New monitor - need new gpu?

greengiant · 20 May 2018 at 09:00

Looking for a bit of advice.

Currently I have an old OCUK Primio home office pc, with the following specs:

AMD A8-6600K APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics

8GB ram

Asus A88XM-A motherboard, which has VGA / HDMI / DVI-D ports for video.

Now the monitor I'm considering upgrading my Dell 2007 WFP is a Dell U2715H for photo editing use.

The fly in the ointment is that the Dell U2715H has only HDMI & Display Port / Mini Display Port. Uunfortunatly it would appear from the specification for my motherboard that it won't be able to do a high enough resolution for the screen via HDMI.

So I may well need to add a discrete GPU for my system (which I had been considering for a while anyway). I won't be gaming on the system, so I'd be looking to spend at most £50 on a suitable gpu. Now I run linux on my machine, and I believe that Nvidia cards are still better supported than Radeon cards? I would want however similar or better gpu performance than that on my AMD gpu. Ideally I'd just use the discrete card, rather than both the GPU & onboard graphics. However there does not seem to be much choice in the lower end of the GPU market for graphics cards which have displayport output!

Or are there such a thing as a DVI-D to Display Port adaptor, and would these run at 1440p resolution of the monitor?

I certainly didn't have this problem when I bought the old Dell 2007 WFP years ago!

Suggestions welcomed,

Squid Vicious · 20 May 2018 at 10:59

Adaptors do exist but looks like you'd need an active one to get 2560x1440 - at which point the gfx card becomes a cheaper and probably more reliable option.

A GT 1030 has significantly higher performance than your current apu but is £15 over budget.

champ222 · 20 May 2018 at 11:10

I use the 2715h at work and its a lovely monitor. Worth the purchase or a new gpu.

Habakkuk · 20 May 2018 at 14:20

Passive adapters are ~£3-5, active adapters are ~£30-50 - but yeah they exist.

greengiant · 20 May 2018 at 14:41

Thanks for the replies. I'd rather go with a discrete GPU rather than an adaptor - should be more reliable that way, plus I free up some system ram rather than using onboard graphics.

Squid Vicious, the GT 1030 does look a good option, happy to extend my budget a little if I get a better graphics card. However in the specs of one I've looked at, https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus...ddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-41j-as.html, it mentions

- DVI Max. Resolution: 1920*1200
- DVI Output: 1x Native single-link DVI-D
- HDMI Output: 1x Native HDMI

So does this mean that the card is limited to 1920*1200 resolution over both DVI & HDMI? If so, what card is recommended?

Thanks!

Randomface74 · 20 May 2018 at 14:46

That's just a restriction on the DVI because it's single-link DVI (not dual-link).

The HDMI will work fine.

Nate1492 · 21 May 2018 at 12:45

Sounds like the 1030 is the right call.

t31os · 21 May 2018 at 21:44

1030 or 1050, probably best to save those pennies before jumping into grabbing the new screen.

greengiant · 23 May 2018 at 10:31

Thanks for the replies. Will opt for the GT1030, even although I don't do any gaming on my system, this should be a good upgrade. I'm assuming a silent GT1030 would be fine, considering I'm not gaming on it? I prefer a relatively quiet system.

orbitalwalsh · 23 May 2018 at 11:07

greengiant said:
Thanks for the replies. Will opt for the GT1030, even although I don't do any gaming on my system, this should be a good upgrade. I'm assuming a silent GT1030 would be fine, considering I'm not gaming on it? I prefer a relatively quiet system.

which software are you using for editing and rendering ? GPU acceleration is now common place

worth seeing if it would benefit you , in some cases it just makes moving around/zooming in on a large MP image a lot smoother as the GPU handles that etc

greengiant · 23 May 2018 at 11:27

Orbitalwash, mainly Hugin panorama software, gimp 2.10 , darktable etc on Ubuntu Mate 18.04. Sadly the onboard graphics on my system does not support HDMI resolutions over 4096 x 2160 @ 24 Hz or 1920 x 1200 @ 60 Hz, hence my need for a discrete GPU.

t31os · 24 May 2018 at 10:39

I'd opt for passive personally, small fans can be or become annoyingly noisy.

Habakkuk · 26 May 2018 at 16:55

I had a passive adapter for displayport that kept turning off the signal after 30 seconds or so.

The active adaptor told it to keep running - annoying, but went away after I got a new monitor with DP built in.

greengiant · 24 Nov 2018 at 15:17

Apologies for the thread necromancy, but I've needed to borrow the Nvidia GT1030 from my photo editing rig to get an old spare PC up and running with zwift (cycle training software). The AMD A8 6600K Onboard graphics are running my monitor at 2560x1440 via HDMI.