On 11/11/14 01:09 PM, Michael Fothergill wrote:
Dear Folks,
I am planning to order the components for a new PC that I will put
together myself with a bit of help from the local PC store I use for
repairs etc.
At first I had thought to buy an FX 8350 motherboard plus fan and some
RAM and a power supply e.g. Corsair Builder Series CXM 750W Modular 80
PLUS.
The case could be a large one e.g. Cooler Master HAF X USB 3.0 XL ATX
Case. Perhaps that is too big but it would have good ventilation.
I would add a flash drive (SSD) and an optical drive and run with it
for a number of months and then get a graphics card etc - probably an
Nvidia one.
I started looking at the AMD Kaveri A10-7850K processor and reviews
comparing it with the FX8350 etc.
At first it seemed that the FX8350 was faster per $ or £ than the
Kaveri and that a separate graphics card like an Nvidia one was a
better option according to various web sites I visited on the subject.
But then I read about HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) and
discovered that it had been used to make e.g. libre office run a lot
more efficiently.
I don't do gaming so I don't need powerful graphics acceleration. I
began to realise that the graphics acceleration produced by the Kaveri
processor would probably be adequate for my own requirements.
From what I can see looking at some tests done by Phoronix it works a
lot better than typical on board graphics would do on a conventional
CPU set up.
It also seems that the open source drivers work pretty well for Radeon
graphics cards.
My question to you is this: if I would choose the Kaveri processor
(and probably not bother adding either an Nvidia card or an extra
Radeon card) and run with it, how rapidly (e.g. 2- 3 years) do you
think HSA enhancements and optimisations of popular packages used in
Debian etc be created and incorporated into new releases (e.g. Jessie
and beyond)?
How much potential do you think HSA has?
Regards
Michael Fothergill
I haven't done a lot of research on the issue but I've used both. To get
the latest chipsets and onboard graphics, you're pretty much limited to
the A series processors. Once the A series came out, the FX processor
boards seem to have stopped being made with onboard graphics.
For business desktop use, I prefer onboard graphics for reliability.
Also, most add-in cards require fans for cooling which gives you another
point of failure while adding to the noise. Power requirements are
higher when you want the graphics performance of the faster graphics cards.
For server use, you can get FX boards and install a very cheap video
card with low power requirements and no fan. That's actually also my
current desktop configuration (uses an HD6450 card with large heatsink)
as well. Not running games, I find it works nicely.
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