Anna,
Please keep in mind that a better GPU is not all that is needed to make darktable work faster. The CPU is also important. See these clockings (where lower numbers = faster execution). The same benchmark has been used on all combinations:
MfG,
Claes in Lund, Schweden
With the caveat that I don’t use noise reduction often, I edit on a four year old i5 desktop and raw files from the d850 don’t seem that slow to edit to me. Sure, CPU only isn’t blazing fast, but it is way more than acceptable.
Well I am a patient person. I think speed is not that bad if I have less than 10 instances. Also darktable 2.7/3 seems to be slower than darktable 2.6.
So if the Geforce MX 250 isonly 2-3 times faster than my current computer it’s ok for me, I’d count that as an improvement.
Here is an interesting comparison:
https://technical.city/en/video/HD-Graphics-520-vs-GeForce-MX250
MfG,
Claes in Lund, Schweden
Great, thanks a lot! How did you find this?
Moinchen!
Ho-hum. Would you believe skill??? :-))))
I bought it. Performance seems to be much better but it is loud - fan is almost always on, and I feel on my legs that it is always warm. The old one’s fan was almost always off. And it is uglier.
Apparently I will need to install Debian testing, Buster does not boot.
But it is really slim and light.
@betazoid Probably, your laptop has dual graphic cards. If so, you should configure some of the alternatives to turn off the second card while not using it, so you can save energy and have a cooler and quieter system when not doing stuff that requires it.
omg darktable is lightning fast with opencl
well the Nvidia driver brings a gui app with which you can select which GPU you want to use. Apparently it is easy
Apparently the Nvidia card really needs a lot of battery power. When on, my battery is empty after a little more than one hour. When off, it lasts for at least 5 hours.
That why they invented Optimus architecture 
LOL stating the obvious?
Has someone experience with installing the Nvidia driver on Debian testing (Bullseye)? So far I have failed because of unsolvable dependencies.
Hi Anna,
No, I have no experience in that particular GPU – but I have installed Nvidia drivers for other GFXs (and sometimes that is a tricky business, especially if the distro believes that nouveau is sufficient…)
Debian testing/Bullseye … isn’t that supplied with nvidia 430.64? According to https://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/153714 driver 430.64 ought to work!?!
Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Schweden
Yes, but I could not install 430 because of those unsatisfied dependencies.
Did Bullseye tell you what was missing?
If my memory is correct, debian can be downloaded in several flavours, like “official Debian image builds”, as well as “unofficial builds which include non-free firmware”.
Since the official and free nouveau driver seems not to work for your kind of graphics, it sounds as if you are forced to install from an unofficial, non-free firmware version…
Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Schweden
What’s written in your /etc/apt/sources.list?
non-free must be there otherwise you can’t install nvidia packages.
My line in sources.list looks like:
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster main contrib non-free
If it is not there you can add non-free at the end. If you change something you always need to run: apt update to update the package list.