On Mon, Sep 20, 2021 at 02:56:31PM -0400, Andre Smagin wrote: > Good day. > > I am looking for a hardware advice. > I don't upgrade my desktop very often - last one was about ten > years ago (AMD FX-8350 CPU), which I recently made my home server > running -current, no issues. Now I am looking for a new desktop that > will last another ten years, hence the question: if I buy the latest > available AMD chipset (X570 I think) and Ryzen 9 CPU - are there any > current issues with using it for OpenBSD desktop? I would like to > overkill it with the choice of hardware now, so I don't have to worry > about it for a while.
If you need audio, that might be a barrier to recent AMD CPUs: https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-bugs&m=161221378203609&w=2 https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-bugs&m=160112047222899&w=2 Earlier Ryzen CPUs worked after disabling MSI for azalia(4), but it seems to not be a solution anymore with later models. For desktop, Ryzen 2xxx CPUs seem to be the last ones without the audio limitations. I ran a Ryzen 7-2700 for a while. If you plan to use GPU acceleration, amdgpu(4) still seems to run into poorly predictable "freezes" where the screen stops updating. I most recently experienced this a week or two ago on the Thinkpad X395. This is probably still an issue with dedicated GPUs, too. Using an AMD Radeon card type Northern Island or older would be the only solution I can think of, but that is > 10 year old hardware and doesn't support newer OpenGL or Vulkan. These issues together are the reason why I personally ended up back on Intel hardware. If your goal of "overkill with choice of hardware now" includes using audio and GPU acceleration including newer APIs, a 10th or 11th gen Intel CPU may be the best option. Of course, if you don't use audio and don't need GPU acceleration, then all these points are moot and you could just get the most powerful Ryzen 9 you can afford. (Note you may not get a lot of return on investment for core counts > 8.) > > I am ten years out of touch with hardware development progress, so will > appreciate any input you may have. > > -- > Andre >
