Say No to the Paywall of PCI-E Bifurcation
1–10 of 29 posts
Re: Say No to the Paywall of PCI-E Bifurcation
#2Looking at asus's 4x nvme bifurcation card you cannot use an igpu enabled processor and maintain 4x4 with any CPU. I don't want to fill a slot with a dedicated GPU.
For a NAS I don't need 4 in a pool, just 2 per slot works fine with HDD backups.
Re: Say No to the Paywall of PCI-E Bifurcation
#3More config options means more to test and support, so more cost. The manufacturers who are buying lower end motherboards/chipsets at scale don’t need the feature. And virtually no consumer installs a PCI-E device, ever.
So basically, it’s an argument to make all computers more expensive, in order to subsidize hobbyists.
Re: Say No to the Paywall of PCI-E Bifurcation
#4More config options means more to test and support, so more cost. The manufacturers who are buying lower end motherboards/chipsets at scale don’t need the feature. And virtually no consumer installs a PCI-E device, ever. So basically, it’s an argument to make all computers more expensive, in order to subsidize hobbyists.
I'm sort of amazed these days that we still have commercial BIOSes (well, UEFIs)
They're not a selling point, even for the enthusiasts who buy individual motherboards.
You'd think that that by now, the chipset vendors would provide a reference Coreboot image for each new platform, (which, since it would be more or less for debugging purposes, would have MAX OPTIONS) and then the motherboard manufacturers would do the bare minimum to cut off any features not relevant to their boards or swap in modules for whichever small technical deltas-- different audio chipsets or clock generators-- they actually make underneath the garish silkscreen and RGB strips.
Re: Say No to the Paywall of PCI-E Bifurcation
#5More config options means more to test and support, so more cost. The manufacturers who are buying lower end motherboards/chipsets at scale don’t need the feature. And virtually no consumer installs a PCI-E device, ever. So basically, it’s an argument to make all computers more expensive, in order to subsidize hobbyists.
I'm sort of amazed these days that we still have commercial BIOSes (well, UEFIs) They're not a selling point, even for the enthusiasts who buy individual motherboards. You'd think that that by now, the chipset vendors would provide a reference Coreboot image for each new platform, (which, since it would be more or less for debugging purposes, would have MAX OPTIONS) and then the motherboard manufacturers would do the…
Honestly, if someone made a reference platform setup utility (and BDS initialization screen) for EFI systems with a familiar-ish UI and got it into upstream git, then I think a lot of the value add of commercial firmware would probably dissipate.
Re: Say No to the Paywall of PCI-E Bifurcation
#6More config options means more to test and support, so more cost. The manufacturers who are buying lower end motherboards/chipsets at scale don’t need the feature. And virtually no consumer installs a PCI-E device, ever. So basically, it’s an argument to make all computers more expensive, in order to subsidize hobbyists.
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Re: Say No to the Paywall of PCI-E Bifurcation
#7More config options means more to test and support, so more cost. The manufacturers who are buying lower end motherboards/chipsets at scale don’t need the feature. And virtually no consumer installs a PCI-E device, ever. So basically, it’s an argument to make all computers more expensive, in order to subsidize hobbyists.
The problem with this argument is that 1) bifurcation often still isn't available on enthusiast-level motherboards which are filled with features catered to hobbyists, and 2) all motherboards are using variations on the same handful of BIOS firmware images.
Same-slot bifurcation controlled by the BIOS requires basically zero additional testing. If it works on one board, it's pretty much guaranteed to work on another. After all, it's nothing more than a feature flag toggle.
They have already invested the money into developing the software feature, because some boards do have bifurcation. So why isn't it available on on all enthusiast-level boards? Or even worse, why are they spending extra time and energy into disabling it on cheap motherboards?
Re: Say No to the Paywall of PCI-E Bifurcation
#8Looking at asus's 4x nvme bifurcation card you cannot use an igpu enabled processor and maintain 4x4 with any CPU. I don't want to fill a slot with a dedicated GPU. For a NAS I don't need 4 in a pool, just 2 per slot works fine with HDD backups.
I believe this has essentially been solved by the AM5 platform. The Ryzen 7000 IO die has a x16 slot which can usually be configured as 4x4, and has a tiny igpu which should be plenty for occasional server use.
The budget Ryzen 8000 CPUs are indeed quite limited, which is a shame if you wanted to go for an 8000G APU to use its powerful iGPU for transcoding.
Re: Say No to the Paywall of PCI-E Bifurcation
#9More config options means more to test and support, so more cost. The manufacturers who are buying lower end motherboards/chipsets at scale don’t need the feature. And virtually no consumer installs a PCI-E device, ever. So basically, it’s an argument to make all computers more expensive, in order to subsidize hobbyists.
I'm sort of amazed these days that we still have commercial BIOSes (well, UEFIs) They're not a selling point, even for the enthusiasts who buy individual motherboards. You'd think that that by now, the chipset vendors would provide a reference Coreboot image for each new platform, (which, since it would be more or less for debugging purposes, would have MAX OPTIONS) and then the motherboard manufacturers would do the…
Motherboard manufacturers would much rather pay AMI or Insyde a non-insignificant amount of money to make all BIOS development go away.
They could hire people to do the work for them, but that'd require finding and vetting people with the necessary skills without the knowledge of how to do so. As long as BIOS manufacturers can sell their services for cheaper than setting up an extra firmware department, they'll do good business.
Re: Say No to the Paywall of PCI-E Bifurcation
#10Most CPUs don't have the lanes for this anyways... after you install a video card and an NVME drive, you're lucky if you have 8 lanes to spare, let alone 16...