Any Intel CPU without their iGPU?

[BonzaiDuck]

I remember a conversation I had with a (former) friend, who was a newbie-enthusiast. [The friendship ended when he insisted on telling me around 2013 that Trayvon deserved being shot by Zimmy-man. ]

But before that, I was planning on building a 2600K system, and his argument was "what good is that, when you aren't going to use the iGPU?" I'm wondering if he actually built a Haswell-E system, which would be way beyond his computing needs.

I was finally able to wrap my brain around the idea of getting a CPU with built-in iGPU . . . that I wouldn't likely use.

On the other hand, if you're building a new system and don't need an "E" processor, it sure makes testing easier so you can wait and find the dGPU(s) you want at a decent price. And the Quik-sync feature actually does work, if you want to use it.

So today, I'm thinking it was a really great idea to build these iGPU-enabled processors.

 

[wpcoe]

Meh, iGPU works well for everybody who doesn't game. The only reason you need discrete graphics is for gaming. Everybody else is just fine with iGPU.

That's what I thought, with my i3-3225's iGPU being adequate for all my computing needs UNTIL I decided to upgrade to a 4k monitor. Got tired of having nice high-res screens on my notebook and tablet, then returning to the low-res 23" 1920 x 1080 desktop monitor. Try finding a micro-ATX motherboard with DisplayPort (or HDMI 2) for 60HZ 4K output. Rare as hen's teeth and/or expensive as sin. I was using the monitor-upgrade to "justify" upgrading to Skylake, but I decided to just stick with my i3-3225 but add a low-end dGPU to feed my new 4K screen.

The iGPU's are becoming more capable, but the mobo's haven't kept pace, so gradually more non-gaming folks will find dGPU's necessary if they want high-res displays.

Off-topic, but another area lagging in high-res screens is software support. I mean, really Adobe? Photoshop doesn't handle high-res displays well? Luckily, Win10 itself does quite well and a couple modern browsers do, as well.

(A Dell P2415Q and Gigabyte R7 360 should be here in a few days.)

 

[nerp]

Except that even 2D games - hell, even UI effects in your OS - need more GPU horsepower than that, and those requirements are always going up.

Are you still thinking it's 2005 and we're stuck with Intel GMA IGPs? A modern day skylake IGP will run circles around discrete cards from even a few years ago. You're not getting hampered with a newer IGP in Windows, at all, ever.