Onboard GPU or dedicated graphics card

[Beerislife]

I'm currently using a Lenovo Ideacentre based on an AMD Ryzen 5 3400G (3.70GHz 2MB) onboard APU (AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 graphics) running KDE Neon 20.04. 16Gb memory shared with the GPU. I have to turn down some of the X-Plane 11 settings to get a decent framerate so I'm wondering if a dedicated GPU would help take the stress off the CPU and reclaim the 2Gb RAM the GPU is using!

Because of cash limitations, case size restrictions and limited power supply (210W) the GT1030 (30W) 2Gb looks like the only option. What do you guys think, will I be better off getting this card or buying a joystick, or even beers instead?

[claydoh]

Make sure you have dual channel ram for the AMD, they like multiple sticks vs a single big stick, with serious improvements in graphic performance.
I'd suggest adding a mesa PPA, but at the moment 20.04 is fairly well recent in this regard., and those that have packages for focal may be too bleeding edge.


A place for making comparisons
https://www.game-debate.com/gpu/inde...ce%20GT%201030
the 1030, form looking around various places may or may not be a significant boost, if any. I see mixed info.


from my own experience on on older slim PCs with ~200 watt psus, it is probably safew to go to 50watts on the card, maybe 75, as I did with my i5 and the rx 560, that cpu is thirstier than your Ryzen for sure. But that old box had no spinning drives, and the optical drive was disconnected, dunno if any of that makes a difference, and I ran that setup for at least a year and a half, for gaming and HTPC uses.


I am suggesting looking at AMD stuff as you get the all the performance without needing to futz with nonfree drivers, usually

[Beerislife]

Onboard memory is 8.0GB PC4-21300 DDR4 UDIMM 2666MHz, I added another 8Gb stick as it clealy wasn't enough. The board maxes out at 16Gb. The other built-in hardware is:

● Storage: 1TB (7200rpm) ST1000DM003-1SB102 HDD + 256GB UMIS LENSE40256GMSP34MESTB3A SSD
● DVD Drive: DVD Super Multi Drive
● Power Adaptor: 210W

I'm in no hurry for an upgrade. Will do a bit more checking.

[Beerislife]

After a bit of checking I found that the GT1050 or Radeon R7 350 is supported without upgrading the power supply, just!

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-...rd/m-p/4576776

[oshunluvr]

Newegg has a wattage calculator. https://www.newegg.com/tools/power-supply-calculator/

Let's not forget that a good power supply is only 80% efficient.

In my personal experience, running close to the edge on a PS results in unexpected crashes. I had a system that I had added to several times without considering power. Then when summer came, all of a sudden it would shutdown when I worked it hard - like immediately - just off. It wouldn't turn back on for many minutes. I noticed it happened more in the daytime than at night.

Turned out I had overloaded the PS just enough that when the room got warm, the corresponding drop in the PS efficiency caused it to shut off due to thermal protection.

Frankly, "just barely" making the numbers would concern me. IMO, I'd hold off on the video card until I could upgrade the PS.

Back to my story: I had a basic 600watt PS running a Q6600 overclocked by a large percentage (like 35%), a water cooling system (to allow the overclock), two nVidia GT over-clocked video cards (also water cooled), 4 hard drives, 8GB ram, and DVD-RW drive. As the PSU aged, it became unable to keep up as I described above. I replaced it with a 1000W High efficiency PSU and like magic all the shutdowns went away. Funny tho, fast forward 5 years and the 1000 watt unit started the same behavior. However, this time is was due to a short. When I worked it too much something would expand and short out. By then I had reduced my power and cooling needs; single video card, newer less hungry CPU, SSDs instead of hard drives, etc. - so I bought a high efficiency "Gold" 850 watt unit. I'm using about 60% of the PSU capacity.

https://www.ebay.com/i/331123967258?...rchantid=51291

[Beerislife]

Now Vulkan will no longer load. X-Plane error message tells me to update my drivers, but there are no updates. It falls back to OpenGL. It was working fine yesterday morning then it just stopped. The only thing I can think of was a reboot after a kernel update.

[Beerislife]

Even updated drivers hasn't helped

https://linuxconfig.org/amd-radeon-u...r-installation

[Beerislife]

In the end I took the tube down to Akihabara Electric town, had pint of craft lager and a sandwich and then bought an MSI GTX-1050ti 4Gb card.

There was a time when I'd be chomping at the bit to get new parts installed in a PC. I'd have the thing open on the floor and get stuck into it. These days if I get down on the floor there's no way I'm getting back up again.

I'm going to have to lug the PC down to the bar and open it ip on a table. It can wait!

[Beerislife]

A quick nap after lunch and then out with the screwdriver! One operation later and no problems whatsoever and the 2Gb RAM the onboard GPU was using were automagically returned to the system!