400 MHz 5: 3400 MHz 6: 3000 MHz
         7: 3400 MHz 8: 3400 MHz 9: 3400 MHz 10: 3400 MHz 11: 2200 MHz 12: 3400 MHz 13: 3400 MHz 14: 3400 MHz
         15: 3400 MHz 16: 3400 MHz
Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA GM204 [GeForce GTX 970] bus-ID: 23:00.0
         Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 drivers: nvidia (unloaded: fbdev,vesa,nouveau)
         Resolution: 2560x1080@60.00hz
         GLX Renderer: GeForce GTX 970/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 381.09 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio:     Card-1 Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Device 1457 driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 25:00.3
         Card-2 NVIDIA GM204 High Definition Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 23:00.1
         Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.8.0-46-generic
Network:   Card: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller
         driver: r8169 v: 2.3LK-NAPI port: f000 bus-ID: 21:00.0
         IF: enp33s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: 4c:cc:6a:f9:e2:9b
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 2980.6GB (28.9% used) ID-1: /dev/sda model: Samsung_SSD_840 size: 500.1GB
         ID-2: /dev/sdb model: ST2000DM001 size: 2000.4GB ID-3: /dev/sdc model: INTEL_SSDSC2BP48 size: 480.1GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 30G used: 16G (57%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sdc2
         ID-2: /home size: 378G used: 176G (47%) fs: btrfs dev: /dev/sdc3
         ID-3: swap-1 size: 16.78GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sdb1
RAID:      No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
Sensors:   None detected - is lm-sensors installed and configured?
Info:      Processes: 377 Uptime: 2:02 Memory: 2832.2/16036.9MB Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 5.4.0
         Client: Shell (bash 4.3.461) inxi: 2.2.35

I'm using the MSI b350 tomahawk board ant it seems to be supported right out the box. Audio, LAN and front USB work fine. I haven't tested the new USB 3 type c port in the back, since I have no devices that run at USB 3 speed.

I'm running a 1700x with 2x8 corsair vengeance LPX rated at ddr4-2666. I've stress tested at 2133, and now running 2400. After 24 hours of folding@home, if it's stable I'll bump it to 2666.

I installed the 16.04 HWE stack which uses kernel 4.8 by default, and it seems to boot fine. I just swapped the boards without re-installing the OS. Myunderstanding is that when 16.04.3 is released, teh HWE stack will upgrade to kernel 4.10 which is the zesty kernel.