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André M. Faria
Asked: 2015-07-17 07:54:48 +0800 CST

Reason to keep a GPU in a computer that is running Ubuntu Server

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After a problem with my old motherboard, I'm switching my Ubuntu to my gaming computer. My main question is: is there any reason to keep my AMD HD 7850 running on this computer?

My motherboard has VGA/HDMI connectors.

Will any application, OS, Ubuntu, or the system use the GPU to process any data?

graphics

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Graphics cards help with:

    • CUDA/OpenCL style workloads (eg bitcoin mining)
    • 3D rendering. You might be rendering stuff on demand.
    • Most cards can help with video decoding but this applies to many IGPs too.
    • Some cards have hardware to help with video encoding. The quality is usually a lot poorer and this is still under development. ffmpeg can use nvenc (obviously on a Nvidia card). I'm not sure if this applies to you.

    Almost everything else will only go through the CPU. If you're not doing any of the above (in a way that uses the GPU) you might as well pull the card.

    But hang on a second, you can also play games on Ubuntu. The AMD drivers are occasionally infuriating, but that's potentially an option. If you're planning on running a media centre, your onboard graphics might be enough but we use a low-end Nvidia card to help in ours.

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  2. Yes if the server generates or, for instance, re-sizes images. Software that uses, or could use, the existing graphic card for such tasks, is not unheard of.

    Surely, this depends a lot on what kind of software, what kind of GPU, is the suitable driver available and things the like.

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