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Comment by tmd83 | Hacker News Reader

I'm really looking forward to this. But one issue with current AMD cpu is that you have to buy a desktop GPU even when you are not doing any kind of gaming and such. I know intel iGPU haven't been terribly good but for work they are good enough and is one less part and cheaper to boot. For same performance a Ryzen 3rd gen + gpu might still be cheaper but the price advantage gets reduced.

I haven't really seen that mentioned much I wonder why is that. I do love the potential for Zen2 + 7nm. The 65w of 3700x and the high frequency of the 3900X both suggest interesting potential for the future. One could end up seeing that the Ryzen 5, six cores might have higher overclocking headroom.

Then there's of course Navi, the first new GPU core in a long long time.

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>But one issue with current AMD cpu is that you have to buy a desktop GPU even when you are not doing any kind of gaming and such.

AMD just aren't selling many CPUs to business desktop system integrators, partly due to dubious tactics by Intel to keep them out of the market. If you sell most of your CPUs to enthusiasts, it just doesn't make sense to squander die area on a crappy iGPU. Gamers obviously want a fast GPU, but so do most creative professionals - Photoshop is heavily GPU accelerated, as is Premiere and Resolve, not to mention essentially all 3D modelling and CAD packages. Scientific computing is also rapidly moving towards the GPU. GPU performance has a surprisingly large impact on day-to-day responsiveness, because all the major browsers use GPU compositing.

The market for fast chips with crappy iGPUs just isn't as big as it used to be, nor is it particularly accessible to AMD. The Athlon and Ryzen APUs make a great deal of sense for the current market, offering a good balance of performance between CPU and GPU. I expect to see 6 and 8 core Ryzen chips with Vega GPU cores as part of the Ryzen 3000 generation, which will further close the gap.

> AMD just aren't selling many CPUs to business desktop system integrators, partly due to dubious tactics by Intel to keep them out of the market. If you sell most of your CPUs to enthusiasts, it just doesn't make sense to squander die area on a crappy iGPU.

I'm a developer, and I want fast build times. I don't need a dedicated GPU for that.

Right now I'm squandering money and power on a dedicated GPU which is probably idling at 0.0000001% rendering a composited 2D desktop in its sleep.

If you really need a mountain of CPU power, then your stance toward the GPU should be that you're glad the several Watts it requires aren't being emitted under the same heatsink as the CPU you're relying on, and that it isn't wasting memory bandwidth you could put to better use.

You can buy a used GPU for well under $100. Now you can drive multiple 4k screens for that HiDPI terminal goodness and stop choking your CPU's memory bandwidth :)

Still a better deal than Intel and a superior desktop experience.

My terminal window has a background blur effect and I like my desktop switching animations to maintain 144fps.

Implying devs don't use dedicated graphics cards...

What desktop environment do you use that has buttery smooth 144fps animations? Gnome certainly isn't smooth.

And who can read a terminal at 144fps anyway? I seriously couldn't care less about eye-candy, animations and fps.

Then again, I'm an i3/sway-user, so I guess I don't exactly represent the average (Linux) user.

No need for animations or anything like that, 144hz also means less input lag and tearing.

I feel the same way and wish all CPUs had at least some rudimentary video output capability. I've always appreciated Intel for that. They've taken a mobile-first / mobile->desktop strategy, and AMD adopted a server-first / server->desktop strategy. Intel's desktop CPUs are a bit of an afterthought, and AMD's mobile (APU) is a bit of an afterthought.

For AMD, what they've done makes the most sense, as fighting Intel in the mobile space is the toughest market to break into. You can get a cheap Geforce 1050 for $130 or so, and with the perk of having great OpenGL/DX drivers to keep anything that you do end up using it for, nice and snappy. I'm in your same boat and use a 2700X and a 1060.

AMD should really have their motherboard vendors add some sort of basic functionality, like the old IGPs.

You could always get a reburb $15 Radeon from a few years ago if you really don't care about 3d performance.

I also considered going with a USB-DisplayPort adapter, but it was more expensive and I wasn't sure how well it would work.

As far as I'm aware, a USB-Displayport adapter will make use of the system's CPU more than a cheap discrete add in card would, factor in the custom drivers that one would have to install (both on Linux and OS X) and for me that would be a non-starter as my sole video output

Same here. I recently did a Ryzen 7 build with a Thin-ITX board.

https://penguindreams.org/blog/louqe-ghost-s1-build-and-revi...

I have a separate gaming machine, and would have rather just used the integrated for my Linux machine. It doesn't look like AMD is refreshing their APU lineup at all in this release. Did I miss it, or are there no APUs in the list?

The APU/mobile chips typically come later. Raven Ridge chips were released after their desktop counterparts, and the Zen+ (12nm) 3000U series mobile chips were announced only a few months ago.

AMD also wants to get more into servers, supercomputing, AI, and cloud. That's mostly Epyc but Ryzen is fast enough to play there and integrated GPUs dont matter there either.

That is probably true, but if I am buying a GPU for hundreds of dollars I don't care as much about the cost of the CPU. I think AMD needs to do something if they want to fulfill the potential of Ryzen. (Removing or minimizing the role of the chipset might be interesting for example).

Not necessarily. For instance if your target is 1080p gaming you can do that on a budget with an RX 570 or RX 580 + a reasonably priced Ryzen 7 chip. This market isn't at all competitive for Intel because it's price conscious and iGPUs aren't anywhere near up to to task.

The only market that doesn't care about CPU price is the market that doesn't care about price at all. i.e people building systems with i9-9900K or X299 platform + RTX 2080 TIs.

I am just not sure it is a super strong market. As far as I can tell those cards have been selling for roughly the same price or more as when they were introduced 2 years ago. A lot of people would just stick with what they got, or get a laptop instead. If the price of GPUs and memory was half of what it is it would make a lot more sense.

Maybe offer a very cheap add on gpu for office use. Something in the igpu range that would sell for say 50usd. It could be based on one of AMDs older gpus but with support for new display types and ports.

Right now, the cheapest "new" video card sold directly by Newegg is a $35 NVidia 210 which was new in 2010. Interestingly, reviews from that time period suggest that it sold for $30 after rebate. It has HDMI, DVI and VGA ports.

In the $50 range you can get an R7 350, which promises 4K support (although I suspect that will be at 30Hz) and would certainly be enough to light a monitor with enough oomph to put shadows and transparency effects on your windows.

> In the $50 range you can get an R7 350, which promises 4K support (although I suspect that will be at 30Hz)

It supports 4k@60. It looks like everything with a GCN core does, so most 7xxx, most 2xx, and all 3xx.

I think the older Radeons only support 4k@60 over DisplayPort though, HDMI support for it is relatively new.

Fine Wine :)

If you want a discrete GPU with the same featureset as a modern integrated Intel GPU - with basic desktop features such as 1) being able to decode modern video codecs like HEVC 2) prime Windows and (especially) Linux support or 3) modern video outputs such as HDMI 2.0 - you need to buy a Radeon RX550. This will still set you back more than $80 and add another fan to your build.

A Radeon R7 240 from 6 years ago will still set you back $50, but will not give you modern video outputs or video codecs (although it at least still has relatively prime driver support). It's probably even slower than Intel's current integrated graphics too. Might as well go for the upsell then.

The prevalence of internal GPUs unfortunately seems to have killed the market for up-to-date very low end discrete GPUs. The "budget stuff" starts at $80, which is quite steep for something that barely has added value over an integrated GPU.

Even the newest AMD Gpus don't have full VP9 (Youtube) acceleration.

Technically AMD's APUs (the Ryzen 2400G and other CPUs with integrated GPU of the Vega generation) do support it, but for some reason AMD has never enabled this in their discrete cards. Neither have they released a low end Vega discrete card either. They have the tech, but don't seem to be interested much in the low end.

> But one issue with current AMD cpu is that you have to buy a desktop GPU even when you are not doing any kind of gaming and such.

What? No you don't. They literally have an entire line dedicated to the exact use case you mentioned (CPU w/ iGPU for business use):

https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-5-pro-2400g

You could pick a Ryzen with "G", like the Ryzen 5 2400G, though... They have an integrated GPU.

Unfortunately there were no desktop G parts (APUs) on the Zen+ architecture (as far as I know.) And they're not in the first round of Zen 2 either.

The 2400G, which I think is currently the top desktop APU, launched in Feb. 2018 and has four cores.

The Zen+ APUs should be out soonish. Can find plenty of information about the Ryzen 3 3200G and 3400G, but no release date :P

Nothing stops integrators from using the 3xxxU parts and the old 2xxxG parts.

Regardless, I do expect G parts will be announced soon, too. 3 CPUs definitely isn't a full lineup.

2xxx series is zen+, also ops complaint was about current gen ryzen, which the 2200G and 2400G fall in to.

Those APUs are a weird mix between Zen and Zen+, they got improvements over Zen but they are not fully Zen+, and they even have some unique drawbacks (the TIM, they are not soldered).

Complaining about TIM on an entry-level processor seems... questionable.

I was just highlighting that there are differences.

Though that temps are higher because of that, resulting in more work for the cooler, is not ideal for a CPU that's apart from that great for a HTPC.

2000 series is not zen+ when it comes to APUs. 3000 series is zen+ in APUs.

Ah, interesting. Thanks for the clarification.

four cores eight threads

They are limited to 4 cores. In the new lineup too, when G series comes out later, they'll be limited to 8 cores (one cliplet for CPU and one for GPU).

With this CPu chiplet design they couldn't have 2 8 core packages and a GPU on a single die.

For the vast majority of professional use cases 8 core / 16 thread running at 4.5+ boost is going to be way enough for a while. AMD sure has spoiled the market in just two years on commoditizing 8 core desktop chips because in 2016 the conversation would be about what flavor of $400+ quadcore or $800+ sextacore from Intel you were going to get.

Not true. 3000 series APUs are based on zen+.

Read 'later' as 'presumably labeled with a misleading 4xxx'.

I know of the G series and I know why they are usually a GEN behind specially given the quality of discrete graphics AMD has and they need to sale. But for work, for just productivity a lot of the savings washes up with the GPU. It used to be that you get super lowend graphics card for those workload but these days almost the lowest price GPU is ~90.

Just as an FYI for anyone looking for cheap basic display adapters, you can basically get an infinite supply of refurbed/pulled Quadro NVS 295 cards on eBay for $5-10.

$39:

https://www.newegg.com/visiontek-radeon-5450-900860/p/N82E16...

Hardly the latest technology but you can plug a monitor into it.

No DisplayPort and it almost certainly doesn’t support 4k at 60Hz, both of which the Intel chipset supports and both of which I’d consider essential for high-end productivity use these days.

I still don't get how people are making use of 4k outside MacOS. Windows and Linux Desktop environments require tons of massaging to get scaling right, even with flagship software (some Adobe programs don't scale properly).

Here we are, 8 years after Apple started shipping "Retina" displays, and PC software hasn't caught up. It's embarrassing.

I use Ubuntu on a 13" 4k laptop with 2x scaling and I've never had any issues.

ah the OG king of HTPC/Media PC Graphics card. I used to have one in a HTPC paired with an Intel Q6600

Wow, that was a powerful (hot) CPU for an HTPC!

You can get a cheap passive gpu, most don't even need power from the PSU. Something like a nvidia GT 710 or 730.

Is there anything similar but from AMD? As a Linux user I'd rather not buy nVidia.

I've been defining specs for a new NAS/home server and was just waiting for this release to finish it. I have that issue and my conclusion has been that you either get an old Nvidia for ~30-40$ (e.g., GT710) or all the AMD options I've seen are ~100$. That generation of card seems to be well supported[1] by the nouveau open-source drivers at least but I'd much prefer AMD as well. For NAS and server applications it would be nice if someone did a motherboard like the Asus X370Pro with an old GPU soldered on. That way you could have simple boot graphics without this hassle and only add a good GPU if you actually needed it for something. But I guess that's too much of a niche to bother with just like low-end graphics cards.

Edit: Found a few AMD R5 230 for the same 30-40$ range. Assuming the drivers are also good that seems like a good option. Edit2: Researching some more the R7 240 has a similar price and is probably the first that is already supported by the new amdgpu drivers so may be a better bet.

[1] NVE0 here: https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FeatureMatrix/ Seems like everything but power-management is fully supported. Need to do some more digging but if the incomplete power-management means it just doesn't throttle up as much that's fine for the application.

Something like the R5 230 or RX 460, several generations old, but will do.

Unfortunately the market with low power AMD cards is non-existent. Maybe some older HD model if you can find it second-hand, but those can't do 4K@60Hz. There is no low powered (=passive cooling) card based on the recent AMD chips. I wanted GPU with only passive cooling for my Xeon machine, had to buy lowend NVIDIA. Hopefully Navi at the end of the year will finally change this.

What are you talking about? you can get RX550s that are passive or even one of the rare RX560s which are passively cooled

I can't find a single passively cooled RX550, albeit some are passive up to a certain temperature, which is likely acceptable for the usecase assuming it works as advertised.

worst case scenario you can always buy an aftermarket passive cooler and swap the cooler yourself

Passively cooled R5 230s are old but readily available. The newest passively cooled AMD card I'm aware of is the XFX RX460 but it's hard to find.

The RX550 is low power enough to not need a PSU connector but for some reason nobody has made a passively cooled version.

Mobo manufacturers could solder some weak GPU on board, but nobody seems to be interested so I guess they did their homework and decided it didn't make any economical sense.

Yep. Intel iGPUs have good open source Linux drivers too. I had hoped that AMD would have some basic graphics in the IO die, but it looks like that won't happen.

The G-line of CPUs with integrated graphics is also interesting to me as well! As system ram gets quicker (it's my understanding that the frame buffer for these integrated GPUs comes from system ram) and nanometer tech gets better that a competent integrated GPU+CPU chip will be able to play AAA games at 1080P with some of the visuals turned up. Though the conspiracy theorist in me thinks that the console makers would never let that happen as it would mean DIY PC gamers would be able to build < 500 USD machines that could be play all the latest games.

Since console manufacturers seem to have been favouring AMD for graphics lately, this could actually be the reason for a lack of AMD iGPUs

There's always the 2200G and the 2400G, I'd expect those to get refreshed within the next year too.

2200G and 2400G from current gen ryzen have integrated graphics though.

They use the same chip for desktop and for server market where it doesn't make much sense to add a crappy iGPU. Intel with their scale could build much more different chips.

When I put together my computer a year or two ago, I just added some cheap $40 radeon board. It really didn't impact the bottom line much.

It's my understanding that Navi is just GCN but tweaked with faster memory.

TFA seems to state that it's a new architecture, although how different it is from GCN depends on how much salt you take with marketing material. They did say it has redesigned compute units; that seems to point in the direction of "not just tweaks".

It's not, it's "RDNA".

Thanks for clarifying. I read the article. I’m excited to see benchmarks.

The 2400G existed. It's a lower end chip, but has the GPU you want.

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