GPUs & CPUs & Enthusiast hardware: Questions, Discussion and fanboy slap-fights - Nvidia & AMD & Intel - Separe but Equal. Intel rides in the back of the bus.

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

The biggest problem with iGPUs is the lack of dedicated VRAM, so they have to cut into your system RAM, and it's obviously a lot slower. Not a problem for most people, but it's a bottleneck for professional or vidya use. But I guess neither is really the target audience for low-end hardware these days anyway.

Desktop APUs like the 8700G arguably provide credible 1080p LOW gaming performance. Strix/Gorgon Point 9000G is probably coming in Q4, providing another +15-20% over the 8700G, whatever it is. They're not exactly budget parts though.

So far, AMD's mainstream 128-bit APUs have not included any Infinity Cache, which would be extremely helpful for coping with low memory bandwidth. That might change with Zen 6 "Medusa Point", maybe not. Even adding a measly 16 MiB could result in a big improvement. Strix Halo has 32 MiB.

 

[The Ugly One]

FSR & XeSS reduce that bandwidth hit even further.

A few games running on a 780M:

Surprised it manages 60 fps in Cyberpunk, even at such low settings.

 

[Bogan]

I think the same thing whenever I hear about people whining about "CPU Socket longevity" and "Upgradability", how often are you really going to upgrade your computer?

I did this. Upgraded from a 12900 to a 14700K and kept the same motherboard.

It'll be until 2028/9 that I upgrade anything again.

 

[The Ugly One]

AMD has once again disabled FSR Fluid Motion Frames in their Adrenaline software. Not only that, but they also disabled FSR as well. They also have broken the Alt+R hotkey that brings up the overlay. I really hate this piece of shit.

EDIT: It is somehow disabled in No Man's Sky but has appeared in other games. I don't even know any more, this mess is so goddamned unpredictable.

 

[Slav Power]

no need to reinstall windows and everything that comes with switching a motherboard.

Nowadays Windows handles motherboard transplants insanely well so it's a woe of the past. I swapped my old mutant install that went from like LTSC 2016 to LTSC 2019 to Pro, that started on Haswell, then got moved to Alder Lake, and then after a gparted mishap that broke the booting process to a Sandy Bridge ThinkPad and it managed to fix itself there, and boot to desktop. Shit on Nadella all you want, but fucking hell, the Jeets really did a solid on this topic with 10.

 

[JoseRaulChupacabra]

If you aren't gaming/win only software, is there even a point to buying a desktop that isn't the mac mini M4 lowest model? I know Apple has its ways of milking you, but the power savings are quite attractive if you don't need LTT compensator specs.

And PC parts have gotten so expensive as of late.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

If you aren't gaming/win only software, is there even a point to buying a desktop that isn't the mac mini M4 lowest model? I know Apple has its ways of milking you, but the power savings are quite attractive if you don't need LTT compensator specs.

And PC parts have gotten so expensive as of late.

If your computing needs are modest, you can get Alder Lake-N mini PCs for around $120-150. Non-Chinesium brands (Chinesium = Kamrui, AceMagician, etc.) cost a little more.

There are also many used computers with similar performance (quad-core Skylake or better) on the market, probably more coming as Windows 10 support ends. Similar price bracket, potentially much less.

In either case, efficiency is worse than the Apple M4, but not terrible if you use Alder Lake-N or Intel "T" (35W) models and stick to integrated graphics.

There are often CPU/mobo/RAM bundles from Newegg or Micro Center that could push the cost of a completely new system down. It's only the GPU pricing that is truly horrific.

 

[JoseRaulChupacabra]

If your computing needs are modest, you can get Alder Lake-N mini PCs for around $120-150. Non-Chinesium brands (Chinesium = Kamrui, AceMagician, etc.) cost a little more.

There are also many used computers with similar performance (quad-core Skylake or better) on the market, probably more coming as Windows 10 support ends. Similar price bracket, potentially much less.

In either case, efficiency is worse than the Apple M4, but not terrible if you use Alder Lake-N or Intel "T" (35W) models and stick to integrated graphics.

There are often CPU/mobo/RAM bundles from Newegg or Micro Center that could push the cost of a completely new system down. It's only the GPU pricing that is truly horrific.

Fuck me, I've been so used to assembling PCs that I didn't even know those were a thing.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

Fuck me, I've been so used to assembling PCs that I didn't even those were a thing.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that we are seeing a steady rise of "mobile on desktop" (MODT) where you have a cheaper motherboard with a soldered/BGA mobile chip on it (some of which are equivalent to desktop chips anyway, just running at a lower TDP).

I think we've seen 16-core mobile chips soldered to a motherboard + cooler or no cooler for around $300-400.

 

[JoseRaulChupacabra]

Oh, and I forgot to mention that we are seeing a steady rise of "mobile on desktop" (MODT) where you have a cheaper motherboard with a soldered/BGA mobile chip on it (some of which are equivalent to desktop chips anyway, just running at a lower TDP).

I think we've seen 16-core mobile chips soldered to a motherboard + cooler or no cooler for around $300-400.

Damn, I've been out of the hobby for too long. I haven't upgraded in a while as I haven't been playing the latest titles. Hell, I hardly play games nowadays. My Steam backlog just gets longer and longer each year.

 

[The Ugly One]

Oh, and I forgot to mention that we are seeing a steady rise of "mobile on desktop" (MODT) where you have a cheaper motherboard with a soldered/BGA mobile chip on it (some of which are equivalent to desktop chips anyway, just running at a lower TDP).

I think we've seen 16-core mobile chips soldered to a motherboard + cooler or no cooler for around $300-400.

You can typically get a better GPU on a mobile chip. Arrow Lake H (mobile) has up to 8 Xe cores, while the desktop-oriented S series has 2 to 4. Same holds with Ryzen mobile vs desktop IIRC.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

You can typically get a better GPU on a mobile chip. Arrow Lake H (mobile) has up to 8 Xe cores, while the desktop-oriented S series has 2 to 4. Same holds with Ryzen mobile vs desktop IIRC.

I'd have to look around and see what's available, but for instance, a Minisforum MODT board with the 7945HX is packing the worst Radeon 610M 2 CUs RDNA2. That chip is simply the 7950X desktop chip in a BGA package with a lower TDP.

You would get that if you wanted to add a GPU yourself or needed the PCIe slot or extra ports. For good mobile graphics, you'd probably end up with a compact 8845HS system (Radeon 780M) or whatever. Minisforum UM890 Pro 8945HS refurbs have been available for under $500, I've read some complaints about their refurbs though.

I think Arrow Lake-H/HX mobile has taken a while to hit market despite being announced in January, but Minisforum and others probably have some decent Alder/Raptor Lake options on sale like this one.

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https://preservetube.com/watch?v=w6JBCsOtFs4

Simple and to the point:
* Zen 6 desktop was originally going to use two 16-core chiplets, with 8 performance/standard and 8 efficiency cores each, that got changed to the 12 standard cores we know now.
* Zen 7 "3D core" chiplets for an Epyc variant don't include any L3 cache with the cores at all (it's all on separate chiplets).
* Zen 7 desktop is planned to use two 16-core chiplets, all standard cores, with L3 cache as usual (32 MiB on Zen 3/4/5, rising to 48 MiB on Zen 6 CCD).
* This will mark the start of a new era... The Great 32-core Stagnation... unless AMD wants to play core count wars with Intel.
* Zen 7 is probably on a new AM6 socket, making 24-core Zen 6 the end of the line for AM5.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

• AMD teases EPYC Verano “Zen7” and Instinct MI500 GPUs coming 2027
• AMD launches Instinct MI350 series, confirms MI400 in 2026 with 432GB HBM4 memory
• ROCm 7.0 Goes Into Preview With MI350X/MI355X Support, Big Performance Improvements
• AMD Previews Instinct MI400 Series & Helios AI Rack
• AMD Adds FSR 4 Support For Four New Games, Fixes Various Issues For Radeon GPUs In Adrenalin 25.6.2 Drivers
• AMD’s CEO Lisa Su Believes AI Data Center Accelerator Market Will Scale Up to $500 Billion By 2028, Driven By Demand For Inferencing
• Intel Arc Battlemage GPU with PCIe 5.0×16 interface spotted at PCI-SIG
• Engineer creates first custom motherboard for 1990s PlayStation console
• China claims to have developed the world's first AI-designed processor — LLM turned performance requests into CPU architecture

 

[Max Weber]

Zen 7 "3D core" chiplets

Hell yeah, a new room heater!

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

Hell yeah, a new room heater!

It probably has to happen eventually because SRAM scaling sucks. But it looks like it's going straight to enterprise that can deal with CPUs using 500 Watts, not consoomers yet.

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POVERTY ALERT
AMD launches 6-core Ryzen 5 5500X3D, budget 3D V-Cache CPU for Latin America
Same 105W TDP, but clocks drop to 3.0/4.0 GHz (5600X3D is 3.3/4.4 GHz).

AMD SP7 & SP8 Platforms For Next-Gen EPYC “Venice” & “Verano” CPUs Detailed: Up To 12800 MT/s 16-Channel Memory & 128 PCIe 6.0 Lanes

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 GPU To Feature 20 Gbps GDDR6 Memory, 8 GB VRAM & 5-Phase VRM

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

Another poverty alert:

Wccftech: Intel’s Bartlett Lake Core 5 120F Specifications Leaked: 6 Performance Cores With Max Turbo Clock Of 4.5 GHz (archive)

Bartlett Lake is back, and a 6-core budget model is apparently coming specifically to poor gamers:



It's an i5-12400F with +100 MHz turbo. If this is based on a 12-core die that is intended for the embedded market, then there could be other SKUs with 8-12 cores (or not, if those all go to embedded?). Maybe the die has no integrated graphics at all, so any parts will be F'd.

 

[Fcret]

Another poverty alert:

Wccftech: Intel’s Bartlett Lake Core 5 120F Specifications Leaked: 6 Performance Cores With Max Turbo Clock Of 4.5 GHz (archive)

Bartlett Lake is back, and a 6-core budget model is apparently coming specifically to poor gamers:

View attachment 7499764

It's an i5-12400F with +100 MHz turbo. If this is based on a 12-core die that is intended for the embedded market, then there could be other SKUs with 8-12 cores (or not, if those all go to embedded?). Maybe the die has no integrated graphics at all, so any parts will be F'd.

This promo material is hilarious. The headset in it is probably more expensive than the CPU will be.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

This promo material is hilarious. The headset in it is probably more expensive than the CPU will be.

You can get the i5-12400F new on Newegg/ebay for about $110, so it's barely going to turn any heads unless the MSRP is $99 or less.

The true novelty of Bartlett Lake is that the 12-core die is all P-cores, so you could have 8/10/12 Golden Cove P-cores and no E-cores.

 

[WULULULULU]

tl;dr AMD value is super shit and the 9070XT turns out to be a massive failure. Nvidia wins again.

 

[Stratos Sphere]

tl;dr AMD value is super shit and the 9070XT turns out to be a massive failure. Nvidia wins again.

all they had top do was force the aibs to keep it at/around 600. but they are allergic to getting market share.