Overall system performance with APU graphics vs. cheap PCI-e

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SweClas

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Apr 20, 2017
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I've got a home server built on a MSI A88XM-E35 motherboard with a AMD A4-7300 processor. Being a server there's absolutely no need for graphics performance. I have, however, been wondering if there would be any overall system performance gain by installing a cheap graphics card and disabling the internal graphics? My guess is that since the CPU is sharing memory with the APU, the CPU-memory access times would benefit from a dedicated GPU. And also the amount of available system memory should increase, right?

Anyone with knowledge about this wanna hand out some advice?

Thanks in advance,
Clas
 
Solution
Barty1884
As far as CPU resources go, I believe the APU's are essentially separate anyway - so not utilizing the GPU aspect of the APU is unlikely to free up any CPU resources.

The APU uses system memory though, as you know - so a discreet GPU would at least free up some RAM for use elsewhere.
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Barty1884

Barty1884

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As far as CPU resources go, I believe the APU's are essentially separate anyway - so not utilizing the GPU aspect of the APU is unlikely to free up any CPU resources.

The APU uses system memory though, as you know - so a discreet GPU would at least free up some RAM for use elsewhere.
 
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Scottray

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How about just going into the BIOS and turning off the iGPU (if this switch is available in the BIOS on your mobo)? No sense installing a power hunger GPU in a server that's on 24/7. Also, note that most server software is pretty light on graphics (you didn't mention which OS you're running). I'm thinking that the performance and memory gain are going to be minimal.
 
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