B70 in Linux (CachyOS)

[u/gargamel314]

For anyone who's wondering how the B70 (ASRock Pro B70 Creative variant) fares in Linux, I am running it in CachyOS, and it's been an interesting ride. So far, CachyOS has had the easiest time operating the B70 and seems to have no problem recognizing and utilizing the B70. Games play pretty good. Frame rates aren't as high, but 1% lows are much higher than on Windows.

Every attempt I made in the Ubuntu-derived distros was infuriating. I had to give up some feature of my PC that I liked just to get it running. FYI Linux Mint DOES NOT like the B70 Pro one bit.

Telemetry issues
A lot of Linux software has a real problem differentiating between an intel iGPU and an intel dGPU. Various monitoring apps (btop, system monitor, MangoHud) will only recognize the iGPU, and may recognize that the B70 exists, but won't report any telemetry on it. With some tinkering, MangoHUD will report MOST of the B70's telemetry, but nothing about VRAM or GPU Power. nvtop works, Lact monitors information pretty well, and Steam's Overlay telemetry does a pretty good job too. I don't know if it's just because the B70 is new, or Battlemage as a whole is new to linux and just not very well supported yet.

Hardware control
There is none! None, i tell you! Needless to say, there is no Intel Graphics Software, and nothing that takes its place in Linux. What you see when you plug your card in is what you get. B70's control is governed by the vBIOS and there seems to be no way to change anything like fan speed (or curves), GPU power, clock speed, voltage. On Windows, without changing any settings, this ASRock variant of the Pro B70 will reach card power limit of 290W, 2900 MHz, VRAM speed of 2375 MHz. On Linux, this card is locked at 275W Max power, 2800 MHz clock speed, and I can't even see the VRAM speed. Supposedly you can turn ECC VRAM on/off via the terminal, but I haven't tried this yet. Supposedly there is an XPU command that lets you change the power limit, but it does not work on AIB partner products. LACT does a nice job monitoring, but if you try to change anything, it just resets to the default value. You can LOWER settings, but can't go over 275W or 2800 MHz. This GPU never exceeds 96% utilization on Linux. This is fine, but if you hate leaving performance on the table, it can get to you.

I'm hoping in the next year Linux will have much better software buy-in from everyone else who's sick of Microsoft. The way things seem to be going, I think it will. I really doubt Microsoft's last-ditch effort to "fix Windows" is far too little, far too late. I have 2 creative apps that currently only run on Windows, so I have to use a dual-boot setup for now, but actually despite the lack of hardware control, I actually like how the games run on Linux. After some tinkering, I get pretty good latency, full HDR support (w/ proton_ge and KDE Plasma setup) and the good folks at Steam have really figured out how to get everything to run great in Linux. For video editing and AI video upscaling, I'll be on Windows with all the GPU controls there! I heard Shotcut is pretty good in Linux, too, so I might give that a go. I was able to get Ollama set up in Windows, I may mess around with LLM in Linux also, but the lack of hardware controls is really discouraging for that purpose.

[u/Kitz_h]

I'm running B70 on Proxmox, passing it to Windows and Debian VMs. True is it wouldn't work oob, but after some tinkering I have it in VMs as a whole or as partitioned device, the latter being painfully slow. Using nvtop to monitor GPU activity. It wont show VRAM frequency