Buying: Pentium G3250 or G4400 or AMD A6-7400K?

hanzer

hanzer

Hi,

I might buy some new hardware to replace my Sempron/1GB-RAM desktop machine. The new system will most likely be built around a Mini-ITX motherboard, it will drive a 23" LED display (already have one), I think I would like to run ZFS (I have two 500GB hard-drives), it should run FreeBSD and will be used as both a desktop workstation and an always-on server. It should cost less than $300 US (including tax and shipping).

My first question has to do with the CPU and integrated graphics. How well can FreeBSD drive the Radeon R5 series GPU in the AMD A6-7400K Kaveri processor (typical desktop graphics, video playback/transcoding, OpenCL support, etc.)?

Alternatively, if the AMD A6-7400K isn't well supported, how about the Intel Pentium G3250 or G4400? The G3250 has "Intel HD Graphics" (seems vague), and the G4400 has "Intel HD Graphics 510" (a bit more specific).

The FreeBSD Graphics wiki wasn't sufficiently clear.

Any references, suggestions, words of wisdom, war stories, etc. are welcome and appreciated :)
 
Not sure about Radeon R5 as ATI/AMD lost me with their weird nomenclature years ago. "Intel HD Graphics" is a generic term, as you noticed. I checked the Intel website and unfortunately their own information is extremely vague on the G3250 chipset: http://ark.intel.com/products/83538/Intel-Pentium-Processor-G3250-3M-Cache-3_20-GHz
I would assume G3250 will be one of the Intel HD 4xxx series, as opposed to the GMA Graphics Media Accelerator line found together with Intel Pentium chips in business desktops and laptops.

With the advent of better DRM support for our i915 intel graphics driver in -CURRENT, you might be OK with Intel HD Graphics 510, though G3250 is more likely to be supported I think.
 
Atsuri said:
Not sure about Radeon R5 as ATI/AMD lost me with their weird nomenclature years ago.
Click to expand...

I came to similar conclusions late last night. AMD technical documentation is either very difficult to find or nonexistent. A consumer site (Newegg) claims the AMD A6-7400K Kaveri has a Radeon R5 series type GPU, then Wikipedia includes AMD "Kaveri" APUs within the category of
Radeon R5/7/9 200 Series in their list of AMD graphics processors. So, I guess the AMD A6-7400K Kaveri has a Radeon R5 200 Series GPU. With this critical bit of data, the FreeBSD Graphics Wiki says: AMD - Radeon HD Rx 200 - Volcanic Islands - Not supported

Atsuri said:
[snip] "Intel HD Graphics" is a generic term, as you noticed. I checked the Intel website and unfortunately their own information is extremely vague on the G3250 chipset: http://ark.intel.com/products/83538/Intel-Pentium-Processor-G3250-3M-Cache-3_20-GHz
I would assume G3250 will be one of the Intel HD 4xxx series, as opposed to the GMA Graphics Media Accelerator line found together with Intel Pentium chips in business desktops and laptops.
Click to expand...

I think I figured out the style and nomenclature of the Intel table in the FreeBSD Graphics Wiki well enough to make some guesses. The G3250 is a Haswell class of processor. The wiki says: Min. FreeBSD version 11.0

The page Update i915 GPU driver to Linux 3.8 suggests "Initial Haswell support" and generally conveys that this will not provide fully functioning, production quality hardware utilization.

Atsuri said:
[snip] With the advent of better DRM support for our i915 intel graphics driver in -CURRENT, you might be OK with Intel HD Graphics 510, though G3250 is more likely to be supported I think.
Click to expand...

The G4400 is a Skylake class of processor (with Intel HD Graphics 510). The wiki says: Skylake - Not supported

I'm not sure how to proceed. Any suggestions for new hardware?
 
Haswell graphics work well with FreeBSD 11, I'm not sure about 10.X, or about Skylake.

As far as the AMD APU, I've used older ones with success. But I stopped buying AMD processors years back because I didn't want to encourage them to keep producing over-promised, under-performing chips. On the other hand, I only buy AMD graphics cards, because they support open source and Nvidia does not. The APU probably has much faster graphics than either Intel.

Given the choices listed, I would probably get the G4400 and run FreeBSD 11.0, planning to add a graphics card if needed. Mini-ITX is going to be not so great for that and the 8G or more of RAM for ZFS.
 
wblock@ said:
Haswell graphics work well with FreeBSD 11, I'm not sure about 10.X, or about Skylake. [snip]
Click to expand...
The FreeBSD 11.0 Release Process page estimates 11.0 will be production quality next month (September). Kismet.

How well will FreeBSD 11 make use of the Haswell graphics hardware? Would the GPU be utilized, for example, with OpenCL workloads? How about video playback/transcoding? Or does "work well" mean only that Xorg will run?

Sorry if I sound a little too intense on this subject. I've been playing whack-a-mole with vague technical documentation while drinking coffee for the last two hours.

wblock@ said:
[snip] Given the choices listed, I would probably get the G4400 and run FreeBSD 11.0, planning to add a graphics card if needed. Mini-ITX is going to be not so great for that and the 8G or more of RAM for ZFS.
Click to expand...

The G4400 is a Skylake class processor. I guess you meant the G3250 (a Haswell class of processor)?

Making a premeditated/deliberate choice to buy a new system with a processor and motherboard that have integrated graphics as a fundamental and central aspect of their design, then buying an additional third party graphics card, thus rendering the integrated graphics moot, would be too ugly for my sense of technical aesthetic.
 
wblock@ said:
[snip] On the other hand, I only buy AMD graphics cards, because they support open source and Nvidia does not. [snip]
Click to expand...

Is the FreeBSD Graphics wiki accurate? All of the AMD cards say "See notes: 1" which says:

Notes:
  1. Radeon video cards:
    • AGP cards not supported before FreeBSD 10-CURRENT
    • Features not yet working/implemented:
      • Hardware-assisted video decoding
      • Audio over HDMI or DisplayPort
      • Multiple cards sharing output connectors
      • Power management
 
isn't now a rather silly time to purchase as new intel's are still dropping and the AMD announcement? I mean if you have held off this long...
 
void_validation said:
isn't now a rather silly time to purchase as new intel's are still dropping and the AMD announcement? I mean if you have held off this long...
Click to expand...

I haven't been watching the market for trends. Can you elaborate on what you have noticed and what you predict will happen?
 
hanzer said:
I think I might go with an AMD FX-6350 Vishera 6-Core CPU on a GIGABYTE GA-78LMT-USB3 (rev. 6.0) Micro-ATX motherboard. With 8GB of RAM, a case and a power supply, it should arrive at my door for $320. BUT, the video is "Integrated ATI Radeon HD 3000 Graphics" on the motherboard.

Does anyone have any experience with the ATI Radeon HD 3000?
Click to expand...

I have a FireGL v5600 and a FirePro v5700 workstation card on one of my FreeBSD-10.3-RELEASE workstations. Unless something has changed, you need to load the kms driver AND the respective firmware (r630 I think) in /boot/loader.conf on system boot to load the driver prior to X11 (in CLI mode). Also, the standard kern.vty=vt line in the same file to get KMS to work properly. Both cards are based on the Radeon HD 3000 architecture as far as I know, and both work perfectly fine on FreeBSD-10.3-RELEASE and perhaps up.

I would also have a look at what's going on in 12.0-CURRENT as I recently read on facebook that the drm bit for Intel graphics is finally synced or close to being synced with the GNU/Linux Intel driver.
 
hanzer said:
How well will FreeBSD 11 make use of the Haswell graphics hardware? Would the GPU be utilized, for example, with OpenCL workloads? How about video playback/transcoding? Or does "work well" mean only that Xorg will run?
Click to expand...
I've had a Haswell notebook since early this year, and it works fine with X. Including suspend and wake on closing the lid, although about one time in ten it fails to wake up, which might have been improved since the last time it was updated. That system was just recently switched to 12-current, but there has not been much divergence yet.

There is no special setup to load firmware or drivers at boot. It just works. I would expect anything based on HD3000 to also work, as that's a very old line.

As far as I know, nothing yet supports OpenCL on FreeBSD. No idea about video-specific stuff like transcoding, either.
 
Atsuri said:
I have a FireGL v5600 and a FirePro v5700 workstation card on one of my FreeBSD-10.3-RELEASE workstations. [snip] Both cards are based on the Radeon HD 3000 architecture as far as I know, and both work perfectly fine on FreeBSD-10.3-RELEASE and perhaps up. [snip]
Click to expand...

wblock@ said:
I've had a Haswell notebook since early this year, and it works fine with X. [snip]
Click to expand...

wblock@ said:
[snip] I would expect anything based on HD3000 to also work, as that's a very old line. [snip]
Click to expand...

wblock@ said:
[snip] As far as I know, nothing yet supports OpenCL on FreeBSD. No idea about video-specific stuff like transcoding, either.
Click to expand...

This is very useful information, many thanks! I think I am now equipped to make a decision with much more realistic expectations.
 
Nothing to sway me. Intel has been pretty stingy with their cores. Maybe this will get us more cores for less money.
Competition has never been bad for consumers.

$1,700 dollar Extreme Edition CPU? Maybe competition will drop it back to the $1,000 mark.
 
Competition is good. AMD has not been very competitive, though. They announce their new wonderful processor that will blow the doors off every Intel chip. Six months or a year later, it's apologies, but our very next line will actually realize everything we promised for this one. This time, for sure.
 
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