Comment by dathinab
1 day ago
Interesting.
through, from a pure power POV you probably would want to exclusively use the integrated graphics most CPUs have (1) with the external GPU powered down for most "daily/office-style" usage (browser, news, email, coding (not gamedev,etc.)) and only switch to external GPUs for Gaming, GPGPU, and I guess some edge cases like too many monitors or insisting on running a coding IDE at >240Hz ;)
EDIT, forgot the food note (1): Even the very very minimal GPU recent (non APU) AMD processors have are good enough for many peoples daily "office" needs.
No iGPU on my CPU (5800x3d). So was straight software decode (well maybe AVX2?) against GPU decode. GPU route was 80W more.
joebonrichie's comment was excellent though - there is a new nvidia tweak that eliminates the GPU going to a high power state the second it sniffs video. So now GPU & CPU get me the same draw.
>enough for many peoples daily "office" needs
Yeah been considering using my mac air for when not gaming / messing with LLMs, but frankly struggling with it on UX.