Question a10 apu with amd gtx 1050 pairing

RayGunPC

Junior Member
Mar 27, 2020
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I currently have

Motherboard A68HM GRENADE (MS-7891)
Processor AMD A10-7890K Radeon R7, 12 Compute Cores 4C+8G, 4100 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
GPU NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050
Memory 16Gb

I bought the mb and apu at a time that I could not afford a discrete gfx card and added the 1050 later.

My question is:

Should I disable the onboard AMD R7 gfx or leave it enabled? Or does it not matter at all?

I was wondering it if it had any effect on the use of the 1050 at all..
 

ao_ika_red

Golden Member
Aug 11, 2016
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Once you plug your display cable to 1050, you will no longer use the IGP. And if you encounter some display / gaming issue in the future, try uninstalling amd gpu driver first using DDU.
 

RayGunPC

Junior Member
Mar 27, 2020
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Once you plug your display cable to 1050, you will no longer use the IGP. And if you encounter some display / gaming issue in the future, try uninstalling amd gpu driver first using DDU.
Ok, I may try that.

I was fishing to find out whether having both 'enabled' at the same time is detrimental or advantageous in any way?

I had always wondered why when I looked on the motherboard driver updates, the motherboard driver was referred to as an amd chipset driver. I thought that meant it was for the CPU but it appears that it is actually for the GPU part of the CPU and the CPU itself does not need a separately installed driver. Is that right?
 

ao_ika_red

Golden Member
Aug 11, 2016
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Enabling both GPU is probably advantageous on very small selection of games which can leverage Win10's DX12 explicit multi GPU feature.

AMD's FM2+ "chipset driver" is used for SATA and USB controller. There's separate GPU driver for IGP although their interface looks quite similar.
 

Stuka87

Diamond Member
Dec 10, 2010
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As I recall, you can also disable the iGPU in the BIOS, should prevent Windows from wanting to install drivers for a device it thinks doesn't have any.
 
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VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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About the only reason to keep an onboard (chipset or CPU) iGPU "active", when you also have a discrete GPU, is when you want to use multi-monitor, and don't want all of the monitors plugged into the discrete GPU for some reason. (Or want more multi-monitors than the discrete GPU supports.)

Another consideration, is system RAM. Having an iGPU enabled, will use up some small portion of system RAM (turning it into VRAM for the iGPU), that means that applications get less available RAM. Can also affect system RAM bandwidth, if there is a monitor attached to the iGPU.
 

RayGunPC

Junior Member
Mar 27, 2020
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About the only reason to keep an onboard (chipset or CPU) iGPU "active", when you also have a discrete GPU, is when you want to use multi-monitor, and don't want all of the monitors plugged into the discrete GPU for some reason. (Or want more multi-monitors than the discrete GPU supports.)

Another consideration, is system RAM. Having an iGPU enabled, will use up some small portion of system RAM (turning it into VRAM for the iGPU), that means that applications get less available RAM. Can also affect system RAM bandwidth, if there is a monitor attached to the iGPU.
That makes sense.

I don't have multiple monitors. So I think it would be best for me to disable it in the bios, to free up the extra ram..

Thanks.
 

ondma

Platinum Member
Mar 18, 2018
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Enabling both GPU is probably advantageous on very small selection of games which can leverage Win10's DX12 explicit multi GPU feature.

AMD's FM2+ "chipset driver" is used for SATA and USB controller. There's separate GPU driver for IGP although their interface looks quite similar.
Not sure that the OP will be able to play many AAA DX12 games on a GTX1050 or the igpu, even if you can find games that actually run better in DX12 mode. I would just leave the igpu disabled and use the 1050. That cpu is pretty weak also, so if the OP wants to play demanding AAA DX12 games, he most likely will need both a better gpu and cpu.
 

RayGunPC

Junior Member
Mar 27, 2020
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Not sure that the OP will be able to play many AAA DX12 games on a GTX1050 or the igpu, even if you can find games that actually run better in DX12 mode. I would just leave the igpu disabled and use the 1050. That cpu is pretty weak also, so if the OP wants to play demanding AAA DX12 games, he most likely will need both a better gpu and cpu.
Well, I guess that's a fair comment. I didn't have the cash to get the best cpu / gpu combination so I'll have to go with whatever I can.

I've disabled the igpu and am currently playing borderlands 3 at around 55fps although I'm not on high settings or using 1080p. Only could afford a 24inch monitor also so no point in using anything over 1080p anyway.

But it's good enough for me...
 

ao_ika_red

Golden Member
Aug 11, 2016
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From my experience, non-MOBA, post-2015 games usually hover around 50-60 fps in high setting (I'm using RX570) with older, pre-Zen APU. From budget perspective, I'm more than happy with that.
 

ondma

Platinum Member
Mar 18, 2018
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Oh, and I forgot to mention that I am using DX12.
Glad you could get it working. When I tried DX12 a few months ago for BL3 the game crashed and would not load, so I could not go in and change back to DX11. So the game crashed every time I tried to load it. A catch 22 if I ever saw one. I was *so* pissed.

I finally got it to work by loading an old DX11 save. (I think I could also have done it by changing a .ini file, but dont like to mess around with those).

Edit: A hint in another thread on this game (by Zinfamous, I think) is to turn off volumetric fog to increase performance. I actually like the graphics better with this setting turned off anyway.
 
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