New low power and noise gpu

Hello :slight_smile:

I’m on need of another gpu for my primary pc.
It currently has a vega 56, but I want to repurpose it for a windows 7 machine.
So i need a new gpu for this one.
It’s currently running w10, but i’m getting ready to swith to ubuntu.
So i’m thinking a amd gpu. It won’t be doing gaming, or other gpu intensive stuff. Only a rare occasion light photo editing.
It’s main purpose is everyday computing, and running a few vm’s.
I’m thinking an rx 560, or maybe a wx 3100.
I’d like to use the open source drivers in ubuntu. Will the wx3100 have issue with that?
Are one of the two I have listed better suited than the other for my purpose?

Thanks :slight_smile:

moved to gpu category

I can swap a RX 560 for your Vega 56 :smiley:

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RX550 will probably do that and they’re very cheap (Just over half the price of a 560, if you can find one - and lower power).

I have one in my work PC. Runs general stuff just fine.

If you in any way care about 3d performance though the 560 is much better bang for buck.

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There is an XFX RX460 that is completely passively cooled.


Being RX460 and all it uses only the PCIe power without any extra power cable requirements.
It’s pretty good, but it’s also fairly weak. Performance is like 1/3 of Vega56…

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I think this is to be expected for this sort of GPU.

Still, that’s a lot better than integrated graphics and depending on the application, may be plenty.

In fact “light photo editing” an integrated GPU is probably fine even. For 2d stuff my RX550 is much faster than intel iGPU on my work i7-6700.

RX460/550 can still game though, just older titles or “e-sports” stuff, or drop the details to low.

You just need to adjust expectations - you’re not going to have vega performance from something 20% of the price.

I have that passive RX460 for a few years now and it works mostly great with linux and plasma. Sometimes i had a bug where the colors would mess up on the desktop and i had to reboot. Not sure if it’s a driver or plasma bug, other DE’s have no problems nor did win10.
It certainly was not overheating though, it stayed in the lowest power state most of the time.
Early on i did have some weird stuff going on when it was hooked up to my tv, it has hdmi 2.0 and my tv has 1.4 or whatever was fashionable in 2014. Not sure that was the card’s fault though, it has generally been solid.

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Nah, I need the vega for another pc. Also I’m from Denmark :slight_smile:

I haven’t considered a 550, but it’l be a 560. Just in case :slight_smile:

It will of course be weaker than the vega.
But the Vega have really only been idling all the time it’s been in the pc. Which is why I want to use it for another pc, where it’l get a something to do :slight_smile:

Igpu isnt present, since it’s a 1900x cpu :slight_smile:
But the vega isn’t put to any real use, which is why I’m replacing it, and using it for another pc.

I’ll look a for a deal at a 560 at my local parts pusher.

Thanks for the inputs :slight_smile:

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Threadripper? Nice :slight_smile:
I can’t imagine RX460 on Threadripper… It’s like a rocket engine on a tricycle…

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I know. That’s why I bought the vega 56 back then. But it’s not doing much. It just seems like a waste.
One of the reasons I’m thinking about swapping it out is to save a bit on the power bill. But the idle power draw difference between a vega 56 and rx 560 might be immeasurable?

You will not notice any difference, dude…
I replaced all my 80W light bulbs with 12W LED light bulbs - the power bill is the same.
To be fair, you may save some power, but not really much at all and at the end of the day - the power bill will be the same.

Power wise it doesn’t make much sense then.
But the main reason was to better utilize the vega 56 for a living room pc for some older games, to play at 4k in my living room :slight_smile:
I want to replay BioShock 1 and 2 (and some other older games) on my 65 inch oled tv in native 4k resolution:)
I think the 56 should be capable of older games at 4k.

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I can.

Threadripper is an ideal VM home-lab platform.

For that sort of stuff GPU is pretty irrelevant.

It will be negligible. When idle, Vega is actually really good on power. It’s also really good when under-volted and down-clocked a bit.

The only reason Vega has such as bad rep for power is that AMD basically worked out what the maximum mainstream acceptable power draw would be, how much heat they could evacuate with a blower - and gave it that much juice with clocks at the maximum speed for those criteria. Which is quite a bit beyond the sweet spot on its power vs clocks efficiency curve.

i.e., its pretty much “overclocked” and limited by power out of the box.

If you don’t push it that hard, it can be a lot more efficient. Idle? it’s like 7 watts or less from memory.

if you are from Denmark that just makes it easier! could drive to swap the gpus ahha :smiley:
jokes aside tho the RX 560 is a pretty good card, I’ve used one for quite a while as my primary GPU until I got my Vega 56, you can play a lot of games at 100 FPS if you conserve on the settings if you ever need to do that, and it can always be repurposed as a display gpu for a server or mediacenter

My sister also has one (Sapphire RX560 4GB, single fan). Super quiet card, great for what it is.