[SOLVED] was i wrong to get this gpu?

[MickB2020]

Hi,

I cant get my head round GPU's. I have just installed a Radeon Pro WX 3200 now my "rate my pc" performance has dramatically reduced. i have been told that the card is for graphic processing ie photoshop etc. I dont really play games and use lightroom and basic video editing so i was happy getting it but i cant understand how my performance is less than before. I would have assumed it would at least be on par????
should i have gotten a different one. for my learning can you let me know which i should have gotten and why. it cost GBP200 i could have spend another GBP50 or so but should i have waited till i could afford a GBP400 one?

my pc details are below:
Case: Contour L03 Silent Workstation Chassis, Black
CPU: Intel Core i7-9700K 3.6Ghz 8 Core CPU, 8 Thread, 4.9GHz Turbo (Intel® UHD Graphics 630 - This is what i have been useing)
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z390 UD ATX Motherboard
Memory: 16GB DDR4 2666MHz Memory (2x8GB)
Primary Storage Drive: 256GB ADATA SX8200 PRO M.2 NVMe
CPU Cooling: Be Quiet Pure Rock low noise CPU air cooler
PSU: Contour 500W High Efficiency ATX PSU

Thanks a million for your help.
Really appreciate it

 

[siaan312]

well, that gpu sucks.
i personally havent even heard of it. its worse than uhd graphics. at 200gbps??

please, put it back and get yourself a normal card.
for light room and basic video editing i would suggest a 1650 super. cheap, and very good.

 

[MickB2020]

Thanks for the advice Siaan312. Wondering if anyone else feels the same?

 

[MickB2020]

Thanks for the advice Siaan312. Wondering if anyone else feels the same?

 

[k1nationIG]

Thanks for the advice Siaan312. Wondering if anyone else feels the same?

definitely, you are crazy for getting that gpu. Dont take it the wrong way. Get a 1660 super. Probably THE BEST value card out now. Idk about the UK but in the US it is 230 USD msrp. THey cost 230-300USD. Amazing card.

 

[k1nationIG]

Hi,

I cant get my head round GPU's. I have just installed a Radeon Pro WX 3200 now my "rate my pc" performance has dramatically reduced. i have been told that the card is for graphic processing ie photoshop etc. I dont really play games and use lightroom and basic video editing so i was happy getting it but i cant understand how my performance is less than before. I would have assumed it would at least be on par????
should i have gotten a different one. for my learning can you let me know which i should have gotten and why. it cost GBP200 i could have spend another GBP50 or so but should i have waited till i could afford a GBP400 one?

my pc details are below:
Case: Contour L03 Silent Workstation Chassis, Black
CPU: Intel Core i7-9700K 3.6Ghz 8 Core CPU, 8 Thread, 4.9GHz Turbo (Intel® UHD Graphics 630 - This is what i have been useing)
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z390 UD ATX Motherboard
Memory: 16GB DDR4 2666MHz Memory (2x8GB)
Primary Storage Drive: 256GB ADATA SX8200 PRO M.2 NVMe
CPU Cooling: Be Quiet Pure Rock low noise CPU air cooler
PSU: Contour 500W High Efficiency ATX PSU

Thanks a million for your help.
Really appreciate it

Word of advice, and maybe I am a bit biased but never get amd graphics. Their CPUs are really good but just dont get their GPUs unless maybe the 5700xt. I like nvidia much more. once again i am biased towards nvidia

 

[MickB2020]

oh bummer thanks guys. i dont have the option to return it as i have it installed etc. i should have touched base here first... hopefully i have my lesson learnt. guess if i ever star playing games ill use the onboard graphics. haha.
thanks again

it there a way of telling how well my pc is running or more importantly if it isn' t running ok. with the exception of it crashing etc

 

[k1nationIG]

oh bummer thanks guys. i dont have the option to return it as i have it installed etc. i should have touched base here first... hopefully i have my lesson learnt. guess if i ever star playing games ill use the onboard graphics. haha.
thanks again

it there a way of telling how well my pc is running or more importantly if it isn' t running ok. with the exception of it crashing etc

i dont really know what you mean, but if i think i understand what you mean, download Intel XTU or use cinebench or some sort of benchmark/stress test

 

[cryoburner]

well, that gpu sucks.
i personally havent even heard of it. its worse than uhd graphics. at 200gbps??

That's certainly not accurate. The Radeon Pro WX 3200 is not exactly what would be considered a "gaming card", but should be quite a bit faster than Intel's integrated graphics. Nearly three times as fast as the UHD 630 in a current i7, going by Userbenchmark's estimates...

https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compa...i7-vs-AMD-Radeon-Pro-WX-3200/m356797vsm867103

The reason you haven't heard of them is because these are professional cards, as the "Pro" in the name implies, so they are not really marketed to consumers just looking for something to play games on, nor do you tend to see them reviewed all that often. They have drivers focused on optimal performance and reliability in professional applications rather than games, and in turn cost more for a given level of performance. Nvidia similarly offers professional cards as well, their "Quadro" lineup, and those likewise cost more than their gaming equivalents. These cards can be used for gaming as well, but performance-wise the WX 3200 tends to not be much faster than a Radeon RX 550 or GeForce GTX 1030 in games, as far as consumer cards go. Again though, it should certainly be a lot better than the i7's integrated graphics for running games on, so there's no point in using that.

Going with a consumer card for professional tasks is also an option, and will in many cases provide more performance for the money, but you are also more likely to run into drivers that are more focused on optimizing performance in the latest games rather than focusing on providing stability and reliability in applications. Also, Nvidia in particular tends to gimp their gaming cards in ways that artificially reduce performance in certain professional workloads to convince professional users to go with their more expensive Quadro options. How much that affects performance will depend on the application though, and most professional applications should perform fine, and in many cases better on consumer cards at a given price level. Personally, I would tend to go the route of getting a consumer card rather than a professional card for running applications like Photoshop and video editors on a home system, as those should generally be adequate and offer more value, but the professional cards like the Radeon Pros and Quadros will be fine as well. It's just that you will tend to pay more for a given level of performance with those professional cards.

Word of advice, and maybe I am a bit biased but never get amd graphics. Their CPUs are really good but just dont get their GPUs unless maybe the 5700xt. I like nvidia much more. once again i am biased towards nvidia

Well, at least you admitted to being biased. : P I wouldn't consider that good advice though. AMD's GPUs are fine, and often provide more performance for the money than Nvidia's offerings. Both AMD's RX 5000 and Nvidia GTX 16-series cards are offering relatively similar performance, features and efficiency at relatively similar prices right now. Like any piece of computer hardware, it's probably good to compare the positive and negative aspects of each product on a case by case basis though, and not just restrict yourself to one brand.

 

[cryoburner]

it there a way of telling how well my pc is running or more importantly if it isn' t running ok. with the exception of it crashing etc

You might want to try running the benchmark at UserBenchmark, then sharing a link to your results page here...

https://www.userbenchmark.com

That should test all the main components, and provide some feedback as to how each of those is running compared to the same components installed in other people's systems. That way, if something isn't performing as it should, we should be able to see that.

 

[siaan312]

That's certainly not accurate. The Radeon Pro WX 3200 is not exactly what would be considered a "gaming card", but should be quite a bit faster than Intel's integrated graphics. Nearly three times as fast as the UHD 630 in a current i7, going by Userbenchmark's estimates...

https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compa...i7-vs-AMD-Radeon-Pro-WX-3200/m356797vsm867103

The reason you haven't heard of them is because these are professional cards, as the "Pro" in the name implies, so they are not really marketed to consumers just looking for something to play games on, nor do you tend to see them reviewed all that often. They have drivers focused on optimal performance and reliability in professional applications rather than games, and in turn cost more for a given level of performance. Nvidia similarly offers professional cards as well, their "Quadro" lineup, and those likewise cost more than their gaming equivalents. These cards can be used for gaming as well, but performance-wise the WX 3200 tends to not be much faster than a Radeon RX 550 or GeForce GTX 1030 in games, as far as consumer cards go. Again though, it should certainly be a lot better than the i7's integrated graphics for running games on, so there's no point in using that.

Going with a consumer card for professional tasks is also an option, and will in many cases provide more performance for the money, but you are also more likely to run into drivers that are more focused on optimizing performance in the latest games rather than focusing on providing stability and reliability in applications. Also, Nvidia in particular tends to gimp their gaming cards in ways that artificially reduce performance in certain professional workloads to convince professional users to go with their more expensive Quadro options. How much that affects performance will depend on the application though, and most professional applications should perform fine, and in many cases better on consumer cards at a given price level. Personally, I would tend to go the route of getting a consumer card rather than a professional card for running applications like Photoshop and video editors on a home system, as those should generally be adequate and offer more value, but the professional cards like the Radeon Pros and Quadros will be fine as well. It's just that you will tend to pay more for a given level of performance with those professional cards.


Well, at least you admitted to being biased. : P I wouldn't consider that good advice though. AMD's GPUs are fine, and often provide more performance for the money than Nvidia's offerings. Both AMD's RX 5000 and Nvidia GTX 16-series cards are offering relatively similar performance, features and efficiency at relatively similar prices right now. Like any piece of computer hardware, it's probably good to compare the positive and negative aspects of each product on a case by case basis though, and not just restrict yourself to one brand.

amds platform is much less polished, and thats actually a fact.
also has less "useful" depends on who you are features.

and just so you know, userbenchmark is one of the worst sites ever built.
there was even a post on here last week on how its so sad people who dont know better rely on it and similar sites.
the GT (not gtx) 1030 is much faster than the intergrated graphics, while the 3200wx, is.. not. its a bit better in some task and worse in others.
yes its probably more reliable and has better built and optimized drivers, but for 200gbps, you can get a quadro p3000 and be MUCH better off.
if i remember correctly, its around as good as the 1060 6gb, but i havent checked

 

[MickB2020]

thanks a lot guys. very helpful. much appreciated. still very confused but thats down to me

benchmark results seem good.
UserBenchmarks: Game 28%, Desk 121%, Work 92%
CPU: Intel Core i7-9700K - 87.2%
GPU: AMD Radeon Pro WX 3200 - 18.1%
SSD: Adata XPG SX8200 Pro NVMe PCIe M.2 512GB - 251.1%
SSD: Samsung 850 Evo 250GB - 118.5%
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 3TB - 100.4%
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 2TB - 75.7%
HDD: Seagate Backup+ Hub BK 8TB - 88.7%
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 2666 C16 2x8GB - 60.8%
MBD: Punch 817-960

still not understanding how/why the intel graphics can play the games better than the card (even if it is a workstation card) but ill keep up the research. i dont really play many games so shouldn't be at too much of a disadvantage. thanks again

 

[cryoburner]

still not understanding how/why the intel graphics can play the games better than the card (even if it is a workstation card) but ill keep up the research. i dont really play many games so shouldn't be at too much of a disadvantage. thanks again

Did you actually test the card in any games and notice worse performance, or are you basing that solely on the results from that "rate my pc" thing? I'm not very familiar with that site (or software?) but it's possible that they simply don't have proper numbers for that card, since again, its a professional workstation card, which are not typically sent out for reviews. The Userbenchmark results did seem to be in line with where that card should perform.

I did locate your results page, and noticed that your DDR4-2666 RAM is currently only set to run at DDR4-2133 speed though. You may want to boot into your BIOS settings and set the XMP profile to 2666 so that it is operating at full speed. That isn't likely to make too much of a difference to performance in most applications, but should help you get a little more performance out of your CPU.

and just so you know, userbenchmark is one of the worst sites ever built.

UserBenchmark is actually one of the most useful hardware benchmarking sites out there. It does have it's flaws, like presenting multiple percentages for each piece of hardware that can be easily misinterpreted if someone doesn't know what they are looking at, and prominantly featuring some numbers that are not always telling the whole story about the capabilities of a piece of hardware, but it does a lot of things right as well. The results page of a benchmark run provides an overview of the performance of each major piece of hardware, and is a often a good way of spotting which component is the cause of a system's performance issues, and can give some clues as to what might be wrong. It provides a lot of useful performance numbers, even if you have to hunt through them to find the ones that are most meaningful.

Their aggregate hardware comparisons, like I linked above comparing the WX3200 to Intel's UHD 630, usually provide a reasonably accurate portrayal of how various pieces of hardware compare to one another as well. They may not always be completely accurate, and the results at times favor one architecture over another, but that goes for any synthetic benchmark. It's not an ideal way of comparing two pieces of hardware, but definitely provides useful results for comparisons that one isn't likely to find in reviews. Hardware review sites generally don't test professional versions of graphics cards, nor do they often compare cards to integrated graphics, so you are unlikely to find a better comparison between those graphics chips elsewhere. The same goes for graphics cards from a few generations or more apart, which don't tend to often get tested together. Testing real-world workloads in actual games and applications is ideal, but in the absence of that, a lot can be determined from synthetic benchmarks as well.

In any case, seeing as the WX5500 is pretty much a bit better version of the RX 550 geared for use in professional software, it should provide significantly more performance than Intel's integrated graphics.

amds platform is much less polished, and thats actually a fact.

I'm pretty sure that's actually an opinion, seeing as you didn't provide any verifiable evidence supporting the claim, and those who review graphics cards for a living don't tend to mention any issues with that. And while Nvidia does tend to make certain features available first more often than not, they also often incorporate them in a proprietary manner that makes them less useful than they could otherwise be, which can in many cases prevent those features from ever seeing widespread adoption. In my opinion, both companies provide decent hardware, and if it wasn't for competition between them, you would be seeing higher prices and less innovation.

 

[MickB2020]

Did you actually test the card in any games and notice worse performance, or are you basing that solely on the results from that "rate my pc" thing? I'm not very familiar with that site (or software?) but it's possible that they simply don't have proper numbers for that card, since again, its a professional workstation card, which are not typically sent out for reviews. The Userbenchmark results did seem to be in line with where that card should perform.

I did locate your results page, and noticed that your DDR4-2666 RAM is currently only set to run at DDR4-2133 speed though. You may want to boot into your BIOS settings and set the XMP profile to 2666 so that it is operating at full speed. That isn't likely to make too much of a difference to performance in most applications, but should help you get a little more performance out of your CPU.


UserBenchmark is actually one of the most useful hardware benchmarking sites out there. It does have it's flaws, like presenting multiple percentages for each piece of hardware that can be easily misinterpreted if someone doesn't know what they are looking at, and prominantly featuring some numbers that are not always telling the whole story about the capabilities of a piece of hardware, but it does a lot of things right as well. The results page of a benchmark run provides an overview of the performance of each major piece of hardware, and is a often a good way of spotting which component is the cause of a system's performance issues, and can give some clues as to what might be wrong. It provides a lot of useful performance numbers, even if you have to hunt through them to find the ones that are most meaningful.

Their aggregate hardware comparisons, like I linked above comparing the WX3200 to Intel's UHD 630, usually provide a reasonably accurate portrayal of how various pieces of hardware compare to one another as well. They may not always be completely accurate, and the results at times favor one architecture over another, but that goes for any synthetic benchmark. It's not an ideal way of comparing two pieces of hardware, but definitely provides useful results for comparisons that one isn't likely to find in reviews. Hardware review sites generally don't test professional versions of graphics cards, nor do they often compare cards to integrated graphics, so you are unlikely to find a better comparison between those graphics chips elsewhere. The same goes for graphics cards from a few generations or more apart, which don't tend to often get tested together. Testing real-world workloads in actual games and applications is ideal, but in the absence of that, a lot can be determined from synthetic benchmarks as well.

In any case, seeing as the WX5500 is pretty much a bit better version of the RX 550 geared for use in professional software, it should provide significantly more performance than Intel's integrated graphics.


I'm pretty sure that's actually an opinion, seeing as you didn't provide any verifiable evidence supporting the claim, and those who review graphics cards for a living don't tend to mention any issues with that. And while Nvidia does tend to make certain features available first more often than not, they also often incorporate them in a proprietary manner that makes them less useful than they could otherwise be, which can in many cases prevent those features from ever seeing widespread adoption. In my opinion, both companies provide decent hardware, and if it wasn't for competition between them, you would be seeing higher prices and less innovation.

thanks - no havent compared any game play. thanks for that i hadn't considered it myself. i had just noticed the ram running at lower speeds but wasn't sure i needed to update the XMP. ill look into doing that now. im new to the whole optimisation of good pc's so all this has been very beneficial. thanks again!