I have routinely been impressed with AMD integrated graphics. My last laptop I specifically went for one as it meant I didn't need a dedicated gpu for it which adds significant weight, cost, and power draw.
It isn't my main gaming rig of course; I have had no complaints.
Same. I got a cheap Ryzen laptop a few years back and put Linux on it last year, and I've been shocked by how well it can play some games. I just recently got Disgaea 7 (mostly to play on Steam Deck) and it's so well optimized that I get steady 60fps, at full resolution, on my shitty integrated graphics.
I have a Lenovo ultralight with a 7730U mobile chip in it, which is a pretty mid cpu... happily plays minecraft at a full 60fps while using like 10W on the package. I can play Minecraft on battery for like 4 hours. It's nuts.
AMD does the right thing and uses their full graphics uArch CU's for the iGPU on a new die, instead of trying to cram some poorly designed iGPU inside the CPU package like Intel does.
AMD's integrated GPUs have been getting really good lately. I'm impressed at what they are capable of with gaming handhelds and it only makes sense to put the same extra GPU power into desktop APUs. This hopefully will lead to true gaming laptops that don't require power hungry discrete GPUs and workarounds/render offloading for hybrid graphics. That said, to truly be a gaming laptop replacement I want to see a solid 60fps minimum at at least 1080p, but the fact that we're seeing numbers close to this is impressive nonetheless.
Common W for AMD
I was sold on AMD once I got my Steamdeck.
Everything I see about AMD makes me like them more than Intel or Nvidia (for CPU and GPU respectively). You can't even use an Nvidia card with Linux without running into serious issues.
Now, if they stick one in a framework laptop, I’ll be a few thousand dollars poorer.
The good news is, Framework is shipping with AMD CPUs now. :)
Currently 7th gen Ryzens, not sure when the 8th gens become available.
That's not how this works
What do you mean?
Laptops don't have the same amount of cooling as desktop computers, so the same CPU in a laptop won't give you the same performance as in a desktop computer because of thermal throttling.
Maybe not the exact performance. But I'm pretty sure the main use for integrated graphics is with laptops and other form factor PCs.
So will this be a HTPC king? Kind of skimped on the temps in the article. I assume HWU goes over it and will watch it soon.
What services use the graphics card and are fine with the low end?
Aaaaand the 7950x3D is not top tier anymore
The playstation 5 also does this.
Mind you that it can get these frame rates at the low setting. While this is pretty damn impressive for a APU, it's still a very niche market type of APU at this point and I don't see this getting all that much traction myself.
I think the opposite is true. Discrete graphics cards are on the way out, SoCs are the future. There are just too many disadvantages to having a discrete GPU and CPU each with it’s own RAM. We’ll see SoCs catch up and eventually overtake PCs with discrete components. Especially with the growth of AI applications.
That's pretty damn impressive. AMD is changing the game!
Meh. It's also a $330 chip...
For that price you can get a 12th gen i3/RX6600 combination which will obliterate this thing in gaming performance.
Your i3 has half the cores. Spending more on GPU and less on CPU gives better fps, news at 11.
$US330 for the top 8700G APU with12 RDNA 3 compute units (compare to 32 RDNA 3 CUs in the Radeon RX7600). And it only draws 88W at peak load and can be passively cooled (or overclocked).
$US230 for the 8600G with 8 RDNA 3 CUs. Falls about 10-15% short of 8700G performance in games, but a much bigger spread in CPU (Tom's Hardware benchmarks) so I'm pretty meh on that one.
Given the higher costs for AM5 boards and DDR5 RAM, you could spend about the same or $100-200 more than an 8700G build you could combine a cheaper CPU and better GPU and get way more bang for your buck. But I see the 8700G being an solid option for gamers on a budget, or parents wanting to build younger kids their first cheap-but-effective PC.
I also see this as a lazy mans solution to building small form factor mini-ITX Home Theatre PCs that run silent and don't need a separate GPU to receive 4K live streams. I'm exactly in this boat right now where I literally don't wanna fiddle with cramming a GPU into some tiny box, but also don't want some piece of crap iGPU in case I use the HTPC for some light gaming from time to time.
I wonder how well it does AI workloads.
Only downside if integrated graphics becomes a thing is that you can’t upgrade if the next gen needs a different motherboard. Pretty easy to swap from a 2080 to a 3080.
Integrated graphics is already a thing. Intel iGPU has over 60% market share. This is really competing with Intel and low-end discrete GPUs. Nice to have the option!
AMD has been pretty good about this though, AM4 lasted 2016-2022. Compare to Intel changing the socket every 1-2 years, it seems.
Could you not just slot in a dedicated video card if you needed one, keeping the integrated as a backup?
Yeah, maybe. I commented on that elsewhere here. If we follow a possible path for IG - the elimination of a large GPU could result in the computer being sold with a smaller case and lower-power GPU. Why would you need a full tower when you can have a more compact PC with a sleek NVMe/SSD and a smaller motherboard form factor? Now there’s no room to cram a 3080 in the box and no power to drive it.
Again, someone depending on CPU IG to play Fortnite probably isn’t gonna be looking for upgrade paths. this is just an observation of a limitation imposed on users should CPU IG become more prominent. All hypothetical at this point.
Or y'know, upgrade the case at the same time.
Or even build the computer yourself. Outside of the graphics card shortage a couple of years back, it's usually been cheaper to source parts yourself than pay an OEM for a prebuilt machine.
A small side note: If you buy a Dell/Alienware machine, you're never upgrading just the case. The front panel IO is part of the motherboard, and the power supply is some proprietary crap. If you replace the case, you need to replace the motherboard, which also requires you to replace the power supply. At that point, you've replaced half the computer.
Same thing with HP. Their "Pavillion" series of Towers contains a proprietary motherboard and power supply. Also, on the model a friend of mine had, the CPU was AMD, but the cooler scewed on top was designed for intel-purposed boards, so it looked kinda frankensteined.
So in essence, it's the same with HP.
Oh, oh ok I thought one of the new Threadrippers is so powerful that the CPU can do all those graphics in Software.
It's gonna take decades to be able to render 1080p CP2077 at an acceptable frame rate with just software rendering.
It's all software, even the stuff on the graphics cards. Those are the rasterisers, shaders and so on. In fact the graphics cards are extremely good at running these simple (relatively) programs in an absolutely staggering number of threads at the same time, and this has been taken advantage of by both bitcoin mining and also neural net algorithms like GPT and Llama.
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