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Comment by BubRoss | Hacker News Reader

There might be almost no reason to buy an Intel CPU, but interestingly, they do have the advantage in very small desktops because they have powerful CPUs with integrated graphics. Cooling without throttling is probably tricky if you get super small, but AMD's APUs are in need of an update.

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AMD APUs are not that bad anymore, I am certainly considering a 3000G for my next cheap build. Obviously it would be nice to have a 15W Zen3 APU though, but one can only dream.

I have one and it works well, but AMD doesn't have good CPUs with their APUs yet.

They aren't Zen 2, more than 4 cores or 7nm, all of which would make a huge difference. Putting the APU on the same chip makes them more difficult to cool, especially since they don't have quite as high quality packaging as the better CPUs. Getting smooth 4k realistically means messing with bios settings to get them to throttle less and run hotter.

That is true, but considering how terrible the AMD APUs were before ryzen, I’m still impressed by the performance leap (current dual-core APUs with HT perform better in multicore workloads than the previous ones with four). I’m still waiting for them to release something that has a low enough thermal envelope to go into a NUC-like while keeping decent performance.

Doesn't have AMD integrated graphics too? Wasn't there a buy-in some years of a graphics company I have forgotten it's name?

So whenI buy an AMD CPU I also have to buy a GPU?

There are "G" suffixed CPUs with a GPU, but limited to only a few parts and are currently one generation behind. The reality is said parts are in low demand as most consumers buying CPUs will also be buying a GPU separately.

Depends on the market. Enthusiasts/gamers/etc. are going to want a discrete GPU. For a random desktop / family (without too much gaming needs) / corporate usages, an APU is not only fine, but it does not even make much sense to use anything else. Now laptops are fashionable too in that area, and I don't know any hard figures, but I would not be surprised if most desktop client x86 CPU shipped on earth actually are of the APU variety and used without discrete graphics. In which case AMD APUs are actually really good: not many people will want an unbalanced system, and they are properly balanced. Beefy CPUs used with their integrated graphics are for specialized tasks (e.g. non-graphic related dev)

But AMD CPUs are so much cheaper and have so much better performance you could buy an old-gen graphics card and it still would still have better price/performance than Intel.

The company you're thinking of was ATI Radeon

This. The 3400G is now what, two years old? I have held off on building a small APU-based system because of that.

Yeah. There have been increasingly plausible rumours that the 4xxxG range is coming soon, but right now AMD seem to be focused on the much larger laptop market (which also benefits a lot more from the really good power efficiency of their current chips).

I bought a 2400G last year, which I've been pretty happy with - but I'm very much looking forward to dropping a 4xxxG into the same socket later this year!

Launch date 7/7/2019, Vega 11 graphics, 4 cores (8 threads).

Zen 2 based APUs are coming out really soon. Up to 8c/16t, 65W.

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