Why have AMD APUs failed on the market?

[schmuckley]

A little example to show you exactly how wrong you are in all counts. Not only the larger iGPU is faster than Intels HD4600, but A8-7600 is also cheaper than any Core i3 Haswell(check newegg) and at 45W TDP it needs a smaller heat-sink than 54W TDP of those Core i3 Haswell.
And the best part is that 28nm Kaveri has way higher efficiency (perf/watt) than 22nm FF Core i3 Haswell(iGPU).

Both CPUs are fine for everyday jobs (internet and office), but the AMD APU can play games at higher resolutions and/or higher Image Quality than the Intel CPUs.
For the average consumer that also like to casually play games, the AMD APUs are way better by far.

yeah..i still don't want one.
I have a 7950.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Not only the larger iGPU is faster than Intels HD4600, but A8-7600 is also cheaper than any Core i3 Haswell(check newegg) and at 45W TDP it needs a smaller heat-sink than 54W TDP of those Core i3 Haswell.

I thought that I had read that the TDP of the A8-7600 was a farce, and that under certain scenarios, it would draw 90W, thus making it (unfortunately) unsuitable for those USFF enclosures powered by 65W laptop bricks.

 

[Ramses]

I played UT3 on my new i7 lappy the other day and had a little chuckle when I realized it didn't even bother using the dGPU. These things would have been great ten years ago.

 

[AtenRa]

yeah..i still don't want one.
I have a 7950.

I believe you missed something

For the average consumer that also like to casually play games, the AMD APUs are way better by far

 

[AtenRa]

I thought that I had read that the TDP of the A8-7600 was a farce, and that under certain scenarios, it would draw 90W, thus making it (unfortunately) unsuitable for those USFF enclosures powered by 65W laptop bricks.

Gaming with the A8-7600 at 45W TDP with an ASUS A88XM-Plus and using the ThermalTake TR2 380W 80plus Bronze PSU, the maximum peak power draw from the wall for the entire system was 88-89W (in one or two games) if I remember correctly.

 

[cbn]

Comparing prices now on single 8GB vs 2 x 4GB RAM kits for DDR4, it looks like the single sticks are currently the same price per GB.

Looking forward a year and a half from now when (rumored) Bristol Ridge launches, I would expect the 8GB sticks to be cheaper per GB than the 2 x 4GB kits.

So big core APUs of the future (with 2 x 4GB) will likely be a total system cost disadvantage compared to dGPU users who might use one 8GB stick or even a single 4GB stick.

 

[USER8000]

Comparing prices now on single 8GB vs 2 x 4GB RAM kits for both DDR3 and DDR4, it looks like the single sticks are currently the same price per GB.

Looking forward a year and a half from now when (rumored) Bristol Ridge launches, I would expect the 8GB sticks to be cheaper per GB than the 2 x 4GB kits.

So big core APUs of the future (with 2 x 4GB) will likely be a total system cost disadvantage compared to dGPU users who might use one 8GB stick or even a single 4GB stick.

The only people I know who would use a single ram stick on a desktop gaming system are noobs and companies who like cost cutting.

 

[cbn]

The only people I know who would use a single ram stick on a desktop gaming system are noobs and companies who like cost cutting.

Low end system builders still use one stick, see some examples here.

 

[cbn]

Also, in another 1.5 years I would say it is safe to assume DDR4 3200 will be the standard, and just one of these sticks should go a long way in scenarios where a gaming iGPU does not need to be supported.

 

[coercitiv]

I thought that I had read that the TDP of the A8-7600 was a farce, and that under certain scenarios, it would draw 90W, thus making it (unfortunately) unsuitable for those USFF enclosures powered by 65W laptop bricks.

Wait, you expect to power a system with a 45W TDP CPU using a 65W power brick?!

You do realize that besides being only part of the system, CPU TDP does not equal maximum power consumption? For example my 47W TDP mobile Haswell CPU can consume up to 59W for a short time window if enough load is applied.

 

[cbn]

So in a nutshell, here are some reasons I would like to see AMD Bristol Ridge desktop reconsidered:

1. Bristol Ridge is only a Excavator quad core. (This will yield both quad cores and dual cores from the die. The quad should be adequate for a lot of gaming, but the dual will not. With that mentioned, an AMD quad core is still not optimal for a lot of newer games like Battlefield 4 64 player where I would like to see at least six AMD cores with the current Steamroller levels of IPC and single thread.)

2. Bristrol Ridge 512sp iGPU is cost adder that pushes die size over the sweet spot for cost. There is also the issue of how high this iGPU will be able to be clocked while remaining under 95 watt TDP for socket FM3. (IMO, in order to maximize the expensive investment of the 512sp iGPU, clocks should be at least 1000 Mhz or greater like the R7 250 (1000/1050 Mhz) , R7 250X (1000 Mhz) , R7 260 (1000 Mhz), R7 260X (1100 Mhz).

3. The dual channel memory cost issues I mentioned in the previous posts will likely add even further to a system price disadvantage compared to a value gamer using dGPU.

Overall, I would say Bristol Ridge is probably a step in the right direction but still too weak and low value compared to what AMD should be giving us in late 2016. IMHO, I would like to see something with at least the same single thread as Kaveri, but with two more cores added and a much smaller iGPU.

 

[BSim500]

Look at my pretty charts that shows Intel owners wanting to game at 5fps!

Great another fake self-made sub-1080p "5 vs 19fps is what real people are interested in!" 'benchmark'... Kaveri has a sub 0.5% market share even amongst gamers (and that 0.5% is shared with desktop R7 240/250/260 cards). Strip those out and it falls to under 0.2-0.25%. It's so low, it's 4x lower than even some DX9-only "VIA/S3G UniChrome Pro IGP" chips... 19fps might be "better" than 5fps - but 99.5% of the gaming market simply aren't interested in sub-20fps modern FPS gaming on AMD APU's at any price - nor interested in the ultra rock-bottom "$90 for CPU+GPU combined" price bracket you're obsessed with in general for FPS games...

 

[Ramses]

Despite having learned some interesting things in the two AMD threads the last little bit, I still can't bring myself to give two craps about an APU or integrated graphics.

I think I might buy a xeon, without the iGPU, just on principle after all this.

 

[Dribble]

So you have a slow cpu and a gpu that's too fast for all those that don't need a gpu, and too slow for any that do. There's no market for that as it just doesn't work.

Hence AMD have the concept of APU where the gpu is meant to speed up cpu processing. To make that work you need massive market share, and lots of software dev and support. Then it might just take off. AMD has none of those thing so that was always doomed to fail too.

Combine that with terrible marketing, out of date motherboards and being consistently late to market (it's amazing that Intel beat AMD to the cpu + gpu on one chip by a good year despite AMD having bought ATI many years earlier). Terrible deal on silicon manufacturing with GF. Ignoring market direction (e.g. no focus on efficiency) - if you can't drive the market then you at least have to follow it! Having much more competent competitors with deeper pockets.

Really the only people buying these things is ignorant budget customers getting duped, and AMD fanboys.

 

[coercitiv]

I think I might buy a xeon, without the iGPU, just on principle after all this.

Buy it while you still can, they are starting to sport iGPs too.

 

[NTMBK]

Buy it while you still can, they are starting to sport iGPs too.

That's the E3, which is just a rebadged consumer chip. The E5 and E7 aren't getting IGPs.

 

[redzo]

Buy it while you still can, they are starting to sport iGPs too.

Guess "xeon" with igp was inevitable since those models are rebranded 4 cores max desktop midrange i7's or i5's. They find their way in cheap, low performance, desktop like platforms but certified for server usage with very few added server features/benefits.

 

[BigDaveX]

A little example to show you exactly how wrong you are in all counts. Not only the larger iGPU is faster than Intels HD4600, but A8-7600 is also cheaper than any Core i3 Haswell(check newegg) and at 45W TDP it needs a smaller heat-sink than 54W TDP of those Core i3 Haswell.
And the best part is that 28nm Kaveri has way higher efficiency (perf/watt) than 22nm FF Core i3 Haswell(iGPU).

Both CPUs are fine for everyday jobs (internet and office), but the AMD APU can play games at higher resolutions and/or higher Image Quality than the Intel CPUs.
For the average consumer that also like to casually play games, the AMD APUs are way better by far.

You probably don't realize it, but you've just gone and answered the entire subject of this thread with those two charts. For as fast as AMD's iGPUs are compared to Intel's (even if you take Iris Pro out of the equation), they're still not fast enough for the liking of most enthusiast gamers. By comparison, Intel's iGPUs are fast enough, albeit just barely, for the liking of those casual users who are likely used to gaming on the PS3 or Xbox 360. 900p@30fps and even 720p@30fps may not be great shakes compared to what a dGPU can deliver, but they're still perfectly playable for those who just dive into games without ever bothering to touch the graphics settings.

 

[beginner99]

A little example to show you exactly how wrong you are in all counts. Not only the larger iGPU is faster than Intels HD4600, but A8-7600 is also cheaper than any Core i3 Haswell(check newegg) and at 45W TDP it needs a smaller heat-sink than 54W TDP of those Core i3 Haswell.
And the best part is that 28nm Kaveri has way higher efficiency (perf/watt) than 22nm FF Core i3 Haswell(iGPU).

Both CPUs are fine for everyday jobs (internet and office), but the AMD APU can play games at higher resolutions and/or higher Image Quality than the Intel CPUs.
For the average consumer that also like to casually play games, the AMD APUs are way better by far.

I specifically mentioned office and internet use. Nowhere did I say Intel was better in GPU performance so your graphs are irrelevant to my claim.

Casual gamers are rare, much rarer than you think. And a lot of them nowadays use their tablet or smartphone for this. Besides that you pay a very small premium for say an Athlon + dGPU compared to an APU. The difference is less than 1 game. However you easily get double the FPS with this setup. So evebn for casual gaming APUs are fail.

Now they have their merit in laptops but again as already mentioned i5 + nv dGPU is better and doesn't cost much more.

 

[MisterLilBig]

but 99.5% of the gaming market

Don't care about GPU's and CPU's, they just want to play games.


****, most of the PC gaming market don't even buy GPU's! Actually, just count how many people play 3D rendered games, a number that would totally surpass the Steam subscribers! And then see the "incredible" 2-3 million GTX 970 cards sold, pathetic, and not only that, only 33% to 50% of GTX 970 buyers are using Steam, based on Steam having 100 million subscribers and the GTX 970 having a .99% share.


99% of gamers would be fine with an APU, Intel knows this and will keep making super slow advances on its iGPU. And I don't mind getting an Intel APU, I would had bought a freaking GT3e laptop, but there was none either!

The end result is neither company has their highest end iGPU product on the market.

By comparison, Intel's iGPUs are fast enough, albeit just barely, for the liking of those casual users who are likely used to gaming on the PS3 or Xbox 360. 900p@30fps and even 720p@30fps may not be great shakes compared to what a dGPU can deliver, but they're still perfectly playable for those who just dive into games without ever bothering to touch the graphics settings.

I guess those Intel iGPU gamers wont notice the 3 times lower minimum FPS hiccups while playing and get totally frustrated with the slideshow.




Edit:
And about my HoloLense comment earlier, PCWorld even states, "The mysterious part of HoloLens remains the HPU", which is what I was referring to, that was the only interesting bit of information, the fact that MS made a chip for it. To be clear, the HPU, is not Cherry Trail.

 

[BSim500]

****, most of the PC gaming market don't even buy GPU's! 99% of gamers would be fine with an APU

99% of people play Bioshock Infinite use an APU? Um, no. This is conflating two different things. As others have said - the bulk of real "casual gaming" in reality consists of the flash / "PopCap" based stuff (Bejeweled, Cake Mania, Chess, Hidden Object, Diner Dash, Luxor, Mahjong, Minesweeper, Solitare, Freecell, PvZ, etc) and other light card, board & puzzle games (many of which are increasing being played on tablets), not simply the neat but dishonest & inaccurate trick of including "any FPS which is older than 18 months" which most buy through Steam, whilst simultaneously declaring Steam's figures to be irrelevant for same game simply because most people play Bejeweled on an iGPU...

The percentage of people playing FPS's on APU's is not the same % as those playing puzzle games on an iGPU, and it's pretty dishonest to keep repeating that as fact when it clearly isn't.

Edit : The "bulk" of the market play FPS games on consoles. And whilst some may then go on to play the usual funny word games dressing that up as an "APU", 7850 class performance + DDR5 isn't "the same" as 7730 class performance in a PC, nor involves the same silly recycled "consoles are better than PC's because Intel's get only 5fps" fake 'False Dilemma' comparisons...

 

[MisterLilBig]

99% of people play Bioshock Infinite use an APU? Um, no. This is conflating two different things. As others have said - the bulk of real "casual gaming" in reality consists of the flash / "PopCap" based stuff (Bejeweled, Cake Mania, Chess, Hidden Object, Diner Dash, Luxor, Mahjong, Minesweeper, Solitare, Freecell, PvZ, etc) and other light card, board & puzzle games (many of which are increasing being played on tablets), not simply the neat but dishonest & inaccurate trick of including "any FPS which is older than 18 months" which most buy through Steam, whilst simultaneously declaring Steam's figures to be irrelevant for same game simply because most people play Bejeweled on an iGPU...

Less than 1% of 100+ million "enthusiasts" users bought a GTX 970. On the greatest amalgamation of PC gamers, only less than 5%, on both sides, AMD and NV, buy a dGPU each year or two. That is what I am saying.

So to answer your question, "99% of people play Bioshock Infinite use an APU?", probably. But a better estimate and answer would be, -> The mayority of people probably played it on an iGPU or a mGPU, simply, because that is what they had. Considering that most gamers don't even buy high-end or mid-range hardware, which is a fact, yes, an APU was used, mostly.


Edited to reply to what I missed by your edit:

The percentage of people playing FPS's on APU's is not the same % as those playing puzzle games on an iGPU, and it's pretty dishonest to keep repeating that as fact when it clearly isn't.

Edit : The "bulk" of the market play FPS games on consoles. And whilst some may then go on to play the usual funny word games dressing that up as an "APU", 7850 class performance + DDR5 isn't "the same" as 7730 class performance in a PC, nor involves the same silly recycled "consoles are better than PC's because Intel's get only 5fps" fake 'False Dilemma' comparisons...

The percentage of people playing FPS's at all, on PC, far surpasses the people that care to buy GPU's every year or two or three.

 

[BSim500]

Less than 1% of 100+ million "enthusiasts" users bought a GTX 970. That is what I am saying.

I know what you're saying. And there are more dGPU's out there than the GTX 970. 2.69% have a GTX 760. Another 2.39% have a GTX 660, etc. Another 2% each for 650 and 770. That's over 9% on just 4 card models of just one brand. Simply playing on a "1% vs 99%" as a supposed dGPU vs APU (with zero figures to back it up with) in general on the back of a single "GTX 970" model is still ludicrously dishonest. Your second repeated fallacy is to label every Steam user as an "enthusiast" when Steam sell casual games too.

Repeating the same inconsistently applied logical fallacy still doesn't make it true. What's the iGPU perf of an FX-6300 or FX-8350? Zero. Therefore they're "even more worthless" then the i3 for exactly the same reason, and therefore "no-one's buying them". Meanwhile back in reality, the FX chips (and i3/i5/i7) consistently outsell AMD's APU's in actual reality for most new gaming rigs (and Intel's in general for non-gaming rigs for both self-build and most pre-builts (eg, Dell Inspiron, HP Pavillion, etc)).

On the greatest amalgamation of PC gamers, only less than 5%, on both sides, AMD and NV, buy a dGPU each year or two.

Buying & using are not the same thing. Of course the former's figures are going to be lower than the latter's.

So to answer your question, "99% of people play Bioshock Infinite use an APU?", probably.

Proper source please.

 

[MisterLilBig]

I know what you're saying.

*Sigh* Lost all my reply thanks to a crash...I'll just shorten it.

The 9% market share and an estimated 12% by September 2015, the month the GTX 650 was released in 2012, is "full" of 3 year old and newer hardware, this should be a sure sign of why my point is meaningful. And that's just from the NV side of things, the majority share holder. We are talking that in September 2015, there's less than 20% people in Steam with a dGPU that is at least 3 years old, that's adding AMD in the mix.

Bioshock Infinite can run on an Intel HD 3000 iGPU. For 20% of people, that is a problem. For the other 80%, its fine. And that's on a 3 year cadence.

Proper source please.

Neither of us have a "proper" source. I just point out that its highly unlikely anyone who isn't part of the 2-3% "super elite pc master race" actually cared to get a dGPU to play the darn game. Any game, actually.

 

[Enigmoid]

A little example to show you exactly how wrong you are in all counts. Not only the larger iGPU is faster than Intels HD4600, but A8-7600 is also cheaper than any Core i3 Haswell(check newegg) and at 45W TDP it needs a smaller heat-sink than 54W TDP of those Core i3 Haswell.
And the best part is that 28nm Kaveri has way higher efficiency (perf/watt) than 22nm FF Core i3 Haswell(iGPU).

And this is why meaningless TDP arguments are meaningless.

Mr. TDP, what is the actual power draw of the 45W A8-7600 and the 54W i3? Oh really, so less power requires a smaller heatsink?

Its nice when you use your own data to prove yourself wrong.


Kaveri is more efficient going by those numbers but it is certainty not using less power.