mpx (mpx@hoga.pl) on 9/29/10 wrote:
>
>But even todays model of APU gives huge advantages: [..]

mpx, your arguments make no sense at all.

First you complain about people having to "pay" for the
integrated graphics, even though for most people that
integration will in fact lower costs (and likely do so
whether they want to use the graphics part or not: the
incremental die cost is likely lower than the
advantage of selling fewer SKU's, so differentiation at
some level makes no economic sense).

Then you talk about how an APU would give huge advantages,
even though clearly it has a much smaller market than
Intel integrated graphics has.

You make no sense. Your arguments aren't meant to convince,
they seem to be just you trying to bolster your idiotic
world view where integration is bad.

The thing is, integration is good for the user. Every
single argument you have made could have been made for
a lot of other integration issues ("IDE controller in the
south bridge? No, I want a discrete SCSI controller, and
I don't want to pay for that integrated hardware"). And
it was wrong back then, and it's wrong now.

Like it or not, integrated graphics is the bulk of
the market, and it's only going to grow. You just need to
face that. And everything seems to indicate that the next-
gen Intel graphics is more than capable enough, and makes
your argument about some $50 low-end graphics card just
look damn stupid.

And no, it's not even true that integration is only for
laptops. Desktops want it too. People who want silent
computers want it, people who want small computers want
it, just about everybody wants it. Look at form
factors like the Mac Mini, look at all the small-form-
factor business computers, just look at the market in
general.

The thing is, the traditional big beige computer box is
going away. Laptops have taken a big chunk of the market,
and even the non-laptop market is quite interested in
"non-traditional" form factors (ie the small boxes, or the
computer being integrated with the display).

The advantages of integration are legion - while at the
same time the advantages of discrete graphics are clearly
shrinking. The percentage of people who need them is just
going down. It's really that simple.

But it really boils down to the case that even if you
aren't going to use the integrated graphics, it is
unlikely that it would be noticeably cheaper to make a
SKU without it, unless you have some other reason for that
SKU.

So there will probably be 8-core server SKU's without the
graphics, because you want a different socket anyway for
more memory channels etc. So non-GPU SKU's will clearly
make sense - but please realize that they will make sense
for totally different reasons than the ones you've
been arguing for.

As to your "APU's make sense" argument - it's very clearly
debatable. The biggest reason to have an APU outside of
graphics seems to be video transcoding etc. And I suspect
you'd be better off having a graphics chip do that with a
largely fixed-function pipeline. Like, say, the Intel
integrated graphics.

I really don't see any reason anybody but an avid
gamer should ever want to have discrete graphics.

Linus