Quote:
Originally Posted by Honest Abe
The Nvidia audio output is carried via the HDMI through the monitor. Using the same can (creative aurvana), MoBo's audio output is much better. [no mixing/ANC/profiling, same song, out of the box]. Possibly because I am still using Nouveau. I do have the nvidia repository added, so switching to the proprietary driver is no big deal. I am delaying because of the graphics card which I am yet to switch.
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Just a thought on this - a lot of newer motherboards have pretty good built-in audio, and it may have a headphone amplifier or some other circuit at work (which should work in linux just the same - since that's 'downstream' from the audio controller), which may explain why the motherboard is better. I haven't seen a monitor with this feature, but many support a basic line-out to help with wire clutter (depending on your setup that is - if you have a subwoofer PC speaker system usually that 'box' is on the floor near your tower, so it isn't much help, but if you just have basic PC speakers it can be nice).
Quote:
@obobskivich,
The primary use of this machine is to learn stuff. I can have a lot more VMs than I was earlier able to, hence the switch from Blue to Red. But I would still like to have a graphics card which is better than the 2G 1050. Sniper Elite 4 is the most recent title in my steam library and I am thinking of getting COD:WWII soon.
So, a very high FPS/online gaming/4K gaming etc are definitely not my priority. I was happy with the 2G Nvidia 1050 for close to 4 years, that should tell you lot about the 'demanding' games I play. 
Also, my PSU (smps) is of 500w and I do not have any extra power hungry components, so a change is not immediately required on that front.
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This is all useful information when plotting an upgrade. With 500W you're probably in the 'questionable' range with RX 580/590 - if I remember right those spec out at around 220-240W and regularly draw around 200W when working (see here for more:
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/m...mech-2/29.html), the 590 will be 'somewhat more than that' since it's (yet another) re-badge, with slightly higher clocks (it performs somewhat better too, of course). Of course the rest of your system is key to knowing if this is 'really a problem' or not - if you only have a single SSD and 1-2 fans and so forth that's a lot different than having a dozen 10k RPM SAS drives and 8 fans and so forth. My point is: 500W may be perfectly enough, or it may be needing to upgrade, depending on what else beyond the CPU and GPU you are going to ask it to power, and what GPU you pick.
The 5500XT is definitely in the 'newer category' so that can help with non-gaming tasks and forward driver support (this will matter more on the Windows front - AMD has a bad habit of abruptly ending driver support for 'older' products when they feel its time for you to upgrade, they generally do not 'track' nVidia's model of providing 5-7 years of drivers consistently; yes of course you can continue using the card after it stops getting new drivers, but that may be a problem with Windows if you also need XYZ driver to update to Windows 10 vXYZ or to support [game] or whathaveyou). The RX 590 is just a re-issue of the RX 580, so unless you are getting a better price, I wouldn't worry too much (basically if you want that GPU (its called Polaris), get whichever is cheaper at the moment).
GTX 1660 is another interesting choice - that's newer than your 1050, and should be faster. See if this comparison helps:
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/m...x-8-gb/27.html
They didn't test 'Sniper Elite' in that, but that's a relative % aggregation of every game they did test (you can click around to other pages to see more detail per-game), it looks like 5500XT and 1660 both end up 'ahead' of the RX 580, with the 1660 being the fastest of the group (by a few %), but power consumption is where it gets good:
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/m...x-8-gb/31.html
Both the 1660 and the 5500XT are around 120W while gaming, and peak a bit higher than that, while the RX 580/590 are still over 200W. I'd say the 5500 or 1660 are a 'win' if you can get either. The 1660 is a bit faster, but you'll have to see what the prices are like in your area as to which is a 'better' choice to get. I know on the Windows side, I would generally preference the nVidia card for their driver/software support, not to say Radeon is 'bad' but certainly this is one area where nVidia has, historically, done very well. On linux I haven't had much issues with either driver, but the nvidia driver (not nouveau) is not always as easy to get working as the radeon driver (which seems to be baked-in to most modern distros). If it were me, and all else was equal (price/availability/etc) I'd think about how well the 1050 has done on the software side for my various workloads, and if that's 'good' then the 1660 seems like a solid choice, otherwise I'd consider the 5500XT (and of course if price/availability/etc is not equal, that's another factor).
