is an amd ryzen7 5700g a good option for SL?

[huanson135]

I would like to buy a new Computer for Second Life. Do you think a APU is good enough or should i buy a CPU and GPU

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

@huanson135

I personally prefer a CPU and separate GPU instead of an APU. APU graphics have never really been on the same level as regular GPU graphics. And then there's the fact if you want to upgrade your graphics later with a GPU, you'll have part of your APU made obsolete and redundant, which seems wasteful to me.

Separate graphics cards are cheaper and more available now than they have been in the last couple of years. There's no need to get the absolutely latest GPU though, as that would be overkill for SL and most games.  As a benchmark, I would not consider anything lower in scale than an Nvidia GTX 1660 Super (released in 2019) which I would consider the absolute minimum for 2023.

The more recent Nvidia RTX 2000 (released in 2018-19) and 3000 series GPUs (released 2020-21) might be a safer middle-level alternative  Their prices have plummeted since the current top of the line Nvidia RTX 4000 series first appeared in 2022.

You mentioned the AMD Ryzen 5700G APU in the thread title. That is an eight core CPU with onboard AMD graphics. SL only needs a single core to run and AMD graphics don't exactly have a reliable history of running SL smoothly.

Perhaps the cheaper six core AMD Ryzen 5600X CPU with a separate Nvidia GPU would be a better choice? 

Edited June 9, 2023 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[huanson135]

20 minutes ago, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

If the new computer is only for SL and 1080p gaming, then yes, go ahead and get an APU. But for more demanding modern gaming with high 4K/8K resolutions and other uses, the APU will struggle.

I personally prefer a CPU and separate GPU instead of an APU.  APU graphics are never really on the same level as regular GPU graphics. And then there's the fact if you want to upgrade your graphics later with a GPU, you'll have part of your APU made obsolete and doing absolutley nothing, which seems wasteful to me.

Separate graphics cards are cheaper and more available now than they have been in the last couple of years. There's no need to get the absolutely latest GPU though, as that would be overkill for SL and most games.  As a benchmark, I would not consider anything lower in scale than an Nvidia GTX 1660 Super (or Ti) which I would consider the absolute minimum for 2023.

The more recent Nvidia RTX 2000 (released in 2018-19) and 3000 series GPUs (released 2020-21) might be a safer middle-ground level.  Their prices have plummeted since the current top of the line Nvidia RTX 4000 series first appeared in 2022.

thank you for the reply. Im not a gamer so the only use i have for the computer would be Browsing the Internet and using Second Life 

[Coffee Pancake]

No. Do not get an APU for SL. 

I have one in a test machine and it's junk !

[MarissaOrloff]

The iGPU in my 16GB M2 Mac Mini "isn't bad" then again its nothing I would use everyday in SL.

[Monty Linden]

22 hours ago, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

SL only needs a single core to run and AMD graphics don't exactly have a reliable history of running SL smoothly.

This is becoming less true today and in the future.  While 2.5 core peak usage in the past made single core speed very important, more parallelism is going into the viewer.  You'll still want that high core speed but more and more, work will be found for additional cores.

[Henri Beauchamp]

Avoid APUs/iGPUs at all price !

They are too slow, and they do not have VRAM (the RAM is then used both for graphics and programs); you would have a miserable experience in SL, especially with future viewers; forward rendering has (sadly) been removed from the PBR viewer, and the latter can use up to 5 textures per object face (4 PBR textures), instead of just one diffuse texture per face in forward rendering, meaning it will eat up VRAM (and RAM) quite fast, and there will be no check box in the Preferences to help you reduce the memory consumption...

So, buy a PC with a discrete GPU, and preferably a NVIDIA one: their graphics drivers is way faster (+50% and more) and way stabler than AMD's (current Windows drivers for AMD cards are very, very, very crash-prone). Anything equal or above a GTX 1070 (with 8GB VRAM) would do quite fine, so you have an ample choice in graphics card cost.

As for the CPU, six cores are a strict minimum: like Monty said, viewers have pushed more and more things to threads (not to mention modern graphics drivers also can use threads of their own), and you can now easily saturate a 8 cores CPU while rezzing in SL. Plus, the future of SL will be Vulkan, and a Vulkan renderer would be able to use more than just one thread as well...

So, 8 cores + SMT (i.e. 16 ”threads”) is the way to go. AMD or Intel, it does not really matter.

Do not forget the RAM: a viewer can easily gobble up over 16GB when pushed to its limits; anything below 16GB of RAM is therefore not enough, and 32GB is the good amount of RAM for the future (PBR, again).

Edited June 10, 2023 by Henri Beauchamp

[MarissaOrloff]

1 hour ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

So, buy a PC with a discrete GPU, and preferably a NVIDIA one: their graphics drivers is way faster (+50% and more) and way stabler than AMD's

I bought a 7900xtx which absolutely phenomenal in everything except OpenGL (it was a downgrade from what I had in opengl) so I returned it for a 4090 which is well, absolutely amazing (but I did have to buy a new motherboard and case to fit the darn thing)