Does an Audio workstation need dedicated graphics and why?

[gundogg9999]

Hi folks,

Can someone please educate me as to why an audio workstation needs dedicated graphics card?
Some of these cards are easily 400 Euro which we know is a lot of money in the studio. And Motherboards have onboard graphics. Not sure what the pros and cons are

And I found a card that is cheap and has multiple outputs:
https://www.mindfactory.de/product_...ming-Aktiv-PCIe-3-0-x16--Retail-_1125755.html

Will there be performance advantages to spending this money? Is this card too cheap?

Thanks for some education.

 

[gundogg9999]

Anyone?

 

[coffeeshop]

I think in general it is better to have a discrete card from what I understood reading through the forums here.
And now days where all those beautiful plugins and shinning DAW and wave drawing and sequencer graphics , well
I dont think it is a bad idea to have one.

 

[dysanfel]

The probably don't HAVE to use a dedicated card, but I would use one. Especially one that has native support like my GTX660 (minus High Sierra grrrrrr....)

 

[jiffyslot]

Here's a dumb question: So if I build a machine and stick a fancy PCIe GPU in it, will the Intel i7 or i9 that has onboard graphics support "know" that there is a dedicated graphics card in a slot to do the GPU work; releasing all of its would-be potential onboard GPU compute cycles, deferring this to the GPU card?

 

[trs96]

Here's a dumb question: So if I build a machine and stick a fancy PCIe GPU in it, will the Intel i7 or i9 that has onboard graphics support "know" that there is a dedicated graphics card in a slot to do the GPU work; releasing all of its would-be potential onboard GPU compute cycles, deferring this to the GPU card?

You can disable the integrated graphics in the UEFI for Coffee Lake systems if you don't want them. If you get an i7 X Series or i9 X chip they don't even have igfx.

 

[Krow01]

No, but if you are going to use the iGPU you may have higher RAM requirements than you might otherwise. Its really a matter of which DAW your using, the size of your sample banks, and ultimately trial/error.

 

[jiffyslot]

Okay, thanks everybody. I'd like to build a machine that could run Media Composer and Pro Tools 2018.4, but now I'm considering a Hades Canyon (full spec) -the only non-Apple machine that has onboard TB3 ready to go without a vaporware add-in card. It's baffling that I can't find a MOBO with onboard Thunderbolt ports-a-plenty, being that Thunderbolt is now royalty-free. I'm beginning to think that buying a UAD Apollo 8 Quad Thunderbolt was really short-sighted. I've already bee through two Apple Kernel-Panic Cylinders.

 

[antosx86]

I plan to build my next computer with a discrete GPU, an inexpensive, passive and silent 1030, just to make sure that all of the RAM and computing power go where I need them (samples and virtual instruments) while the GPU and dedicated RAM handle the video part.
Regarding the Hades Canyon, I've been considering that briefly, but after a quick search it turns out you don't get to use the discrete GPU under macOS. It's a shame, it would make a great compact and powerful hackintosh, and I was already planning to fit it in a rackmount case, which would be great in the studio (yeah, and get rid of the awful skull case...).

 

[tabarus]

When using the eGPU will it use CPU power to render things or is teh eGPU a complete separate part of the chip ?