Discrete PC CPUs and GPUs on life support, Nvidia and Intel in grave danger! Get in now!

AMD is introducing an APU with Ryzen CPU and Vega GPU for the laptop. It's just a matter of time before they introduce gaming APUs for Desktop PCs. It's amazingly dumb of them that they have been already doing it for consoles for years but until now it hasn't occurred to them to bring it over to the PC.

Imagine gaming PCs the size of an ultrabook but with the power of a Ryzen CPU and a Vega GPU. This really could put PCs in the living room as the ultimate media hub. This could be the true steambox as well at the same time.

Extinct will be the monster PC tower with tower CPU cooler and massive GPU. Instead you will get a smaller, energy efficient truly small form factor PC with actual all around power including good gaming performance.

Laptops will benefit greatly as well because gaming performance will be phenomenal so it makes sense this is where they begin.

Now what about Intel and Nvidia? How will intel compete if they don't have real graphics on their CPU? How will Nvidia compete if they don't have a CPU with their graphics? An AMD APU can kill both Intel and Nvidia in short order under the right circumstances.

The future is a small Apple TV size device with high end PC like performance. I guess building PCs may even become obsolete at some point as well.

lolno.

OP is clueless, as proved by his previous threads

This on the day Nvidia starts preorders for the 1070Ti

I hope TC is trolling or it's facepalm of a thread. We already had apus in 2000s for PC. They died a horrible death. No one even remembers them today. Apus are just cpu and gpu soldered together. No PC enthusiast will ever want to limit their pc upgradability. I didn't spent 500 bucks on my cpu in order to throw it away when i want to change my gpu. CPU performance is well ahead nowadays of the GPUs, they last longer. A good cpu can last you 5-7 years, meanwhile it's good to change the gpu every 2-4 years. Soldering them together you make pc upgradability so much more expensive.

As someone who has been a PC gamer since the 90's, I can't tell you how many times someone has made the claim that some closed system or technology will replace the PC. This is great tech for a laptop, but not for desktops.

So Teh Cell was right all along? Thank you Sony

@Xplode_games While I admire the thought put behind the premise of your thread, it has one fatal flaw. We'll always be able to cram more transistors in a larger surface than a smaller one. No matter how powerful your tiny PC is, a huge one will always be able to wield more power.

An APU capable of giving equivalent, or more, power than a CPU and discrete GPU is long way off. Especially from AMD, whose flag ship GPU card comes in level with a GTX 1080 on power and price.

Physics disagrees with the notion that APUs can be more powerful than discrete and AMD is frankly awful at over hyping products.

Don't fall for it.

The future is a small Apple TV size device with high end PC like performance. I guess building PCs may even become obsolete at some point as well.

This quote alone gave me cancer lol

Maybe not APUs per se but a combined CPU/GPU solution I would say could be more powerful than separated components because of the bottleneck created by the CPU-GPU data transfer. I programmed an image recognition software once that used Cuda and the biggest bottleneck by far was the transferring of data between the devices. That was a long time ago so I think now there are much more optimized procedures that make it fairly quick but I think it would still be slower than sharing all memory and working area between both.

Yup, I'm sure Nvidia and Intel are shaking in their boots right now.

Pee Salty Seas are... wait for it.... Doomed. :P

It's like you go out of your way to make the dumbest threads. Jesus.

I'll believe it when I see it. We haven't even seen an APU that match an XB1 on a bad day. And I speak as one who has an AMD A10-7850k DIY PC at home (youngest kid's PC). Luckily, I snagged a cheap 2GB R9 390 to go with it.

APUs up until now have failed miserably because they have been very flawed. AMD APUs have had a weak CPU and weak GPU so that makes them practically useless. No way anyone is replacing a high end PC with that. Intel CPUs have graphics but terrible performance. You can't do anything with only an Intel CPU, you have to pair it with a powerful GPU to have good gaming performance.

This is the first time we have seen a Ryzen level CPU and Vega level GPU on one chip. This could replace a high end PC and be a very small form factor. This is the future of PCs and could be AMD's chance to really take command of the industry as they have already done in the console space.

Haven't you noticed that laptops have all but taken over desktops but what is stopping them from totally killing desktops has been gaming performance.

It's not going to happen, as everyone is telling you in the thread

Yet, the asking price of a desktop graphics card has never been higher. It's almost as if demand for things like enthusiast CPUs, graphics cards, and even prefabbed watercoolers is... growing...

It all depends on architecture and set of istructons of cpu and gpu, and how the developers take advantage of those. Shared memory, quicker buss between cpu and gpu won't make games perform magically faster on it. The problems is it only works if you specifically program a game for that hardware. The hardware is changing too fast to bother. This is why we need intermediary software api such as directx or opengl. Without them your game would work only on a specific hardware, which would make that hardware basically a console.

The APU doesn't have to match the power of the top CPU and the top GPU to be successful. It just has to have enough power and the amazing form factor and convenience will bring it over the top. For example, the Riva 128 by Nvidia wasn't better at 2D than the Matrix Millenium cards and it certainly wasn't better at 3D than the 3dfx Voodoo 3D cards either. But because it paired decent 2d and 3d performance, it all but killed discrete 2d and 3d gaming cards on the PC. Notice today the GPU handles both 2d and 3d graphics as well.

When the general consumer sees a little box that is as powerful as a high end PC, it will end the big tower PCs. Laptops and small form factor PCs will rule the day. The purists will be mad for a while but then they will just adapt and move along. I remember when LCD monitors first arrived and there were CRT purists that resisted for a long while. That was a long time ago. For a long while now it's been almost impossible to find anyone that will argue for the benefits of CRT vs LCDs.

Yep, I agree. The biggest problem now for such a transition is that almost everything is thought out to take advantage of the discrete components logic. This was one of the reasons why the Cell was so difficult to program. It was an architecture that changed the whole logic of how programmers use and manage resources so to truly take advantage of it you needed a paradigm shift and not many were willing to invest time and money there. I'm not sure where the future lies though, maybe the bus transfers will become so fast that a combined solution wouldn't make sense but maybe after the discrete solution can't be more optimized then the industry will naturally move towards a combined one.

That is true but only because there is currently no alternative. When the alternative becomes you can go to bestbuy to purchase a small form factor PC that can perform at 75% of a high end PC but offer the small package and cool factor it will explode. I agree that this is not the near future. The near future is laptops so it makes sense that AMD began with laptops.

You don't get it. The games will have to be programmed for that apus specifically in order to work as you expect, in order to have a boost, which basically will make them a closed system or console. You are basically saying that PCs will become consoles lol. PCs current architecture has its slight disadvantages. We need intermediate api between software and hardware such as DirectX and OpenGL so the games work on a wide variety of different hardware. Your solution will basically kill backward compatibility and make older PCs incompatible. No software developer will go along with that. Your APUs will have to imitate the current pc architecture of separated cpu and gpu and memory, connected by busses. In reality, you won't see any pergormance boost unless a game is specifically crafted for that apu. No developer will bother to do double work.

but why a $1500 pc destroys a $2000 laptop?

How can laptops kill towers when they ask over DOUBLE the price?

Already have mediocre performance small form factor boxes, they are called consoles

Sounds more like the death of consoles than PCs to me. PCs are about choice and customization, consoles are about ease of use. Buy a pre-built with one of these APUs that, supposedly, kills current consoles in performance AND in a tiny form factor... You got a plug and play PC under your TV right there. Why do we need outdated closed system home consoles anymore?

There will ALWAYS be a market for discrete CPUs and GPUs UNTIL they are topped in performance. According to physics, an APU just can't do that (at least not with current tech). Plus there is a consumer base (one you are greatly underestimating) that prefers to choose their own parts and assemble their own PCs.

Another problem with this I foresee is increased price for the chip and longevity issues, forcing one to replace BOTH (essentially) CPU and GPU at the same time when upgrading instead of just one or the other.

Physics is not on your side. No matter how powerful you can make a laptop, a tower will have the flexibility to outperform it. Also, neither Intel or AMD will abandon the mass market for x86 personal computing to pursue being closed systems unto themselves. The operating system is the tie that binds. It's just not happening like you expect it to.

Actually CRTs DO still have some advantages over LCDs, even to this day.

An LCD can't physically change the number of pixels like a CRT when using different resolutions.

Even the fastest LCDs still have a higher response time than a CRT.

It's just that very few if any people care enough about that to put up with a monitor that weighs 20x as much and takes up 10x the space lol.

Yeah, we all know that @Xplode_games believes this will bring the realization of the dream, the day that consoles make gaming PC's extinct.

Until it melts because there's not enough cooling.

Uh, yeah, sure a very powerful APU that will outperform discrete pc parts.

There's a big problem here, a Ryzen based APU is not going to have Vega 64 GPU paired with it on one chip. The heatsink alone would be the size of an ATX case. So you're not going to have a "little box" with the power of a high end PC.

As for CRT's they have many advantages over LCD (originally TFT) screens such as pixel density and variation, variable frame refresh rates (my last CRT could run up to 150Hz). Hell I wouldn't even consider running a monitor at less than 85Hz. Also, as mentioned above, response times were far better on a CRT, the term input lag didn't exist prior to LCD displays. I'll argue the advantages of CRT over LCD any day but technology advances and, as with most people, I'd rather have a 27" monitor that I can carry in one hand than a 24" monster that needs two people to lift safely and a reinforced desk.

Not a problem ?

This, innovation and industry leading

The way of the Sony.

You of course mean IBM and their Power PC architecture from 1990?

This is for budget builds, and they just barely skirt by on performance. You'd be better off getting a dual(or weak quad) cpu and a dedicated GPU for the same price.

@BassMan said:

When the Most Interesting Man in the World sees the fail, you just know it's epic! ???

@commander said:

Ok I admit I was slowly scrolling down the page until I saw that and started laughing.

Yeah OP....APUs are nothing new, no PC gamer would want it, the great thing about dedicated components is that they can be swapped. Why else do you think people trash their laptops every 2 years? or that high end laptops are insanely expensive compared to desktop PCs with equivalent spec?

Besides PCs CAN be used in the living room, its not hard to build a small factor PC (or at least, not as hard as you might think).

No, just,,,just NO!

I think we're safe for a while

And yet you want a monster PC tower that needs two people to lift safely and a reinforced desk rather than a small form factor PC that you can carry with one hand and easily fit in your living room entertainment center.

@AdobeArtist said:

Yeah, we all know that @Xplode_games believes this will bring the realization of the dream, the day that consoles make gaming PC's extinct.

Wow, do you really not understand what I'm talking about? I am not talking about the end of PCs. I am talking about AMD bitch slapping Intel and Nvidia at the same time with the development of these new APUs that right now no one can compete with.

@drlostrib said:

I think we're safe for a while

Wow, those are pathetic numbers...

@Dark_sageX said:

@drlostrib said:

I think we're safe for a while

Wow, those are pathetic numbers...

Pretty much. They are games that a potato could run good and it struggles.

You don't get it! Am I not making myself clear? Why would I want to buy an i7 intel CPU and an Nvidia GPU when I can ***INSTEAD*** buy an AMD APU that has a Ryzen based CPU and Vega based GPU. That will give us awesome performance and you are only buying an APU and not both a CPU and GPU. This will make the PCs much smaller. You are still building your own PCs but you aren't buying a separate CPU and GPU. In some time the APUs will be all over the market and the discrete CPUs and GPUs will be rare until they are gone forever.

You don't build your own laptop right? Well, in time you will not even be building your own desktop PC which will eventually become the size of an Apple TV. Again, not overnight but this is the trajectory that I see the industry heading in.

because the i7 and discrete GPU give you better performance?

How does any of that add up to CPUs/GPUS being "on life support"