Image description:

Shopping for a laptop as a Linux user:

Screenshot from the Simpsons where Otto is talking to Marge and Homer standing next to a window in their house with a caption “Oh wow, windows!.. I don’t think I can afford this place.”

  • @[email protected]
    1•9 months ago

    iGPUs are pretty useless for the most part.

    1. Shared memory. Regular DDR is high latency high throuput. GDDR is low latency low throuput. Not only you’re sharing memory with other apps, you’re also penalising yourself in terms of performance.
    2. iGPUs are very slow at computation. Yes, they have codecs built-in, but if you want to run custom math they are not much better than running it on CPU.
    3. CUDA is not available. OpenCL is, but some apps are locked to CUDA.
    4. Old GTX 1080 is 5.5 times faster than brand new Iris Xe at computation. RTX 4080 is like 3x times faster than GTX 1080. That’s an order of magnitude difference between modern GPU and modern iGPU.