Ubuntu 18.04 hasn't dropped AGP support - I said that the Unity desktop environment doesn't appear to work with AGP cards (when I tested it on my P4 Prescott - 32-bit - 7900GS). It worked with the GNOME3 environment in 32-bit though. For all I know, it is just Unity which doesn't work with AGP cards in 32-bit. I need to test 64-bit mode. Would you upgrade a whole motherboard just to keep the Unity desktop environment? I wouldn't and dropping it is one of my fall back options.

On my AsRock 939Dual-SATA2, which is the board in question, it is 64-bit. Opteron 185 / FX60. What I have learned with Linux is that before you test anything, make a clone of your HDD and do all of this risky testing on your clone. I need to do more testing with a cloned HDD on the 939. Another thing I can say is that just because the live CD works, doesn't mean the installed OS will work because of all the multitude of updates which come thereafter.

Three years will go by before we all know it. In fact, we all will be dead before we know it too. I like to be prepared (for death too!). The main purpose of the thread was looking for x16 splitters. When it comes to looking for oddball hardware, I have realised that sooner is always better. Remember those PCI-X to PCIe adapters that were available just 3 years ago? They be gone now. If there exist internal x16 splitters, I want to source them now. I can work with any of those A-E limitations, but I want to prepare for the best case.

I don't view this as difficult. I find it more fun if anything. I've been knee deep in linux configuration for the past 4 months straight and every little thing I want to accomplish requires pain staking research and tinkering. In my opinion, linux is and always will be a beta OS. If you're going to use it, buck up. The question posed is merely a small drop of spit in the mighty Pacific.

feipoa wrote on 2021-04-15, 04:12:

Ubuntu 18.04 hasn't dropped AGP support - I said that the Unity desktop environment doesn't appear to work with AGP cards (when […]
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Ubuntu 18.04 hasn't dropped AGP support - I said that the Unity desktop environment doesn't appear to work with AGP cards (when I tested it on my P4 Prescott - 32-bit - 7900GS). It worked with the GNOME3 environment in 32-bit though. For all I know, it is just Unity which doesn't work with AGP cards in 32-bit. I need to test 64-bit mode. Would you upgrade a whole motherboard just to keep the Unity desktop environment? I wouldn't and dropping it is one of my fall back options.

On my AsRock 939Dual-SATA2, which is the board in question, it is 64-bit. Opteron 185 / FX60. What I have learned with Linux is that before you test anything, make a clone of your HDD and do all of this risky testing on your clone. I need to do more testing with a cloned HDD on the 939. Another thing I can say is that just because the live CD works, doesn't mean the installed OS will work because of all the multitude of updates which come thereafter.

Three years will go by before we all know it. In fact, we all will be dead before we know it too. I like to be prepared (for death too!). The main purpose of the thread was looking for x16 splitters. When it comes to looking for oddball hardware, I have realised that sooner is always better. Remember those PCI-X to PCIe adapters that were available just 3 years ago? They be gone now. If there exist internal x16 splitters, I want to source them now. I can work with any of those A-E limitations, but I want to prepare for the best case.

I don't view this as difficult. I find it more fun if anything. I've been knee deep in linux configuration for the past 4 months straight and every little thing I want to accomplish requires pain staking research and tinkering. In my opinion, linux is and always will be a beta OS. If you're going to use it, buck up. The question posed is merely a small drop of spit in the mighty Pacific.

I just found these riser cards from Supermicro meant for some of their server products.

What you're looking for would be an active GPU riser (the RSC-R2UG-A2E16-A is a good example), which incorporates a PCIe switch to split slots, so the host motherboard doesn't need to support bifurcation.

Given the form factor and availability of these cards, they may not be directly helpful, but close enough for your use case. Still, GPU risers are very uncommon that I personally haven't really seen any solutions that are publicly available.

On the other hand, there are already some active storage expansion cards utilizing those switches to provide additional NVMe slots (M.2 or SFF-8643) in the market, for motherboards without bifurcation support. However, the switches are very pricey so expect them to be 5-10 times more expensive than passive ones (that rely on motherboard's bifurcation).

LSS10999 wrote on 2021-04-15, 08:00:

What you're looking for would be an active GPU riser (the RSC-R2UG-A2E16-A is a good example), which incorporates a PCIe switch to split slots, so the host motherboard doesn't need to support bifurcation.

Great information, thank you. When you say "GPU riser" do you mean graphics-bsed riser? It technically doesn't need to be for graphics - I could put a graphics card on the MB's x1 PCIe slot and use the riser (two x8 slots) for a) Adaptec RAID, b) USB 3.x.

In my mind, I was looking for something like those risers you linked, but without the 90 degree orientation. Basically, something like this PCI-X to PCIe card https://www.startech.com/en-us/cards-adapters/pcix1pex4 but for PCIe x16 and with two x8 slots - one on the same axis as the x16 and the other offset by a slot width and on a parallel axis.

While I was uanble to find the chipset's databook, this link https://www.ocworkbench.com/2005/uli/m1695/g1.htm , says that the chipset supports "next-generation one PCI Express x16 lanes or two x8 lanes for graphics cards/ devices AND two PCI express x1 or 1x4 expansion slots. HyperTransport tunnel architecture... new bus delivers over 4 GB/s in both upstream and downstream data transfers... Support full PCI Express x16, AGP 8X, PCI graphics cards simultaneously on the same platform."

When it says the chipset supports one x16 OR two x8, does that mean if I adjust some BIOS chipset register that I can tell it to use two x8 and I don't need an "active" riser? On my MacPro 1,1 tower, there is a MacOS app to set this configuration. You open the app and tell the board how many lanes to use for each PCIe x16 slot. Basically, the board came with four x16 slots, but it is setup for something like one x16, two x8, and one x1.

Those specs said it supports two x1 PCIe and one x16. The motherboard's other hidden x1 is a built-in JMicron SATA 2.0 controller which has horrendeous performance. Nobody would have noticed unless they ran it with a SSD or hybrid drive. The performance is so lousy that the SSD's read speed benches the same as the built-in SATA 1.0 ports, however the write is bit better. Now if I could somehow repurpose that Jmicron PCIe x1 slot to a bodge-job USB 3.0 card, that would also satisfy the requirements, but is more destructive than I care to be to vintage hardware.

Are you using the Adaptec card for hardware RAID, or as a disk controller+cache with mdadm?

You would likely get better performance out of a newer motherboard and processor and Linux software RAID. I'm using one of the lower power i7 4790S processors on a B85 board along with a 3Ware 9650SE-8, but purely for cache and SATA ports - I'm not using the hardware RAID engine at all... and I get north of 560MB/sec on a 5 drive RAID5 volume (8TB Seagate Exos drives). The board, processor and 32GB of RAM were a < £100 second hand purchase a couple of years ago.... and still give me a full x16 slot for a GPU as well.

I think it's time to bite the bullet and consider an upgrade to a more modern, lower power and more performant board. Sometimes struggling on with older kit is just not worth it - especially if it's to actually run a 'service' like you appear to be doing with the RAID volume on it.

I'm not sure what you mean by "service". I am using the RAID card so that I can fully utilise my Samsung EVO 870 SSD. In stripe mode with two SSD's, it benches 640 MB/s read and 956 MB/s write (write cache enabled) or 652 MB/s (write cache disabled). The goal here is to fully maximise this motherboard and push it to the bitter end. When it gets too slow for my needs, then it will go into the collection closet with two dozen other obsolete, but fairly optimised systems. PCIe 1.0a x1 cannot saturate the EVO 870 drives, and apparently, neither can cheap 2-lane cards. Hence the Adaptec RAID, at x8 has no issue saturating the EVO 870 SSD drives.

For your interest, if I use the RAID card in simple VOLUME mode on a single SSD, it benches 460 MB/s read and 970 MB/s write (write cache enabled) or 346 MB/s (write cache disabled). So using a SSD in VOLUME mode on a RAID card isn't very optimised. What I don't like about the Adaptec RAID card is that even in VOLUME mode, the HDD needs to be setup in the config software as such and other standard SATA 1/2/3 controller cards cannot read that Adaptec configured VOLUME.

If by service you mean a web server, I haven't run one of those in years. The purpose of the Opteron is to host LAN only files to the house with about 10 computers max. It also serves as my general purpose PC when I'm in the office.

I'm going to experiment some by comparing a SATA3/USB3 combination card and an x1 GT710 card and see if the drop in performance is tolerable.

feipoa wrote on 2021-04-15, 11:54:

I'm not sure what you mean by "service". I am using the RAID card so that I can fully utilise my Samsung EVO 870 SSD. In strip […]
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I'm not sure what you mean by "service". I am using the RAID card so that I can fully utilise my Samsung EVO 870 SSD. In stripe mode with two SSD's, it benches 640 MB/s read and 956 MB/s write (write cache enabled) or 652 MB/s (write cache disabled). The goal here is to fully maximise this motherboard and push it to the bitter end. When it gets too slow for my needs, then it will go into the collection closet with two dozen other obsolete, but fairly optimised systems. PCIe 1.0a x1 cannot saturate the EVO 870 drives, and apparently, neither can cheap 2-lane cards. Hence the Adaptec RAID, at x8 has no issue saturating the EVO 870 SSD drives.

For your interest, if I use the RAID card in simple VOLUME mode on a single SSD, it benches 460 MB/s read and 970 MB/s write (write cache enabled) or 346 MB/s (write cache disabled). So using a SSD in VOLUME mode on a RAID card isn't very optimised. What I don't like about the Adaptec RAID card is that even in VOLUME mode, the HDD needs to be setup in the config software as such and other standard SATA 1/2/3 controller cards cannot read that Adaptec configured VOLUME.

If by service you mean a web server, I haven't run one of those in years. The purpose of the Opteron is to host LAN only files to the house with about 10 computers max. It also serves as my general purpose PC when I'm in the office.

I'm going to experiment some by comparing a SATA3/USB3 combination card and an x1 GT710 card and see if the drop in performance is tolerable.

When I said GPU risers I think it certainly doesn't have to be GPUs, as these are just PCIe slots with lanes assigned to them. Theoretically you can have a video card taking one x8 slot and a RAID controller taking the other. It's that PCIe slots with x16 length (regardless of the underlying actual lane width) are typically for video cards so they were called that way.

Also, from the looks of your benchmarking results, it seems some hardware RAID controllers are capable of assigning as much bandwidth it can acquire as possible to disks behind them, that you can attain SATA 3 speeds even with only a PCIe 1.0a motherboard.

http://dynapowerusa.com/product/pcie-expansio … -slot-na211a-2/

I had another thought. What about changing to a PCI Geforce GT520 or GT610? Those are really the same exact card and should play 1080p video just fine.

rmay635703 wrote on 2021-04-15, 15:41:

http://dynapowerusa.com/product/pcie-expansio … -slot-na211a-2/

Thanks. I may very well go with an external enclosure if the price is right. What I don't like is that there aren't any HDD bays in the enclosure, so I'd have to jerry rig something. Also, this review on amazon has me a little confused.

1The PCIe cards included are only 4x electrical, while the case supports up to 8x electrical.
2No reason why the master and host PCIe cards couldn't be 8x. In fact, NetStor ships PCIe 8x adapters with their other models.
3Why create an artificial bottle-neck?

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-04-15, 20:09:

I had another thought. What about changing to a PCI Geforce GT520 or GT610? Those are really the same exact card and should play 1080p video just fine.

feipoa wrote on 2021-04-14, 22:48:

e)Perhaps a PCI graphics card , the GT610, will fix the Ubuntu 18.04 bugs. Not like there's any gaming on this system.

I mentioned this as an option in response to you previously. I can expand on it a bit - when I did a quick test with this in Ubuntu 16.04, the OS wouldn't boot when the GT610 PCI was installed. I'd have to see if Ubuntu 18.04 is any different. Perhaps if I first install the NVIDIA proprietary driver on an Nvidia card which boots, then swap the cards. More testing needed.

By service I meant as a NAS, desktop workstation, something you use as more than a retro gaming toy... Which by your description as a file server and office workstation seems to be the case.

For something as old as a system with AGP graphics I'm wondering what the humongous striped SSD throughput is needed for? Are you running 10gbit ethernet from it or something? It seems like the disk IO from it massively outclasses the performance of any other piece of hardware that would be on it.

It just sounds like a lot of work to get the setup you want and I'm struggling to see the need for such huge read/write speeds on something so old.

I've been here myself so many times trying to keep older systems still current and useful, but when they're so massively outclasses by even cheap second hand kit I kinda got to the point of admitting that my spare time is worth more than the effort needed to tweak them to the point where they stay competitive.

Wowah, tough crowd in here today! haha! I'd have expected this kind of push-back more from a modern IT workers forum. In hind sight, I suppose I should have kept the reason for wanting a PCIe x16 splitter private. This is a hobby; it is for fun. Just because the computer in question is stilled used for everyday tasks, doesn't mean I don't find it fun to optimise it to its limit. The system will still do what I need it to do in the time I want it done in if I make some minor sacrifice. See A-E noted on the previous page.

Yes, I probably don't "need" the RAID controller, but when looking at the numbers, it is nice to have and certainly fits in with my hobbies goals/desires to fully [over] optimise disk drive access. I haven't yet compared the RAID's working performance against the SATA/USB 3.0 card to see if I can feel the difference.

there exist adapters to give you more than one port for m.2 and I think there are adapters to make those ports back into full size slots I think that's 4x though

someone with more subject knowledge should comment on my idea though.

That would be one hilarious setup... PCIe to multiple M.2 and then M.2 to PCIe.

Most of them just do 1x NVMe and 1x SATA.. but here is a SuperMicro x8 card that has bifurcation (PCIe switches and supports 4x NVMe (PCIe) SSDs:
https://www.cdw.com/product/Supermicro-AOC-SH … -3.0-x8/6165311

Couple that with NVMe to PCIe and you could have 4x PCIe slots.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/254730098594

Not 100% sure if the SuperMicro card would work though as it mentions PCIE 3.0.. but in theory it should be backwards compatible.

That being said, it would be a huge hassle to do it this way because you still wouldn't be able to mount the cards in the normal slots in the case.

That would be one goofy setup, but I wouldn't be against testing it if the price was low.

Is it just me, or is the direction of the PCIe slot on that M2 adapter card facing the wrong direction? Seems to me that if it was turned around, this plan would work with a x4 RAID card instead of the x8 RAID card that I have. The RAID card doesn't have any external ports, so no biggie. The USB card, I suppose, I could break the cables out of the case with 1 foot long USB extension cords. To make it clean, bring those USB extension ports onto a slot cover, like how those USB 1.1 slot ports were on socket 7 era cases.

Ideally, that Supermicro x8 card would be x16.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-04-16, 04:31:

That would be one hilarious setup... PCIe to multiple M.2 and then M.2 to PCIe. […]
Show full quote

That would be one hilarious setup... PCIe to multiple M.2 and then M.2 to PCIe.

Most of them just do 1x NVMe and 1x SATA.. but here is a SuperMicro x8 card that has bifurcation (PCIe switches and supports 4x NVMe (PCIe) SSDs:
https://www.cdw.com/product/Supermicro-AOC-SH … -3.0-x8/6165311

Couple that with NVMe to PCIe and you could have 4x PCIe slots.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/254730098594

Not 100% sure if the SuperMicro card would work though as it mentions PCIE 3.0.. but in theory it should be backwards compatible.

That being said, it would be a huge hassle to do it this way because you still wouldn't be able to mount the cards in the normal slots in the case.

so I was onto something..

well, they have pci express cables... bring it down to a unused slot on a tall case with a short motherboard?

feipoa wrote on 2021-04-16, 00:05:

Wowah, tough crowd in here today! haha! I'd have expected this kind of push-back more from a modern IT workers forum. In hind sight, I suppose I should have kept the reason for wanting a PCIe x16 splitter private. This is a hobby; it is for fun. Just because the computer in question is stilled used for everyday tasks, doesn't mean I don't find it fun to optimise it to its limit. The system will still do what I need it to do in the time I want it done in if I make some minor sacrifice. See A-E noted on the previous page.

Yes, I probably don't "need" the RAID controller, but when looking at the numbers, it is nice to have and certainly fits in with my hobbies goals/desires to fully [over] optimise disk drive access. I haven't yet compared the RAID's working performance against the SATA/USB 3.0 card to see if I can feel the difference.

Hahahaha! Don't take it seriously - we all do wacky things that actually make no practical sense when viewed from an efficiency/cost-effectiveness standpoint!

I could have bought a really, really nice sports car with what it's cost me over the last 10 years or so to restore one of my old cars, but common sense goes out of the window with a lot of these things.

Some update: I decided to install Ubuntu 18.04 and there is no issue with Unity in 64-bit. So seems that the Unity add-on for 18.04 doesn't do 32-bit, which is sort of understandable as 18.04 is the end of the road for 32-bit. On the Opteron 185 now, I'm using the Adaptec 6805T PCIe x8 RAID controller with two 250 GB Samsung 870 EVO SSD drives in stripe and the PCIe x1 slot has the USB 3.x card. Gigabit is on conventional PCI. All is good.

But, I'd still like to fully utilise that PCIe x16 slot. The RAID card uses only 8 lanes, so the other 8 lanes are going to waste. I see on anandtech there is this "ULi reference board 2" that is based on the same chipset as my board. However, that ULi board has AGP, x16, x4, and x4. Looking at the BIOS, the PCIe slots can be configured (in BIOS) as: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1733/2

x16 + x4
or
x16 + x2 + x2
or
x8 + x8 +x4

for a total of 20 lanes. I wonder why Asrock crippled the 939Dual-Sata2 with only 18 lanes? Perhaps for 3 conventional PCI instead of 2? Seems like a bad trade-off.

Why would the x16 be configurable as two x8 slots? Because it seems there was a riser card option, particularly for running two graphics cards in SLI. Here's the photo: https://images.anandtech.com/reviews/motherbo … /part2/card.jpg

And here's the riser board in action: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1748/4

Does this mean this ULi reference board supports bifurcation? And if the ULi reference boards supports bifurcation, would the AsRock 939Dual-Sata2 board also support bifurcation, e.g. if I use the ULi reference board's BIOS to set the x16 configuration or hack the AsRock's BIOS ? And if so, could I use one of these passive PCIe x16 splitter boards noted earlier by others in this thread?

Was the AsRock 939Dual-Sata2 the only motherboard with full AGP 8x support AND PCIe x16? In search around, it seems most dual AGP+PCIe implemtations contained crippled AGP and went by various names. This crippled AGP usually ran off the conventional PCI bus and was buggy and slow.

FYI: Intel chipsets including older chipsets for P4 and Core 2 Du0, and CPU that uses 11xx socket for consumer market are always 16 lanes with no ability for bifurcation (extreme market segmentation) and usually 4 lanes more from the southbridge with bifurcation depending on motherboard maker options. Socket 11xx Xeons (all E3-xxxx series) for entry-level is 20 lanes (16 + 4) and support for ECC memory.

AMD that integrates the northbridge for AM2 and AM3 including plus version are always 16 lanes. For more lanes with these AMD processor of this type have to seek out the high end motherboard southbridges that can provide more lanes. For example 990FX. But the question is these motherboards are very costly and impractical due to cost sensitive in view of much better options out there.

Well, regarding the ULi M1695 chipset of yours:

And I have chipset in question specifically for your motherboard you are asking about. Indeed it is laid out same way like lntel does with lanes with few differences.

That means 16 lanes from Uli north bridge chipset, and another separate 4 lanes from Uli chipset. It does states that can do one x16 or two x8 and x8. The other 4 lanes can be either x4 or two x1 and x1.

The north bridge connects to southbridge which in turn connects to AGP slot so you have contentions with other i/o devices hooked to this southbridge that need the bandwidth.

Here's the link:

https://www.nvidia.ca/docs/CP/29985/m1695dm_web.pdf

In other words you will need to hunt down a bifurcation-ed PCIe adapter "more $$" like one poster suggested that takes one x8 lanes for first slot and and other x8 lanes for other second slot. Also how to integrate into your computer with this? Also this depends on motherboard's bios support to use x1 video card on start up initialization.

For this reason, this is cost effective and most easier to pull off is to buy older workstation computer instead that provides more lanes.

Cheers,

For active riser cards from supermicro, these would be the only options that fit:

Left-hand side
RSC-R2UG-A2E16-A
RSC-G2F-A66-X1

Right-hand side
RSC-G2FR-A66

Here's an item similar to what I was originally looking for, but says BIOS needs support for bifurcation support:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/133273222189

Basically, it has the x8 slot right above the x16 slot with an adjacent x8 slot. Problem is that the slots are too close together. There's a little IC on the PCB. What does it do?

Here is another design that might work if it was flipped 180 degrees, but needs BIOS support: https://www.ebay.com/itm/133297905073

Here is one that does two x4 and one x8, but needs BIOS support: https://www.ebay.com/itm/133503409303

Here's a seller that sells "bifurcated risers" and "non-bifurcated risers". I'm not sure what the difference is because they look identical. https://riser.maxcloudon.com/en/bifurcated-ri … to-2x8-set.html

Here's another company making these passive risers: http://www.ioi.com.tw/products/proddetail.asp … &ProdID=1060223

If the chipset supports two x8 PCIe cards, is there not a means to write the appropriate values to the some chipset address telling it two x8 instead of one x16?

I'm pretty sure I tried the PCIe x1 graphics card in the PCIe x1 slot and it booted up just fine.

feipoa wrote on 2021-04-21, 04:49:

For active riser cards from supermicro, these would be the only options that fit: […]
Show full quote

For active riser cards from supermicro, these would be the only options that fit:

Left-hand side
RSC-R2UG-A2E16-A
RSC-G2F-A66-X1

Right-hand side
RSC-G2FR-A66

yes those are the active ones, the ones that have a pcie-pcie bridge chip on it.
though from the looks of it, the only one you could actually use is the Supermicro RSC-G2F-A66-X1 .
The others have some odd connecter placement which will likely interfere with any card you might want to use, unless you're willing to add another two extension cables to the mix

Here's an item similar to what I was originally looking for, but says BIOS needs support for bifurcation support:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/133273222189

Basically, it has the x8 slot right above the x16 slot with an adjacent x8 slot. Problem is that the slots are too close together. There's a little IC on the PCB. What does it do?

from the looks of it, PCIe clock splitter/amplifier/whatchamacallit... one in, same two out/buffer

Here's a seller that sells "bifurcated risers" and "non-bifurcated risers". I'm not sure what the difference is because they look identical. https://riser.maxcloudon.com/en/bifurcated-ri … to-2x8-set.html

the bifurcated ones which needs bios support, passively split one x16 to multiple others.
the non bifurcated ones are just straight through, so no splitting, x4 to x4 or x8 to x8

If the chipset supports two x8 PCIe cards, is there not a means to write the appropriate values to the some chipset address telling it two x8 instead of one x16?

That's the Bios bifurcation support. 😎