@maya_b @mntmn y'all don't wanna do an altra workstation, the pcie on those is totally busted which means gpu support is just bad and super unstable (source: i have an altra workstation and i maintain downstream kernel patches, https://github.com/chimera-linux/cports/blob/master/main/linux-stable/patches/9001-ampere-arm64-Add-a-fixup-handler-for-alignment-fault.patch and https://github.com/chimera-linux/cports/blob/master/main/linux-stable/patches/9002-ampere-arm64-Work-around-Ampere-Altra-erratum-82288-.patch ), the only gpus that work fairly reasonably (but not completely) are the intel ones and they will never fully work upstream without patches

this is not fixed until ampereone, and since it's a hardware bug you'd be shipping buggy hw forever

@q66 @maya_b ah, big meh! so this is fixed in ampereone?

@mntmn @maya_b i think so; altra max has the same thing (i confirmed it with someone some weeks back) but i believe ampereone is brand new

ofc, it's not available to mortals yet so we won't know for sure for a while

@maya_b @mntmn yeah, though the least expensive sku for that should be beefier than the best one for regular altra, so at least that's somewhat appropriate

but if they messed up the pcie again i won't be amused

@q66 @maya_b @mntmn Ditto on Ampere Altra: Save your time and sanity. It's not worth it.

@elly @q66 @maya_b ok, one or two more questions: do you have any more detailled info/links about the brokenness level of nvidia/amd/intel gpus on that system? ampere themselves have some guides recommending nvidia rtx cards. are these also broken? because their erratum pcie-65 mentions amd gpus.

@mntmn @elly @maya_b amd: opengl ok before 6.10, vulkan broken; since 6.10, does not work

intel: works ok with the patches since 6.12

nvidia: proprietary driver works fully, no patches (but it's the proprietary driver)

patches reduce performance in edge cases due to alignment fixup

@q66 @elly @maya_b thank you very much for taking the time to list these issues! do you still use the machine, and if so, now with intel GPU? i wonder if sth like blender runs OK on it?

@mntmn @elly @maya_b i use it with an a750, everything more or less works, though it can very occasionally crash the compositor randomly

oh yeah another thing about amd: need to disable amdgpu power management on kernel cmdline or it does not work at all