Hey team,

Years ago, SO gifted me an Alienware Aurora R7.

It has an Intel I7-8700 and Nvidia GTX 1080 (8GB VRAM), 16 GB of DDR 4 RAM. (what else is relevant to this question?)

My question to you is basically this -

Given that I’m not gaming with it anymore, I want to use it for only two things -

  1. Plex Server
  2. Running random local LLM stuff like Kotaemon (https://github.com/Cinnamon/kotaemon)

Let’s say I have $1000 to throw at a GPU and I’d like to get 16 GB VRAM (or 24 if it’s possible). I want to install it myself rather than take it into a shop.

What’s a GPU I can buy that will fit,

  1. within my budget?
  2. within the chassis?
  3. with the CPU and motherboard without issues?
  4. with the needs I’ve detailed (namely Plex transcoding, and running ML models)?

I am an absolute noob when it comes to figuring out what hardware to buy (hey, we got us an Alienware sucker here).

So lemmings, help me out! I’d rather not ask ChatGPT.

  • Nyctfall@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    8 days ago

    An Intel ARC 7 with 24GB of VRAM would be the dream!

    But with a 6700K… there’s no official PCIe Resizable Base Address Register (ReBAR) support, or PCIe 4.0 support. (There are some UEFI patching workarounds that might be worth looking into.)
    That would certainly be one of many caveats worth looking into if going Intel ARC… currently just the last gen ARC A770 16GB.

    Intel oneAPI performance is good, but not CUDA good (see YouTuber “Hardware Canucks” testing the ARC B580 12GB). There is the ZLUDA project, but that shouldn’t get anyone’s hopes up based on its history.
    And the Intel Quick Sync Video (QSV) encoder is amazing, it’s a legitimate contender with NVENC in some workloads, and it is sometimes the best in others. Would recommend looking for reviews and testing of QSV vs. NVENC/NVDEC.

    AMD has the Radeon RX 7900XT 20GB and the 7900XTX 24GB. There’s ROCm and HIP support, but Hardware Canucks’s testing show AI is usually CUDA or bust. (ROCm support in many AI workloads can be lacking…) There’s also the AV1 encoding 1920x1082 AMD ReLive defect…
    And the new Radeon RX 9070 16GB and 9070 XT 16GB with improved encoders, even for H.264 (AVC). But there isn’t any ROCm support yet…

    Nvidia is so expensive, they took the G out of GTX…
    and put it into the price.
    The RTX 50-series has dropped 32-bit CUDA support, which breaks the old PhysX games completely. So the 4090 24GB (beware 12VHPW), 3090 Ti 24GB (beware 12VHPW), or 3090 24GB… definitely will need to look into a new PSU for handling the transient power draw spikes.

    Good sources are: Gamer’s Nexus
    Hardware Unboxed
    Hardware Canucks
    Level1Techs/Level1Linux
    Der8auer JayzTwoCents (good start for newbies) PC Builder (even better for noobs)