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How big is the market? Anyone even little serious about gaming will get a dedicated GPU and they can't beat it no matter how much space they use. It will have w

How big is the market? Anyone even little serious about gaming will get a dedicated GPU and they can't beat it no matter how much space they use. It will have weaker cpu that will hurt in many tasks. x86 isn't big in mobile form factor.

3abiton 3y ago
If you look right now at the homeserver market, it's getting larger and larger. With APUs, it could be a great bargain for a self-hosted PC console with decent steam deck like performance. Linux is getting spoiled with steam compatibility. I have one of those iGPUs, with around 15W idle, and their performance is surprisingly good for an old APU, on low settings for AAA games. You can check YouTube for some comparison.
- c0pium 3y ago
  > …homeserver market, it's getting larger and larger. Is that true? How are you measuring it?
  - 3abiton 3y ago
    Proxy kpis, like how many tech YouTubers are pivoting to the "check my home server you guys", and the popularity of home server desktop hardware (on the shopping sites I follow)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- diffeomorphism 3y ago
  There are somewhat opposing goals between home servers (e.g. movies, many drives, low power consumption, stowed away) and gaming console-like pcs. A mini pc can be a good compromise but not the best at either.
- blackoil 3y ago
  Home Servers need not be very small. If gaming is primary objective, you can add a 3060/70 or similar, or old gaming laptop, otherwise like you said current iGPU also serve purpose. OPs idea is to sacrifice CPU cores for iGPU, i.e. a home server with weak CPU but powerful iGPU, that is a small niche.
danbolt 3y ago
I usually buy game consoles instead of fussing around with components, but I’d be incredibly tempted with something as convenient as that.
- c0pium 3y ago
  Do you own a Steamdeck?
- jorvi 3y ago
  You can put together an ITX / SFF system with: - AM4 motherboard - 5800X3D - Aftermarket low profile CPU cooler - 3600MHz 16GB RAM - RTX 4060 Low Profile - 2TB NVMe SSD And it’d be smaller and much more powerful than a PS5. If you get the parts secondhand, it wouldn’t be that much more expensive either, especially once you factor in PS+ and how cheap Steam games are. The only hairs in the soup are SteamOS and Nvidia drivers. SteamOS doesn’t yet have a standalone install. You can work around that by installing ChimeraOS and having it launch Steam Big Picture on passwordless boot. Nvidia currently has relatively poor open source drivers, but nvVLK is rapidly improving, with probably good performance in a year or so. Your other option is hoping AMD or a board partner release a low profile card, but I don’t see that happening. Or the dark GPU horse that is Intel. You could also go for a larger case, which would allow you to fit a bigger GPU. Something like an AMD 6800 XT would deliver a 120FPS experience at 1440P and high/ultra settings, and do so quietly with an undervolt.
  - gpderetta 3y ago
    You can of course use NVidia closed source drivers.
  - dannyw 3y ago
    You can also, just use Windows.
nfriedly 3y ago
FWIW, I have a desktop with an RTX 2070 and a handheld (GPD Win Mini) with a 7840U, which is essentially the same chip as the Z1 Extreme. I do nearly all of my gaming on the handheld these days. The desktop is way more powerful, but the handheld is powerful enough, and way more convenient.
- ngcc_hk 3y ago
  Have gdp4 and older winmax2-2022 and both run fine with fs2020. Hence unless I need to do Ai which need nvidia, it is all good for low resolution games.
The_Colonel 3y ago
I think the handhelds prove there's a market for mobile gaming. Thin and light 13" laptops would be a step up from those handhelds. I would be interested also because AMD has better support in Linux and their mobile GPUs are hard to find in laptops.
- izacus 3y ago
  There is a market for mobile gaming, but machines like Razer Blade 14 and ASUS G14 are successfully cornering that market with powerful discrete GPUs. There's no big reason to manufacture iGPUs when a separate chip is much more performant and easier to cool. There's not that much demand for a mediocre-to-poor GPU that's more powerful than iGPUs of current era.
  - The_Colonel 3y ago
    Most gamers game on mediocre to poor GPUs, which are still more powerful than the current iGPUs. My assumption is that such APU would be cheaper than the equivalent CPU + discrete GPU and there's a large demand for budget gaming (e.g. students). Ultimately we will see if/when the Strix Halo gets released, how priced it will be and how successful. I would likely buy a laptop with it.
JonChesterfield 3y ago
It's not clear to me that discrete GPU's are inherently faster. Historically yes. You got 16gb or whatever on the card near the compute core. So what if you put 16gb of the same memory on the package with the APU instead? Shout out to PCIe for unhelpful latency characteristics and barely adequate atomics support as my primary objection to discrete GPUs. It's also plausible that games will become less demanding of the state of the art in GPU. If a playstation APU can play them beautifully, maybe a higher spec PC one will manage the same despite the OS and libraries overhead. I think dedicated GPUs are probably on their way out.
DinaCoder99 3y ago
> Anyone even little serious about gaming will get a dedicated GPU This is just not true—I do the vast majority of my gaming on my laptop and only switch to the dedicated GPU for super graphics-intensive games like city skylines. As usual, this attitude conflates "FPS-obsessed entitled divas" with "gamers"

3abiton 3y ago

If you look right now at the homeserver market, it's getting larger and larger. With APUs, it could be a great bargain for a self-hosted PC console with decent steam deck like performance. Linux is getting spoiled with steam compatibility. I have one of those iGPUs, with around 15W idle, and their performance is surprisingly good for an old APU, on low settings for AAA games. You can check YouTube for some comparison.

c0pium 3y ago
> …homeserver market, it's getting larger and larger. Is that true? How are you measuring it?
- 3abiton 3y ago
  Proxy kpis, like how many tech YouTubers are pivoting to the "check my home server you guys", and the popularity of home server desktop hardware (on the shopping sites I follow)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
diffeomorphism 3y ago
There are somewhat opposing goals between home servers (e.g. movies, many drives, low power consumption, stowed away) and gaming console-like pcs. A mini pc can be a good compromise but not the best at either.
blackoil 3y ago
Home Servers need not be very small. If gaming is primary objective, you can add a 3060/70 or similar, or old gaming laptop, otherwise like you said current iGPU also serve purpose. OPs idea is to sacrifice CPU cores for iGPU, i.e. a home server with weak CPU but powerful iGPU, that is a small niche.

danbolt 3y ago

I usually buy game consoles instead of fussing around with components, but I’d be incredibly tempted with something as convenient as that.

c0pium 3y ago
Do you own a Steamdeck?
jorvi 3y ago
You can put together an ITX / SFF system with: - AM4 motherboard - 5800X3D - Aftermarket low profile CPU cooler - 3600MHz 16GB RAM - RTX 4060 Low Profile - 2TB NVMe SSD And it’d be smaller and much more powerful than a PS5. If you get the parts secondhand, it wouldn’t be that much more expensive either, especially once you factor in PS+ and how cheap Steam games are. The only hairs in the soup are SteamOS and Nvidia drivers. SteamOS doesn’t yet have a standalone install. You can work around that by installing ChimeraOS and having it launch Steam Big Picture on passwordless boot. Nvidia currently has relatively poor open source drivers, but nvVLK is rapidly improving, with probably good performance in a year or so. Your other option is hoping AMD or a board partner release a low profile card, but I don’t see that happening. Or the dark GPU horse that is Intel. You could also go for a larger case, which would allow you to fit a bigger GPU. Something like an AMD 6800 XT would deliver a 120FPS experience at 1440P and high/ultra settings, and do so quietly with an undervolt.
- gpderetta 3y ago
  You can of course use NVidia closed source drivers.
- dannyw 3y ago
  You can also, just use Windows.

nfriedly 3y ago

FWIW, I have a desktop with an RTX 2070 and a handheld (GPD Win Mini) with a 7840U, which is essentially the same chip as the Z1 Extreme. I do nearly all of my gaming on the handheld these days. The desktop is way more powerful, but the handheld is powerful enough, and way more convenient.

ngcc_hk 3y ago
Have gdp4 and older winmax2-2022 and both run fine with fs2020. Hence unless I need to do Ai which need nvidia, it is all good for low resolution games.

The_Colonel 3y ago

I think the handhelds prove there's a market for mobile gaming. Thin and light 13" laptops would be a step up from those handhelds. I would be interested also because AMD has better support in Linux and their mobile GPUs are hard to find in laptops.

izacus 3y ago
There is a market for mobile gaming, but machines like Razer Blade 14 and ASUS G14 are successfully cornering that market with powerful discrete GPUs. There's no big reason to manufacture iGPUs when a separate chip is much more performant and easier to cool. There's not that much demand for a mediocre-to-poor GPU that's more powerful than iGPUs of current era.
- The_Colonel 3y ago
  Most gamers game on mediocre to poor GPUs, which are still more powerful than the current iGPUs. My assumption is that such APU would be cheaper than the equivalent CPU + discrete GPU and there's a large demand for budget gaming (e.g. students). Ultimately we will see if/when the Strix Halo gets released, how priced it will be and how successful. I would likely buy a laptop with it.

JonChesterfield 3y ago

It's not clear to me that discrete GPU's are inherently faster. Historically yes. You got 16gb or whatever on the card near the compute core. So what if you put 16gb of the same memory on the package with the APU instead? Shout out to PCIe for unhelpful latency characteristics and barely adequate atomics support as my primary objection to discrete GPUs. It's also plausible that games will become less demanding of the state of the art in GPU. If a playstation APU can play them beautifully, maybe a higher spec PC one will manage the same despite the OS and libraries overhead. I think dedicated GPUs are probably on their way out.

DinaCoder99 3y ago

> Anyone even little serious about gaming will get a dedicated GPU This is just not true—I do the vast majority of my gaming on my laptop and only switch to the dedicated GPU for super graphics-intensive games like city skylines. As usual, this attitude conflates "FPS-obsessed entitled divas" with "gamers"