Re: [GTALUG] GPU advice needed

2024-03-31 Thread Lennart Sorensen via talk 
On Sat, Mar 30, 2024 at 12:13:35PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> Fun fact: Mac folks never cease to brag about how great Unified Memory
> is on the M1 etc.  That seems silly when you realize that integrated
> GPUs have always had this.  But there is apparently a case where the
> performance benefit is great:

Unified memory is a great idea when designed with the bandwidth
it requires.  The integrated video on PCs never was, it has no more
bandwidth than the CPU without the integrated GPU had, so it was always
costing you bandwidth your CPU needed.

What the MAC has done, and what SGI did as well as some of the Xbox
models, is design the system with lots of memory bandwidth, more than
the CPU itself could ever take advantage of, which means anything you
now put in ram is also useable directly by the GPU and neither is getting
starved for bandwidth.  So unified memory with high bandwidth is good.
Unified memory with low bandwidth is bad.

I remember a laptop my wife had with intel integrated video where doubling
the ram made the machine way way faster because it allowed it to switch
from single to dual channel access and doubled the bandwidth and suddenly
the video wasn't starving the CPU as much anymore.  It made way more
difference than a bit more ram normally should have done.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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[GTALUG] GPU advice needed

2024-03-30 Thread gs via talk 
I don't think a $150 price premium is worth it for negligible 
performance and cooling gains due to slight core/memory clock differences,

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/products/video-card/#c=499=price=1

I consider Memory Express to have better customer service compared to CC 
but anything is better than Amazon.

On 2024-03-29 15:36, Evan Leibovitch via talk 'talk at gtalug.org' wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> Although I really don't want to, I need to upgrade the graphics card 
> on my main desktop.
> I currently have an AMD RX 6600 but some of the applications I want to 
> work with, notably in AI and content creation, either don't work well 
> on AMD cards or not at all.
>
> For decades I've stuck to AMD cards -- partly because of their better 
> track record with Linux drivers, but also because of my affinity for 
> ATI in Markham. Alas, though, I must get something from Team Green 
> now. Leaning towards an RTX 3060 12GB, that should be enough for me.
>
> Here is my question. Even having picked that one chipset, there are a 
> dozen variations that I see between CanadaComputers and Amazon. These 
> vary in price by more than $150. The only differences I can tell are 
> the number of fans and the output connectors (some have 2 HDMI and 2 
> Displayport,  some 1/3).
>
> Are there any compelling reasons other than price that would drive a 
> purchase? I don't care how many fans so long as the GPU is 
> sufficiently cooled (I have no interest in overclocking). Also, any 
> GTA store recommendations besides CC are appreciated.
>
> Thanks!
>
> -- 
> Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
> @evanleibovitch / @el56
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Re: [GTALUG] GPU advice needed

2024-03-30 Thread D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk 
GPU-for-AI advice from the cheap seats (I've never done this).

AI stacks seem very fragile.  Any time you make a substitution the
whole thing might misbehave.

You can either copy EXACTLY a working configuration from someone else or 
you can sign up for adventure.  Most likely you will try some of both.

NVidia cards come in at least three flavours: those for AI, those for
pros (running things like autocad), and those for gamers.
They try hard to segment the market so they can charge as much as
possible for the segment.

Serious AI cards cost up to US$20,000.  Maybe more.

How do they keep gamer cards from being great AI cards?  I don't know
all the techniques, but they include:

- crippling the speed of 64-bit floating point

- limiting the amount of on-board memory (pretty important)

- (I think) limiting the ability to partition the card into virtual
  cards for multiple processes to run in parallel safely.

- limiting how GPUs can scale up (interconnect)

This is on top of the crippling they did to hobble cryptocurrency
mining.  I don't know what that amounted to technically.

Advice for buying a card:

- how much do you want to spend?  Not enough!

- you probably want as much on-board RAM as possible because swapping
  stuff between the computer's RAM and the GPU's RAM is apparently a
  serious bottleneck.  I don't have a cost/benefit curve.  I'm pretty
  sure that it is like real RAM: performance falls off a cliff when
  you don't have enough.

- fans probably matter because (1) good cooling should be quieter than bad
  cooling (not in data-centre cards: nobody cares about noise there),
  and (2) without good cooling, throttling will happen.
  Read good review sites to get opinions about card cooling issues.

- Guess: the version of PCIe used might matter.  We're in a period of
  transition.  (Remember: the motherboard and the GPU have to both
  support the PCIe version you target.)

- if I were at all adventurous, I'd look at Intel graphics cards.
  They are probably a bargain on a per teraflop basis.
  Intel tries hard to push AI on Linux.  They are pretty good
  open-source players and seem more competent than AMD.

- my impression is that AMD for AI on Linux smells a bit like a lost
  cause: they care about their commercial GPU-compute customers but
  not us.  ROCm only really seems to work on their industrial GPU
  cards.

- the latest gen of NVidia is apparently not much a step up from the
  previous one.  Check the performance, not just the model number.

Fun fact: Mac folks never cease to brag about how great Unified Memory
is on the M1 etc.  That seems silly when you realize that integrated
GPUs have always had this.  But there is apparently a case where the
performance benefit is great:

- tonnes of memory on the Mac (very expensive), more than you can get
  on an NVidia gamer GPU

- working with a model that doesn't fit in the NVidia GPU
  but does fit in the Mac's RAM.

The Mac's RAM has very fast access from both the GPU and the CPU.
Much faster than the PCIe bus.  In fact, much faster than an X86 can
access bulk RAM.

Phoronix.com seems to focus on Linux and GPUs.

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/ might be helpful finding deals.

Where to buy?

Check out
Amazon (easy returns; sometimes good prices)

Canada Computers (sometimes bad customer service but I've not really
encountered this)

Best Buy (sometimes)

NewEgg (sometimes)

Memory Express
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Re: [GTALUG] GPU advice needed

2024-03-29 Thread Evan Leibovitch via talk 
Thanks!

Too bad about the trade

- Evan


On Fri, Mar 29, 2024 at 8:19 PM Peter King via talk  wrote:

> On 3/29/24 3:36 PM, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
>
> Hi all.
>
> Although I really don't want to, I need to upgrade the graphics card on my
> main desktop.
> I currently have an AMD RX 6600 but some of the applications I want to
> work with, notably in AI and content creation, either don't work well on
> AMD cards or not at all.
>
> For decades I've stuck to AMD cards -- partly because of their better
> track record with Linux drivers, but also because of my affinity for ATI in
> Markham. Alas, though, I must get something from Team Green now. Leaning
> towards an RTX 3060 12GB, that should be enough for me.
>
> If I'd seen this a week earlier I would have proposed a trade -- I just
> took out an MSI GeForce RTX 2060 to replace it with an AMD RX 6600.
>
> I can't help with your main question, unfortunately, but I can tell you
> why I chucked my Nvida card, which is that there seems to be a nasty
> interaction bug between the nonproprietary nouveau drivers and the current
> iteration of mesa, which leads to all manner of complications, mostly in
> never coming out of suspend but sometimes even not booting the console.
> (In each case using ssh to get in to the computer found everything else
> running perfectly.)  This all happened under current Arch Linux.
>
> Most likely you aren't interested in the nouveau drivers.  I don't know
> how extensive the interactive bug with mesa is, but you might check that
> out before you take the leap.  I have never used the nvidia proprietary
> drivers so I have no views about whether they have problems.
>
> --
> Peter Kingpeter.k...@utoronto.ca
> Department of Philosophy
> 170 St. George Street #521
> The University of Toronto(416)-946-3170 ofc
> Toronto, ON  M5R 2M8
>CANADA
> http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/
>
> =
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>
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-- 
Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
@evanleibovitch / @el56
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Re: [GTALUG] GPU advice needed

2024-03-29 Thread Peter King via talk 

On 3/29/24 3:36 PM, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:


Hi all.

Although I really don't want to, I need to upgrade the graphics card 
on my main desktop.
I currently have an AMD RX 6600 but some of the applications I want to 
work with, notably in AI and content creation, either don't work well 
on AMD cards or not at all.


For decades I've stuck to AMD cards -- partly because of their better 
track record with Linux drivers, but also because of my affinity for 
ATI in Markham. Alas, though, I must get something from Team Green 
now. Leaning towards an RTX 3060 12GB, that should be enough for me.


If I'd seen this a week earlier I would have proposed a trade -- I just 
took out an MSI GeForce RTX 2060 to replace it with an AMD RX 6600.


I can't help with your main question, unfortunately, but I can tell you 
why I chucked my Nvida card, which is that there seems to be a nasty 
interaction bug between the nonproprietary nouveau drivers and the 
current iteration of mesa, which leads to all manner of complications, 
mostly in never coming out of suspend but sometimes even not booting the 
console.  (In each case using ssh to get in to the computer found 
everything else running perfectly.)  This all happened under current 
Arch Linux.


Most likely you aren't interested in the nouveau drivers.  I don't know 
how extensive the interactive bug with mesa is, but you might check that 
out before you take the leap.  I have never used the nvidia proprietary 
drivers so I have no views about whether they have problems.


--
Peter King  peter.k...@utoronto.ca
Department of Philosophy
170 St. George Street #521
The University of Toronto  (416)-946-3170 ofc
Toronto, ON  M5R 2M8
   CANADA

http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/

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[GTALUG] GPU advice needed

2024-03-29 Thread Evan Leibovitch via talk 
Hi all.

Although I really don't want to, I need to upgrade the graphics card on my
main desktop.
I currently have an AMD RX 6600 but some of the applications I want to work
with, notably in AI and content creation, either don't work well on AMD
cards or not at all.

For decades I've stuck to AMD cards -- partly because of their better track
record with Linux drivers, but also because of my affinity for ATI in
Markham. Alas, though, I must get something from Team Green now. Leaning
towards an RTX 3060 12GB, that should be enough for me.

Here is my question. Even having picked that one chipset, there are a dozen
variations that I see between CanadaComputers and Amazon. These vary in
price by more than $150. The only differences I can tell are the number of
fans and the output connectors (some have 2 HDMI and 2 Displayport,  some
1/3).

Are there any compelling reasons other than price that would drive a
purchase? I don't care how many fans so long as the GPU is sufficiently
cooled (I have no interest in overclocking). Also, any GTA store
recommendations besides CC are appreciated.

Thanks!

-- 
Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
@evanleibovitch / @el56
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