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With AMD finally taking a page from Intel with regards to providing an iGPU to everyone, Intel expected to integrate ARC into their CPUs with Meteor Lake (14th

With AMD finally taking a page from Intel with regards to providing an iGPU to everyone, Intel expected to integrate ARC into their CPUs with Meteor Lake (14th gen), and discrete GPUs from Nvidia and AMD being as bloody expensive as they are, I wonder if we're on the verge of a turning point in desktop computing as discrete GPUs go down the path once trodden by sound cards?

sampa 4y ago
look at the size of 4090 and think again
- noizejoy 4y ago
  The soundcard analogy may not be that faulty. General purpose soundcards have pretty much been replaced by motherboard components, while high end soundcards (audio interfaces) for DAW (digital audio workstation) use cases are an entirely separate market. Side note: Most of those high end audio interfaces are now external devices connected via USB (formerly also via Firewire). And since a DAW typically doesn’t need high end video, I didn’t bother with a separate GPU on my latest DAW build. I will only add a GPU card, if I ever want to do higher end gaming, video production or machine learning on that computer.
- p1necone 4y ago
  Dedicated GPUs are a chip about the same size as a CPU + a big board with power delivery, memory modules, cooling etc. CPUs would be the same size if they had all that stuff on their own discrete board too. Pairing a 4090 + a CPU on the same chip/side by side would be a stretch, but it has nothing to do with physical size - more the motherboard needing to handle power delivery, and the separate memory not being fast enough. Something like a 3060 is probably more reasonable. This already exists too - the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S both use APUs with much more powerful GPUs than are available as standalone purchases.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    > Dedicated GPUs are a chip about the same size as a CPU + a big board with power delivery, memory modules, cooling etc. 4090 have die area of ~600mm2 Ryzen 7 have 71mm2 CPU die and 122mm2 IO die It's not even fucking comparable > CPUs would be the same size if they had all that stuff on their own discrete board too Oh, oh, I know, we can call the board that has all the power and IO CPU needs a "motherboard" cos it cradles the CPU in its hold (socket). Oh, wait, that's exactly how it is.
    - AnthonyMouse 4y ago
      That's because you're comparing one of the biggest GPUs to a midrange CPU. Epyc 9654 has 12xCCD, which is bigger than the 4090. Radeon RX 6400 has a 107mm2 die, which is smaller than the Ryzen IO die.
      - ilyt 4y ago
        That's server CPU. 7950X3D isn't that much bigger,only one extra CCD > Epyc 9654 has 12xCCD That's $7k CPU you're comparing to $1600 GPU
        AnthonyMouse 4y ago
        I named a big one. It's expensive. The 9354P is $2,730 and still has 8 CCD. That's >60% more than the 4090, but it's also >60% bigger, because Epyc has a ~400mm2 I/O die on top of the CCDs.
      - p1necone 4y ago
        Ryzen 7 is the high end of the gaming market in AMDs offerings. Buying an EPYC would give you worse performance for more cost and higher power budget (games still generally benefit more from a modest core count + high single core speed rather than the high core count + modest single core speed found in most high end server/workstation chips).
        4y ago
AnthonyMouse 4y ago
Fairly common for even pedestrian discrete GPUs to use over 200W. The ludicrous ones can break 1000W. In a given generation, GPU performance is not far from linear in power consumption. The problem is the existing iGPUs are unnecessarily anemic. Okay, the Radeon RX 6950 XT has 80 CU at 335W. You can't fit that in Socket AM5. But the Radeon RX 6400 has 12 CU at 53W. You could add that to a Ryzen 7 7700X (105W) and still have a lower TDP than a Ryzen 9 7900X (170W). You could double that and add it to a Ryzen 7 7700 (65W) and still be under 170W. You could even add that to the 7950X with the caveat that it has the base clock of the 7945HX when the iGPU is under load. But the Ryzen 7000 series iGPU doesn't have 24 CU, or 12, it has 2. Intel's have been even slower. The question is, why bother? 2 CU is plenty to run a monitor if you're not doing anything that benefits from a fast GPU. If you are, 12 CU is still on the low side. But AI could change things, because then even people who don't play games will have a use for that kind of hardware. Professionals will still pay thousands of dollars for a big hot discrete GPU but there is now a case for having ten times as many CU in every business PC. It's also starting to make more sense to put the CPU and GPU together because of unified memory. The full version of LLaMA requires ~122GB of RAM. That's petty cash in PC memory but a capital expenditure for GPUs. If AMD wanted to make a big splash, they'd drop a new Threadripper with a high TDP socket, a ton of memory channels, support for RDIMMs and a fast iGPU. This is the thing that may finally unseat Nvidia on AI, because if every CPU from Intel or AMD starts to include an iGPU that can do AI as fast as a $300+ Nvidia discrete GPU, people are going to make the code run on them.
- dragontamer 4y ago
  DDR5 is something like 10x slower (or 10% of the bandwidth) of GDDR6 or HBM that's used on GPUs. There's no point going much wider on iGPUs, because they're all throttled by DDR4/DDR5 anyway. The exception: PS5 and XBox both have GDDR (graphics RAM) which is 10x more bandwidth than your typical DDR4/DDR5. Since they are no longer memory-bandwidth constrained, they can go much bigger and remain practical.
  - AnthonyMouse 4y ago
    > DDR5 is something like 10x slower (or 10% of the bandwidth) of GDDR6 or HBM that's used on GPUs. DDR5 is something like 50% of the bandwidth of GDDR6. DDR5 up to 8 GT/s, GDDR6 in the range of 14-21 GT/s. For example, the Radeon RX 6400 has GDDR6 at 16 GT/s. But it also has a 64-bit memory bus, compared to 128-bit for Socket AM5. So they have the same memory bandwidth, given the fastest available DDR5. Higher end GPUs have a wider memory bus than that, but those don't fit in the CPU socket's TDP anyway. It wouldn't prevent the iGPU from having 12+ CU instead of 2. Moreover, higher end CPUs have a wider memory bus than that too. Socket SP5 has 12 memory channels. And a max TDP of 360W. That's as much memory bandwidth as many midrange discrete GPUs, especially anything that would fit in its TDP with a reasonable power budget left to the CPU.
ilyt 4y ago
> With AMD finally taking a page from Intel with regards to providing an iGPU to everyone Eh, it's wasted silicon for most that will be buying those CPUs. I'd rather see separate chipset that integrates GPU for those that need it and drop few bucks off the CPU price.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  I've had my bacon saved more than enough times by integrated graphics that I consider it downright heresy to call them a waste.

sampa 4y ago

look at the size of 4090 and think again

noizejoy 4y ago
The soundcard analogy may not be that faulty. General purpose soundcards have pretty much been replaced by motherboard components, while high end soundcards (audio interfaces) for DAW (digital audio workstation) use cases are an entirely separate market. Side note: Most of those high end audio interfaces are now external devices connected via USB (formerly also via Firewire). And since a DAW typically doesn’t need high end video, I didn’t bother with a separate GPU on my latest DAW build. I will only add a GPU card, if I ever want to do higher end gaming, video production or machine learning on that computer.
p1necone 4y ago
Dedicated GPUs are a chip about the same size as a CPU + a big board with power delivery, memory modules, cooling etc. CPUs would be the same size if they had all that stuff on their own discrete board too. Pairing a 4090 + a CPU on the same chip/side by side would be a stretch, but it has nothing to do with physical size - more the motherboard needing to handle power delivery, and the separate memory not being fast enough. Something like a 3060 is probably more reasonable. This already exists too - the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S both use APUs with much more powerful GPUs than are available as standalone purchases.
- ilyt 4y ago
  > Dedicated GPUs are a chip about the same size as a CPU + a big board with power delivery, memory modules, cooling etc. 4090 have die area of ~600mm2 Ryzen 7 have 71mm2 CPU die and 122mm2 IO die It's not even fucking comparable > CPUs would be the same size if they had all that stuff on their own discrete board too Oh, oh, I know, we can call the board that has all the power and IO CPU needs a "motherboard" cos it cradles the CPU in its hold (socket). Oh, wait, that's exactly how it is.
  - AnthonyMouse 4y ago
    That's because you're comparing one of the biggest GPUs to a midrange CPU. Epyc 9654 has 12xCCD, which is bigger than the 4090. Radeon RX 6400 has a 107mm2 die, which is smaller than the Ryzen IO die.
    - ilyt 4y ago
      That's server CPU. 7950X3D isn't that much bigger,only one extra CCD > Epyc 9654 has 12xCCD That's $7k CPU you're comparing to $1600 GPU
      - AnthonyMouse 4y ago
        I named a big one. It's expensive. The 9354P is $2,730 and still has 8 CCD. That's >60% more than the 4090, but it's also >60% bigger, because Epyc has a ~400mm2 I/O die on top of the CCDs.
    - p1necone 4y ago
      Ryzen 7 is the high end of the gaming market in AMDs offerings. Buying an EPYC would give you worse performance for more cost and higher power budget (games still generally benefit more from a modest core count + high single core speed rather than the high core count + modest single core speed found in most high end server/workstation chips).
      - 4y ago

AnthonyMouse 4y ago

Fairly common for even pedestrian discrete GPUs to use over 200W. The ludicrous ones can break 1000W. In a given generation, GPU performance is not far from linear in power consumption. The problem is the existing iGPUs are unnecessarily anemic. Okay, the Radeon RX 6950 XT has 80 CU at 335W. You can't fit that in Socket AM5. But the Radeon RX 6400 has 12 CU at 53W. You could add that to a Ryzen 7 7700X (105W) and still have a lower TDP than a Ryzen 9 7900X (170W). You could double that and add it to a Ryzen 7 7700 (65W) and still be under 170W. You could even add that to the 7950X with the caveat that it has the base clock of the 7945HX when the iGPU is under load. But the Ryzen 7000 series iGPU doesn't have 24 CU, or 12, it has 2. Intel's have been even slower. The question is, why bother? 2 CU is plenty to run a monitor if you're not doing anything that benefits from a fast GPU. If you are, 12 CU is still on the low side. But AI could change things, because then even people who don't play games will have a use for that kind of hardware. Professionals will still pay thousands of dollars for a big hot discrete GPU but there is now a case for having ten times as many CU in every business PC. It's also starting to make more sense to put the CPU and GPU together because of unified memory. The full version of LLaMA requires ~122GB of RAM. That's petty cash in PC memory but a capital expenditure for GPUs. If AMD wanted to make a big splash, they'd drop a new Threadripper with a high TDP socket, a ton of memory channels, support for RDIMMs and a fast iGPU. This is the thing that may finally unseat Nvidia on AI, because if every CPU from Intel or AMD starts to include an iGPU that can do AI as fast as a $300+ Nvidia discrete GPU, people are going to make the code run on them.

dragontamer 4y ago
DDR5 is something like 10x slower (or 10% of the bandwidth) of GDDR6 or HBM that's used on GPUs. There's no point going much wider on iGPUs, because they're all throttled by DDR4/DDR5 anyway. The exception: PS5 and XBox both have GDDR (graphics RAM) which is 10x more bandwidth than your typical DDR4/DDR5. Since they are no longer memory-bandwidth constrained, they can go much bigger and remain practical.
- AnthonyMouse 4y ago
  > DDR5 is something like 10x slower (or 10% of the bandwidth) of GDDR6 or HBM that's used on GPUs. DDR5 is something like 50% of the bandwidth of GDDR6. DDR5 up to 8 GT/s, GDDR6 in the range of 14-21 GT/s. For example, the Radeon RX 6400 has GDDR6 at 16 GT/s. But it also has a 64-bit memory bus, compared to 128-bit for Socket AM5. So they have the same memory bandwidth, given the fastest available DDR5. Higher end GPUs have a wider memory bus than that, but those don't fit in the CPU socket's TDP anyway. It wouldn't prevent the iGPU from having 12+ CU instead of 2. Moreover, higher end CPUs have a wider memory bus than that too. Socket SP5 has 12 memory channels. And a max TDP of 360W. That's as much memory bandwidth as many midrange discrete GPUs, especially anything that would fit in its TDP with a reasonable power budget left to the CPU.

ilyt 4y ago

> With AMD finally taking a page from Intel with regards to providing an iGPU to everyone Eh, it's wasted silicon for most that will be buying those CPUs. I'd rather see separate chipset that integrates GPU for those that need it and drop few bucks off the CPU price.

Dalewyn 4y ago
I've had my bacon saved more than enough times by integrated graphics that I consider it downright heresy to call them a waste.