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by MenhirMike 746 days ago
Given that there are only 2 CUs in the GPU (and fairly low clock speeds), does the architecture matter much? Benchmarks were kinda terrible, and it looks to me that the intent of the built-in GPU is for hardware video encoding or to run it in a home server system, or emergency BIOS and the like. Compared to the desktop CPUs, even the lowest end mobile 8440U has 4 CUs, going up to 12 CUs on the higher end. Or go with Strix Point, which does have an RDNA 3.5 GPU (with 12 or 16 CUs) in it.

I guess you _can_ game on those 2 CU GPUs, but it really doesn't seem to be intended for that.
2 comments
spixy 745 days ago
Better efficiency with three external 4K 120Hz monitors?
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MenhirMike 745 days ago
Oh, there's plenty of good uses for it, but I was specifically wondering why the previous poster cared for it being RDNA 2 instead of RDNA 3 since I don't think it makes a difference outside of gaming, and it's a pretty bad gaming GPU because of the low core count.

So I was curious if there was anything else that RDNA 3/3.5 would offer over RDNA 2 in such a low end configuration.

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MenhirMike 745 days ago
(Oh, just realized that "better efficiency" could mean that RDNA 3 can do the office work that RDNA 2 does but with lower power usage. That could be true, though I wonder if that would really be significant savings in any way)
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cschneid 746 days ago
Yeah, I'm glad they started including built in gpu so there's something there, but beyond booting to a desktop I wouldn't use this graphics for anything else. But if you're just running a screen and compiling rust, that's all you need. Or in my case, running a home server / NAS.
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philsnow 746 days ago
When building a non-APU ryzen machine for homelab use, I ended up buying the very cheapest graphics card I could find that was compatible, a "GeForce GT 710" that was not a beefy card when it was released in 2014. It's.. fine. After getting the system working I passed it through to a win10 VM and I can play non-FPS windows-only steam games over RDP.

So yeah next time I build a machine I'll appreciate having this built in.

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MenhirMike 745 days ago
Yeah, I have several GT 710's which also came in a PCIe x1 variant so I could keep the x16 slot free for something better. Glad that's no longer needed - the built-in GPU is a legit good thing.
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