Will APU's make discrete GPU's obsolete?

I typed out a longer version of this, but it didn't post some reason. Anyway, been doin research into APU's and I'm pretty impressed. I wasn't aware it was capable of 1080p gaming and such. It can even handle BF4, Metro LL at 1080p, granted at low settings, but that made me wonder whats next for AMD. I believe 2-3 years from now their APU's will be good enough to play most modern games on high settings @1080p. Can AMD's apu's cause the discrete GPU to be useless in the future?

I also decided to make my own APU build for a 720p monitor I have for guests that wanna play. I'll get down to testing more games in a few weeks.

No it won't.

Because proper space\processing power

With our current tech sure, but who knows what kind of stuff the future holds.

With such an emphasis on mobile computing, I think we'll see some big breakthroughs that makes super powerful APUs possible.

Will it eventually happen? Most likely!

Anytime soon? I doubt it... I think we're still 4-5 years away from such powerful APUs

I mentioned in my original thread about the rumor of AMD's Carrizo APU's getting stacked on die memory. So far it seems legit and if so that is pretty big. That would give a pretty significant performance boost and bring us a step closer to SoC's.

Tom's Hardware had a little article about it.

I think APUs are the future of smartphones or tablets but it's got no belonging or replacement to a real strong CPU and GPU.

Guyz this is impossible. You are asking from a 95watt (or 125watt) APU which has to power his CPU and his GPU, to compete a lets say (I will not go to Titan levels) an 150watt GPU only (a simple entry gaming level GPU with only one PCI-E 6pin).

That's bloody impossible. Now combine this with Maxwell effieciency. Game over....

Also in 4-5 years 4K will be mainstream. Good luck to any APU in 4-5 years to try to give good FPS at high settings in 4K. Things will go back where they started.

AMD has plans to improve their APU from time to time but by no means replacing even an R7 260/260X/265 of their time.

AMD has the APUs in order to target entry level users who don't have much space (ITX). Nothing more...

APUs are not worth anything in gaming today if you have a little more space to add a discrete GPU.

Instead of an APU which will cost $150-160, take an Athlon 750K/760K and combine it with a R7 250X GPU. With the same money they will destroy any APU in any game...

So TLDR: AMD cannot build an APU in order to compete with discrete GPUs, neither they want to build one...

You can do mini PC with those APUs like the Intel NUC, Sapphire Edge, Zotac ZBOX or Gigabyte BRIX

Yeah I know. That's why I said about ITX and people that don't have much space...

I disagree on a couple of things. You mentioned it couldn't compete/replace the r7 series, well I think Carrizo will. Kaveri is capable of 1080p gaming right now even in a couple of demanding games like BF4 and Metro LL. If Carrizo brings a significant performance boost like everyone is saying then we're looking at a 30%-40% increase. That means games could be played on High 1080p instead of low, which will put it on par with the r7 series(if not better).

The A10 7850K cpu is actually slightly better than the 760k, so if one was to build a budget build to play right now that would suffice. Then they could add a discrete GPU down the line or wait for Carrizo to see the performance first. I'm predicting that Carrizo can eliminate the need for a GPU for 1080p gaming for the next few years. If AMD keeps pushing their APU technology then who knows if you will need a GPU in 4-5 years.

I also feel like people hate the idea of not having a discrete GPU because they love to just purchase things lol. PC gaming is definitely heading in a more compact area. Everything is getting smaller nowadays. I'd love to remove my GPU and go for a smaller build and APU's can do just that. Not to mention it can turn a lot more people onto PC gaming by cutting costs and space. If Carrizo is everything it's being hyped up to be that would be huge for the PC market. If its $200 or under would be fantastic. All you would need is the APU, RAM, HDD, case, and power supply to enjoy games @1080p with high settings.That would cost under $400 if you didn't own any of that already. It's a good time to be a PC gamer. There is so much innovation happening.

Sure they will get more powerful but a discrete gpu will always be more powerful unless they decide not spend the time and money advancing them.

I think they will get to a servicable point, but dedicated GPUs evolve at around the same pace as APUs does. So when APUs are capable (and they likely will at some point) the dedicated GPU will be further ahead still.

The question rather is how many of potential customers will feel that an APU is "good enough" a segment which will grow in the comming years I think.

APU's will definitely compete with certain levels of GPU's. If you were on a budget, but could afford a rig decent enough to play games at high settings @1080p and could choose between a APU or a CPU/GPU combo, why would you go for the latter? Especially if the APU is cheaper than the combination? At the very least I feel APU's will in fact render entry/low level cards useless and APU's itself will become them.

It's impossible with our current technology. We're moving to replace silicon with graphene which is a much more capeable material to build chips out of. That's just one of the changes I know is coming in the next 20 years of computing. Who knows what else.

Already phones are outpowering PCs that are only 7-8 years old. It's pretty astounding what we can do with our current technical limitations.

I'm never going to underestimate what the human race is capeable of. Each year we understand our universe just a bit more and thus can create more amazing technology that would appear to be magic just 50 years ago.

But it's just a matter of logic. Until quantum computing becomes a thing, the compromise inherent to having both a CPU and graphics acceleration on the same chip will bring its downsides to having a discrete card.

But most of those downsides can be avoided through new materials. It's logical to assume that we can overcome these things in a number of ways.

If you OC the A10 7850k to 4.3ghz and the igpu to 960mhz you can play BF4 and Metro on Medium Settings comfortably. That's kind of a big step and Carrizo is going to take it even further with Stacked memory. For the igpu and cpu to pull the same amount of resources, it's going to give a big performance boost. We are heading in that direction. I'm kind of surprised some of you can't see it. That alone should refute the processing power argument.

In 2-3 years time I feel AMD will be capitalizing on the small form factor PCs making APUs capable of playing maxed/medium settings at 1440p across the board.

Intel has them nailed in the CPU front and it does not look like that is changing any time soon.

It would be a smart move from AMD as their is a massive market for compact cheap gaming rigs which currently only consoles fulfil, as steam boxes are still high in price.

I think you didn't understand what I said. Maybe in 4-5 years APU will reach Titan performance and maybe carrizo will bring R7 265 (highly doubt) performance.

The point is that in order to do this it will borrow technology from its GPU department. When you will see an APU bein able to beat an R7 265, R7 265 will be a discontinued product which it will be replaced by R7 365.

People don't hate the idea of not having discrete GPU cause they like buying stuff. Its the disadvantages of the APU that makes people buying GPU.

CPU and GPU are faster, upgradeable (whichever you like first).

Do you blame people that want to play their games with more eye candy with the same money?

As I said before I don't compare tomorrow's APUs with today's GPUs.

I compare tomorrow's APUs with tomorrow's GPU. The power consumption gap will never make them on par.

The only thing that can make this possible is when goverments will start limiting the power draw of machines (as they did with vacuum cleaner in EU from 1600watt max to 950watt max in 2017).

i had an APU in my old laptop (an A8 3400M or something. cant remember exactly). it actually surprised me with what it could do. it was a 500 euro laptop so i wasnt expecing much. but it could play the likes of skyrim at 1366x768 (the monitors native res) at almost max settings and keep a steady framerate.
a very pleasent surprise.

the one catch was that the game had to use the 4 cores on the APU. so skyrim ran better than oblivion for example. if the game only used 1-2 cores then it became seriously CPU bound.

i dont think it will take the top end but it could certainly pull the rug out from under the low and mid tier GPUs. for things like miedia centers where the user also wants some gaming punch i think they are definately worth looking at.

the one thing that would help them though is to replace DDR with GDDR as main system memory (ala the PS4). if a module/socket can be standardised for GDDR then that would help the GPU side greatly and may even tempt the manufacturer to give the GPU more of the transistor budget.

the other thing im wondering is are they looking at further integration of the CPU and GPU? they are both on the same die currently but its still seperate. could they look into doing things like replacing the CPUs FPU with the GPUs shaders, having one scheduler that deals with both CPU and GPU tasks, get other components of the CPU to replace the GPU and vise a versa where it could make sense basically.

@Coseniath: I think it's possible Carrizo will be on the r7 265's level. I have a r7 265 and it plays most games comfortably on the high default setting and even on ultra in some games. It doesn't hit the average 60 fps or anything, but it does well. Slightly over clocking the a10 7850k can get you on medium settings on most games at 1080p, so I don't think it's a stretch that Carrizo can bring that performance boost.

Anyway, I wasn't suggesting that APU's will immediately flush out GPU's at all, but I think 5-10 years from now it could be very much possible to not even need a GPU at all, unless you want a really high frame rate(100's or something).

As I said, it's completely up to future technologies. But there's nothing right now that can make up the advantages of having a unit dedicated to graphics.

Not for quite some time, but considering how far mobile graphics processors have come recently, it might not be too far in the future where APU type graphics processors are adequate for all but the most demanding graphics in gaming.

R7 265 is a good GPU and its more than 3 times faster than the best APU.

I don't know where you get the numbers for 200% performance increase.... If you got a link where you get these numbers it would be great...

Also good luck playing with even LN2 overclocking on a A10 7850K crysis 3 and Metro LL at medium settings.

Not to mention that Witcher 3 is coming....

Since the 1997 which I follow PC industry there were never a GPU performance increase of 200%.

Do you think that AMD engineers will start doing miracles?

Now about 5-10 years... This might be true but only if devs stop taking advantage of new tech, which it might never happen....

in 5-10 years game will be more and more demanding.

So APUs will still offer lower entry level graphics performance, low end GPUs will offer a little more, low to medium GPUs will offer more than the previous etc etc.

@Coseniath: The 10 7850k can already play LL on low settings without any overclocking. If for some reason you played on a lower res a APU would hardly be the worst choice if you were on a tight budget. Anyway, my whole point is if the best APU atm is capable of that and if there is a significant performance boost like many are predicting, wouldn't that immediately put Carrizo in direct competition with current entry level cards? Now imagine 5 years from now or so if the technology keeps advancing. APU's would hardly be the worst choice.

I don't own a APU yet. Today I'm ordering some parts and in a couple of weeks I'll have a build together, then I'll do more extensive tests.

I should also mention that not only will Carrizo have stacked on die memory, but will support ddr4.

"The 10 7850k can already play LL on low settings without any overclocking"? Yeah clearly playable at 23,2FPS...

So it will be an achievement if a new APU in five years would be able to play a 5-6 years old game?

Why would someone buy something in order to play 5 years old games when for almost the same money can play today's games?

I am sorry but I fail to see your excitement. And you still didn't post a link to justify 200% performance increase.

Support DDR4? Do you think that the memory type is the problem of APU's low memory bandwidth?

In order to see the APU's lower memory bandwidth, you have to look at its memory controller which is totally outdated crap.

Look at the photo that I have linked you. DDR3 2400 is pretty fast. Intel manages to achieve double!!! memory bandwidth than AMD's APU from the exact same memory. So even with DDR4 most people fear that it will not even pass Intel's DDR3 speeds.

Not to mention the price of DDR4. That will not make APUs more attractive...

I don't know you can see clearly that today's APU cannot beat a $75 R7 250 GDDR5 card yet you want to order one. Its your choice to do anything you want with your money. But this doesn't mean its the best choice...

For the past 5 years I mostly trying to help people making the right decision for PCs they want to buy so they can take better performance for less money.

I would love to convince you, not to order an APU if gaming is your main purpose.

But as I said, in the end its your money...

@Coseniath: I've seen different benchmarks for LL specifically throughout the web and most of them vary. Especially on the speed of the RAM and etc. I never said "200% performance." As a matter of fact, if you look through this thread the most you see me say is 30%-40% performance increase over the A10 7850k. Also, as I've stated, I have a r7 265 paired with a fx 6300 atm. I'd say that's a lower mid range build. If I play LL on high settings I dip below 30 fps more frequently than you think. I have to play on medium quality settings to prevent that from happening. Now, since we're using LL as a example, I guess because its one of the more demanding games at this moment in time...try to follow me here;

Lets say someone was to OC the 7850k to 4.3 GHZ and the igpu to 960mhz, said person would surely be averaging over 30 fps on low(for LL). Can we agree there? Now, what I'm saying is that with my rig I play comfortably only 1 quality setting above that. Are you telling me its completely impossible for Carrizo to give a big enough performance boost to knock LL and other games up a quality setting? I don't think it's that impossible. If they do achieve that it will put that stupid thing nearly on par with my rig. Granted, not in every single game(such as Crysis 3). Also, can we stop pretending demanding games like Crysis comes along all the time?

The whole reason why I decided to do a APU build is because I have a spare monitor that is 720p and I have a friend that is always wanting to play. That will not be my main rig. I plan to upgrade my gpu sometime next year since nothing atm is forcing me to do so. I also have the RAM, and spare case to do so. Contrary to belief it is cheaper than doing the gpu/cpu combo.

BF4 sadly, is still one of the most demanding games on the market. Here is a taste of the capabilities of the APU.

EDIT; Time stamp didn't work for the video. 7:23 was my example.

I'd rather spend a bit more, and get a rig thats really good at gaming at 1440p, becuase I just bought a new 1440p monitor. Even an overclocked R9 270X cannot max out every game at that resolution :(

@AlexKidd5000: oh absolutely. It would be insane to get a APU for 1440 lol. This conversation isn't about the present as much as it is the future.

"Will APU's make discrete GPU's obsolete?"

No. Next question?

-Byshop

For the average gamer and PC consumer the answer is yes. For professional content creators, not so much. Some people have this illusion that everyone wants the fastest system, the vast majority of times people overspec the average consumer. Just like mobile domination, APU domination is immanent and is the real PC hardware mover now and for the future.

@intotheminx: Well you said that the Carrizo will reach R7 265 performance. Since R7 265 is 3 times more powerful, you need 200% performance increase in order to reach it.

BF4 is not the most demanding game. Crysis 3 and Metro LL are far more demanding.

BF4 is not demanding at low-med settings at all.

Hell an $75 R7 250 GDDR5 can play it at medium settings at 1080p with 40FPS...

I imagine A10 7850K should easily reach 40FPS with low settings at 1080p like the video showed.

720p? Well for 720p it might be worth a shot.

Also the guy in the video was doing an overkill in overclock. You don't have to overclock anything, just try to get faster RAM. APUs love this :).

edit: I just saw the "cheaper" you said. Its nolt cheaper by any means. That's why most reviews about APUs, reviewers say that AMD shot themselves in the foot with that prices cause their A7xxK CPU + a $75 AMD GPU is cheaper and faster....

This started since the first APU when a cheap CPU combined with the $70 HD6670 was destrying the best APU. Today things didn't change at all....

Apus are weak so is the ps4.

Tablet cpus nuff said.

To those who say "maybe in the future"....we will have better hardware and intel and nvidia will run all over amd and yes i use amd but lets get serious amd does not have power.

@intotheminx: I would rather run a game at 720 and 900p at high settings than 1080p at low. All APU's in computers are significantly weaker than the APU used in the PS4 to boot.

I think the main problem with APUs is that you can't upgrade them the same way as a GPU.

If I want some more horsepower in my current PC I just throw in a new GPU and update drivers. If I had to upgrade an APU to something more powerful I'd have reinstall Windows and everything.

Though..............weirdly enough the last PC I built booted to Windows from an old hdd we recycled in it............ So maybe it's not the case anymore? But that's what I keep thinking.

Anyone know?

I think APU might be the future. Athough someone above might mention that the dye is too small and the power draw is huge, i believe that that is not the main issue. We can always make the dye larger, have a new socket, and add more power connectors when it's nescessary. Just think of it as something like intel's knights landing, bigass dye with more power connector. APU can solve a lot of problem we currently have with the standard GPU such as latency and bottlenecking on poor builds. It can improve power effeciency, and most of all, it's practical to use. We can already see powerful APUs coming in the future with AMD Navi thats predicted to be able to play 4k at 60 fps on incoming PS 5. There's no reason as why APU wont be a thing in the future. Sure discrete GPU might be more powerful than any APU for probably 5 years to come, but after that, maybe its time for APU to shine

4 years old necro, well done

@josuad: as been said 4 years old thread, locked.