Budget CPU - for a config without a GPU? Is Intel the only option

[Ty42]

Hi there,

Like all of you I have been looking at announcement of new AMD CPU with much interest.

 

But I had a question regarding a potential CPU upgrade on my side. I would like to keep a relatively inexpensive set-up and have currently a server running mainly as NAS and media/office station.

 

As of now I have an intel iGPU passthrough to a win10 install. When I looked at budget cpu, the choice of AMD chip with integrated graphics is quite poor (and based on zen 1.5). Am I correct or did I miss anything.

Just to be clear I have a small size set-up w/ ITX motherboard and my only PCI express slot is already taken, so separated cheap GPU is not technically possible.

 

In a nuttshell,  If I have a set-up without a dedicated GPU, is intel the choice to still have have some graphics option? 

Thanks,

[Hoopster]

1 hour ago, Ty42 said:

If I have a set-up without a dedicated GPU, is intel the choice to still have have some graphics option? 

Video transcoding for Plex, Emby, Jellyfin, HandBrake, etc could be another consideration.  If you want that with an integrated GPU, then, yes, Intel CPUs are your only option as the APUs from AMD do not seem to be supported.

 

When it comes to passing through video to a VM, Intel iGPU or Nvidia PCIe cards are the better choices as AMD cards are often very problematic.

 

There are some users in these forums that say they have had good luck with the Ryzen 3 3200G and Ryzen 5 3400G as far as just utilizing the integrated graphics but not for transcoding.  You might want to look at some of those posts (forum search) to see how they are using these APUs.