Integrated or Dedicated Graphics

[JEB]

Hi,

I know this is an old topic but I need to get up to date. The reason? My trusty eight year old Mac is on its last legs and I need to consider its replacement. I am unlikely to replace it with another Mac as I believe that a PC may be adequate for my purposes now. On discussing a possible build the question of the need for a dedicated graphics card has risen its head. My understanding, based on debate from several years ago, was that a dedicated card was a priority. However I am being told that integrated graphics have moved on considerably. What is the current thinking. Keep in mind I'm talking PC not Mac.

Thanks

John

[davegee]

No, I think that your first thought was definitely correct.

Igor has recommended the nVidia 1060 and I personally agree.

Bare in mind that there are some 1060 cards with more dedicated memory than other 1060 cards. More is best.

 

[davegee]

 

[JEB]

Thanks Dave, I thought as much but had to be sure. 

John

 

[tom95521]

I have the Nvidia 1050 card and it works great with PTE. The prices of the high end graphics cards like the Nvidia 1060 or higher are inflated thanks to the cryptocurrency miners.

My next computer will probably be an AMD Ryzen APU. If anybody has experience with PTE slideshows and the Ryzen AMD APU I would like to know how well they work. I'm going to wait for the Spectre/Meltdown to settle down a little longer before I buy another Intel CPU.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3253306/computers/ryzen-apu-review-ryzen-plus-vega-saves-budget-gamers.html

Thanks.
Tom

[JEB]

Hi,

I am looking at a Dell offer at the moment which I assume should do the job for PTE, PSCC and LRCC.

The GPU is of higher spec. I think than that mentioned by Igor but they (Dell) say there would be little difference in cost to replace it with the 1060.

For me I think the 4TB HDD is perhaps a bit OTT but who knows.

1 8th Generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8700 6-Core Processor (12M Cache, up to 4.6 GHz)

1 16GB Dual Channel DDR4 at 2666MHz (2X8GB)
1 256GB M.2 PCIe x4 SSD + 4TB 7200 rpm Hard Drive
1 NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GTX 1070 with 8GB GDDR5 Graphics Memory

Any comments?

Regards

John

 

[tom95521]

That system looks really good. If you do any video editing or high resolution photography then 4 TB is not too big. Even larger 8 TB drives are common now. If I had a choice of HD I would get a Hitachi. Even though they are owned by WD I think they are still a better drive.  Unlike owning a Mac it's not that hard to upgrade your system later to add more RAM and larger SSD/HD.

My personal system is a 512 GB SSD + 4 GB data drive. I only have 128 GB free on the SSD.

Tom

 

[Gérard de Lux]

On 3/13/2018 at 11:14 PM, tom95521 said:

My personal system is a 512 GB SSD + 4 GB data drive. I only have 128 GB free on the SSD.

4 GB data drive? It doesn't seem much to me.

[tom95521]

My mistake. 4 TB Hitachi is my favorite. I blame it on my 9 month old kitten who likes to keep me occupied while I try to type. I better stop now before she sees me typing.

Thanks,
Tom