building a newer PC - which GPU to choose

[mastablasta]

my old frankenstein PC is having issues with freezing. not sure exactly what is wrong but i suspect it is the old GPU card. i can't get a replacement (AGP card), so i was thinking of building a new PC. i will be using a smaller frame - looks like Cooltek Coolcube Maxi is a good choice as it can use standard ATX PSU and i can fit 2 large HDD drives in it - just what i have. it also has room for the CPU cooler.

i need help with the rest of the build meant for light gaming/video editing. i plan to pack it with 16GB RAM and use some new components from the old machine. but i can't decide on the GPU. options i came down with:

• Ryzen 5 2600 + nvidia 1050 ti,
• Ryzen 5 2600 + nvidia 1650 or
• Ryzen 5 2600+ any other AMD entry card -- which one?;
• or Radeon vega 11 (on ryzen 2400G).

From what i read, AMD cards (550, 560, 570) need more power and their performance is still weaker than nvidia. i would like to keep the wattage and heat down as well as price. for some reason their (AMD) price is the same here as nvidia or higher. size is also a factor.

current monitor is old with VGA cable and max resolution 1680x1050. might change it within next 2 years. depending on financial situation.

motherboard i was thinking Asus Prime B450M-A which i am still investigating, but it does seem it will work with linux. it's an older board. it supports 3xxx series of CPU but i see i get enough performance with older cheaper CPU model. however if anyone has another, better suggestion, i will listen.

OS will be Kubuntu (preferably LTS). i guess it will need a fresh install using GPT and secure boot or whatever is needed with the latest UEFI boards.

importantly - all should be easy to install and use = plug and play vs. plug and pray and fix and... i don't have the patience any more. an option was also to get an older HP machine but they have really specific PSU with low wattage. so a 1050 card would first in them (maybe) but it will all be quite borderline.

[CatKiller]

From what i read, AMD cards (550, 560, 570) need more power and their performance is still weaker than nvidia.

This isn't true in general. At a given price point both AMD and Nvidia have cards that perform about the same and have about the same performance-per-Watt. The confusion is because of the high end: AMD don't have anything to compete with something like the RTX 2080 Ti, which costs over £1000 and uses nearly 300 W. You aren't interested in the high end, though, so you've got plenty to choose from.

Phoronix do regular benchmarks of Linux tasks, including Linux gaming, and they include power consumption in their results. Here's one that covers the range that you're likely to be interested in. Here's another that looks at integrated graphics.

current monitor is old with VGA cable and max resolution 1680x1050. might change it within next 2 years. depending on financial situation.

This is going to be an issue. Modern GPUs aren't going to have an analogue output, and converters don't pass through the EDID that will let the resolution be detected automatically. You're likely to have to manually fiddle with xorg.conf to get the right resolution.

OS will be Kubuntu (preferably LTS).

For a small form factor build that isn't primarily aimed at gaming, the Ryzen integrated graphics would be fine. However support for them wasn't available in 2018, so you're either going to have to forgo the LTS so that you can use the later software that came with the later releases, or manually add the later hardware enablement and Mesa stack to your 18.04 base, or wait till 20.04. The 3000 APUs are apparently easier to get working smoothly than the 2000 APUs, even on the newest graphics stack; their launch was quite rough.

Otherwise, pick whichever card fits into your case, and financial and power budgets. From an 18.04 base you're going to need to use the graphics driver ppa if you choose anything Turing. Pascal works with the proprietary driver in the normal repositories, I think. I don't know that much about the AMD side for discrete graphics.

My 2700X / 2080 Ti build was entirely painless with Kubuntu 18.04, FWIW.

[TheFu]

Nothing more to add, new GPUs don't support VGA. You'll need a new monitor. Perhaps buying that first would be best? Get HDMI, DP, and DVI-i inputs to avoid lots-o-issues. More display port would be better.

I fought the EDID battle using an active DVI-i -to- VGA converter with an nVidia 1030 GPU on a Ryzen 2600. These converters work at well-known resolutions - 1080 and 720. Don't expect 1050 to work under any situation. The 1030 I got is fanless. All the higher cards had fans, which means they required more power, made more noise, made more heat, etc. There are lots of fake GPUs out there. Buy from a reputable retailer. Any recent generation nVidia with VGA support is a fake. The 1030 doesn't have VGA, none of the 10xx does.

[oldfred]

I made a mistake when I built this system.
Monitor has VGA and DVI-D in and new motherboard had HDMI & Displayport out. oops.
I ended up using my old nVidia GT620. Later found that Intel Haswell video was slightly better than GT620 and found a cable that converted to DVI-D.

I do not game so video from CPU is all I need anyway.

[TheFu]

I do legacy gaming on a ...

CPU:       Quad core Intel Core i5-8250U (-HT-MCP-) cache: 6144 KB 
Graphics:  Card: Intel UHD Graphics 620

And did the same on a Core i3-5015U previously. Sim City, C&C, and most old games don't really care.

[mastablasta]

if this was for me, i would be OK with APU graphics. and for a bit of gaming the 1030 is strong enough and as mentioned has a fanless version available.

i heard about RX5500 but it will take a while before we see it here. and 1650 has some reduced prices here now (maybe beause SUPER is out there?!). RX570 is weaker (based on tests), while 580 is much more expensive and heats up. the 1000 series is getting old and is not that much cheaper than 1650 at current price. i will be buying from reputable dealer. if something is wrong or if i don't like it they will exchange it or return the money at no cost.

I was actually planning on using DVI adapter to get the monitor working. however this got me thinking, i might need a new monitor sooner than expected.

but what should i do with the old working one? can it be used as a monitor on laptop? usually laptops can easily output to VGA as many projectors have VGA ports. the also still come with VGA port on the side, so maybe i could use it for laptop. but i am not sure how this goes with newer ones which often have Display Port or HDMI. i hate to see things that are working well go to waste. i wouldn't be even thinking about new PC yet, if this old box was not freezing. it was more than good enough for the tasks we were doing on it. so the idea is to replace this one with a new laptop and use the parts for a new desktop for my son. he will buy it as he was saving money for it for a "gaming PC" for 3 years now. plus we could use something a bit stronger for some light video editing and cutting.

[TheFu]

I haven't seen a laptop with a VGA port in a few years. Think pre-2015. HDMI-to-VGA adaptors at HiDef definitions are pretty good. Again, that's 720p@60hz and 1080i@30hz or 1080p@60hz. I've always had to exactly specify those resolutions to get projectors working.

[CatKiller]

but what should i do with the old working one? can it be used as a monitor on laptop?

It's not that it won't work, it's that it won't work without some fiddling and you were specifically trying to avoid fiddling.

It's (probably) just a couple of lines in xorg.conf that we're talking about, but they're lines that you'd be less likely to need with digital signalling. Someone might be unfortunate and still need to do it with digital signals; manufacturers still cheap out on EDID if they're particularly crappy.

[TheFu]

It's not that it won't work, it's that it won't work without some fiddling and you were specifically trying to avoid fiddling.

It's (probably) just a couple of lines in xorg.conf that we're talking about, but they're lines that you'd be less likely to need with digital signalling. Someone might be unfortunate and still need to do it with digital signals; manufacturers still cheap out on EDID if they're particularly crappy.

My experience with this: Connected the laptop HDMI-out --> HDMI-to-VGA converter ($15), set the output to 1080p@60hz using lxrandr, and never have any issues. There are terrible HDMI-to-VGA converters, but if you get one with high reviews, it should be fine. No need to do EDID stuff.

When I had to do EDID and xorg.conf stuff, the DVI-i output was used --> DVI-i -to- VGA adaptor, --> KVM switch with VGA only, --> existing VGA connection to a 1200p monitor where I wanted 1200p resolution. With 1080p resolution, everything "just worked". I wanted 1200p resolution.
The DVI-i -to- VGA adaptor specifically claimed 1200p resolution support, but the EDID information it was telling the GPU was 1080p. The adaptor didn't pass through the EDID from the monitor.
Was already using the HDMI-out to another monitor which is/was working fine. No KVM-switch in that connection.

HDMI-to-VGA adaptors basically work at all the standard resolutions and refresh rates.

[CatKiller]

he will buy it as he was saving money for it for a "gaming PC" for 3 years now. plus we could use something a bit stronger for some light video editing and cutting.

Video editing is orthogonal to gaming; any potato with enough RAM can do video editing, and faster machines will do it faster. With sufficient RAM lots of cores is what will make video encoding faster, and having those cores as fast as possible. Ryzen is a great platform for that.

Since it now apparently is a machine that's being built for gaming, you'll need to look at the games that you'll want to play on it. A machine that can play Overwatch well is not the same as a machine that can play Cyberpunk 2077 well. For performance gaming, lots of cores makes little difference; it's the strength of the GPU that will be the bottleneck first. Again, depending on the game: you can play as much Stardew Valley as you want with any GPU that you have.

It's worth recognising that if they've been saving for a gaming PC for three years then you don't want it to be bad at gaming. That means that you're going to have to land quite high up on the performance charts for the GPU. Many games that they'll want to play will also require Windows.

Edit to add: if they're comfortable with only using the games that will work on Linux, the Feral ports are only generally tested with Nvidia cards. AMD cards have got adequate performance in Vulkan now, but they didn't when Feral started using Vulkan for their ports.