Do you think Intel should offer dual core chips with GT4e iGPU?

[cbn]

A 3.6-3.8 GHz Skylake i3 would be in the performance ballpark in games of a heavily-overclocked FX-83xx/9xxx processor in the range of 4.7-5.0 GHz, with some variance. If you look at the system cost of running an FX @ 4.7 GHz (not to speak of higher clockspeeds), taking into account all the board and cooling issues you have to deal with, getting the equivalent of the same processor AND a 250X in one package for $200 that you can toss onto an H110 board with the default fan at a lower power draw would be a huge win for budget shoppers who are aiming for some good 1080P gaming without breaking the bank. And we haven't even taken into account the potential for overclocking the thing, assuming unlocked bclk is a thing (is it? we should know soon).

r7 250x is a pretty small GPU to be used with the equivalent of a heavily-overclocked FX-83xx/9xxx processor in the range of 4.7-5.0 GHz (or a 3.6-3.8 Ghz Skylake Core i3). This especially when we factor in Vulkan and DX12 being on the Horizon.

 

[cbn]

OEMs would lub it for entry-level "gamer" PCs aimed at newbies that know they wanna play some games on a budget but don't understand tech so well.

I agree OEMs would love a small system with R7 250X level GPU, but the cost and performance needs to be balanced.

Example: Back in March there were two low cost Steam machines with R7 250X as their GPU...but the CPU was only a Athlon x 4 840)

 

[Shivansps]

I did some gaming testing on a overclocked 5150+250x and i can assure you right now it is GPU limited, specially at 1080p... it can handle 900p a lot better, so makes sence to pair it with a X4 840.

Still bigger igps are comming to smaller models, the presence of GT2 on Pentium G4500 is surprising.

 

[cbn]

I did some gaming testing on a overclocked 5150+250x and i can assure you right now it is GPU limited, specially at 1080p.

Just out of curiosity, what game was that?

 

[Shivansps]

Witcher 3 and GTA V.

 

[DrMrLordX]

According to this low end buyers guide a Core i3 pairs with a R9 270 (or the like):

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2389797

. . . and? The 250/250x has been the card-of-choice cited in nearly every discussion on this forum (and elsewhere) related to whether or not it's "worth it" to buy a Kaveri APU. The usual comparison is between something like a 7870k and an x4-860k + 250 (or 250x on sale), the idea being that it's still cheaper and better to get a cheap CPU + dGPU than it is to go for an APU. Inevitably, any discussion involving the 860k also invites the presence of the FX-6300 and something like the FX-8310 or 8320e, along with various i3s.

My point is that a 2C/4T + GT4e Skylake for $200 blows all those configurations that we've discussed on this forum out of the water.

The idea that the 270 is a budget gamer card is a joke. The cheapest 270 I can find is $137:

http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/video-card/#c=154,147&sort=a8&page=1

It might be a good bang for the buck, but it is going to be out of some peoples' budgets.

r7 250x is a pretty small GPU to be used with the equivalent of a heavily-overclocked FX-83xx/9xxx processor in the range of 4.7-5.0 GHz (or a 3.6-3.8 Ghz Skylake Core i3). This especially when we factor in Vulkan and DX12 being on the Horizon.

Again, so what? If that's what's in people's budget, then so be it. Intel has, up 'til now, been notorious for offering their best iGPU offerings with "more CPU than a gamer would need", such as the i7-5775c. GT4e on an i3 would be a step in the right direction with respect to CPU/GPU balance.

If your CPU/GPU budget is ~$200 or so, and you are looking for your CPU first, your choices are basically 860k, 6300, 8310, 8320e, or i3. Then you add a dGPU onto that. Most people still aren't willing to run with a 7870k all on its own (or an upcoming 7890k, but whatever). That doesn't leave much budget room for something more expensive than a 250X unless you go for the 860k. The FX chips require careful board + cooling choice for overclocking, so that tightens up the budget in that department (860k can often OC okay with the stock HSF or somebody's throwaway stock HSF from an 8350 or whatever). i3s all start at over $100 for anything you'd actually want to buy. Sorry, no R7-270s in that budget range. Maybe you could get a deal on a 260X instead?

 

[cbn]

DrMrLordX,

The $200 budget you bring up is purely arbitrary though.

I think a better question to ask is what CPU is balanced to a R7 250X?

My thinking is something much slower than a Core i3 works for that purpose.

In fact, with Intel pushing up the clocks on the Skylake i3s to 3.7 Ghz to 3.9 Ghz, my guess is there will be room for a Skylake Pentium 2C/4T (maybe around 3.2 Ghz). This type of 2/4T would be more than enough to feed a R7 250X. A higher clocked 2C/2T Pentium would also work.

So instead of spending $200, the user gets something that works just as well in a lower price bracket.

 

[DrMrLordX]

DrMrLordX,

The $200 budget you bring up is purely arbitrary though.

It might be, but that's about the baseline that most of the 860k discussions revolve around. People will start looking at CPUs in the range of $70-$130 (with the 860k being the low man on the totem pole) and then ask themselves, "what dGPU should I pair with this"? Inevitably, the discussion shifts to dGPUs at $100 and less.

$70-$130 averages out to $100. $100 + $100 = max CPU/dGPU budget of $200.

I think a better question to ask is what CPU is balanced to a R7 250X?

I think the best thing to do is to pay attention to the buying decisions that people are actually discussing in these (and other) forums. A 250X might "best be balanced" by a $20 x2-220 unlocked to 3-4 cores with some old DDR2/DDR3 that people had lying around, or what have you. Are people gonna buy a rig like that new? For most people, the answer is , "no".

If you snap up an 860k and put it on an Asus A88x-Plus and manage maybe 4.3 GHz with the stock HSF (which is quite possible), you are probably gonna have more horsepower than you "need" for the 250X. But can you possibly defend the idea that anyone is going to buy less CPU than an 860k for a gaming machine? I would say no. Maybe they can get a G3258 for cheaper, though that brings with it all the cons of being a 2c/2t chip, so maybe that shouldn't be the baseline for everyone. As Shivan has already pointed out to us, his OCed 5150 + 250x is imbalanced by the weak CPU, so AM1 is probably out. An x4-840 might be a viable choice if you can find a reliable/reputable place to actually buy one.

Regardless, what a lot of people are gonna do is get the 860k + a board in the $60-$70 range (in which the A88x-Plus is the smart one to get, not that everyone's gonna pick that board). Or they're gonna try an i3-4170 + cheap H81 board at about the same price point (or close to it). Or they'll throw in a little more and get an FX-6300/8310/8320e + 970a-ud3p (again, if they're smart). Then they add cheap 2x4Gb DDR3-xxxx in the $50-or-less range which covers a lot of kits these days. What's in their budget after all that? Probably something in the range of a 250x-260x.

 

[sm625]

Gt4e is more powerful than my amd 7750 so i wouldn't need to buy a discrete gpu as gt4e would be a good upgrade.

Do you have any data to back that up? The only data I have shows a previous gen HD6200 only just barely beating a 384 shader Oland GPU.

 

[cbn]

As Shivan has already pointed out to us, his OCed 5150 + 250x is imbalanced by the weak CPU.

Here is what he wrote in post #78:

I did some gaming testing on a overclocked 5150+250x and i can assure you right now it is GPU limited, specially at 1080p... it can handle 900p a lot better,

Although when I did ask what games he was using that gave those results, he did mention Witcher 3 and GTA V in post #80.

 

[cbn]

. . . and? The 250/250x has been the card-of-choice cited in nearly every discussion on this forum (and elsewhere) related to whether or not it's "worth it" to buy a Kaveri APU. The usual comparison is between something like a 7870k and an x4-860k + 250 (or 250x on sale)

I did use the R7 250X many times in the past as an example to compare value of Athlon x4 860K +dGPU vs. A10-7850K and the like. (re: for over the course of a year the R7 250X would cycle between $59.99 After rebate and $79.99 After rebate so it fit the budget).

However, the Athlon x4 860K CPU can handle more GPU than the R7 250X. In fact, it works great with my GTX 660.

And the Core i3 (by virtue of it being faster than Athlon x 4 860K) should be able to go beyond that.

EDIT: I have read that Nvidia drivers are multi-threaded (in many games) whereas AMD only uses a single threaded driver. So that might be part of the reason I find the Athlon x 4 860K so agreeable with the GTX 660. With that mentioned, Certainly a Core i3 with its stronger single thread should be able to work well with either AMD or Nvidia cards.

 

[cbn]

Maybe they can get a G3258 for cheaper, though that brings with it all the cons of being a 2c/2t chip, so maybe that shouldn't be the baseline for everyone.

I think 2C/2T can work fine provided the GPU being paired with it is rather small (eg, R7 250X)

One theory is that by having some GPU bottleneck, it gives the processor more time to breath and thus process tasks. Some comments on this here and here

 

[TheELF]

I think 2C/2T can work fine provided the GPU being paired with it is rather small (eg, R7 250X)

One theory is that by having some GPU bottleneck, it gives the processor more time to breath and thus process tasks. Some comments on this here and here

The processor does not need time to breath,you just have to change the priority the games run on from high to low or even idle,devs ship games with priority on high so that the gamer won't see any slowdowns from the antivirus or from updates running in the background,if the game has a lot of threads the high priority messes up a low core count cpu.

 

[cbn]

The processor does not need time to breath,you just have to change the priority the games run on from high to low or even idle,devs ship games with priority on high so that the gamer won't see any slowdowns from the antivirus or from updates running in the background,if the game has a lot of threads the high priority messes up a low core count cpu.

Interesting, So for a Linux game port I bet the games could be (or are) shipped with priority on low since (most) Linux users don't use Anti-virus and updates are controlled manually (at least on Ubuntu based distros).

If true, I'm thinking that would make the 2C/2T version of GT4e even more suitable as a lowest common denominator target for Linux game and creative app development.

 

[mohit9206]

Do you have any data to back that up? The only data I have shows a previous gen HD6200 only just barely beating a 384 shader Oland GPU.

Wait i am not sure what a GT4e is. Is it Iris Pro 6200 desktop or Intel hd 530?
I thought toms hardware benchmark showed Iris Pro 6200 beating A10-7850k with ease and almost matching Gtx 750.
Here's the benchmarks

Bottom Line
AMD’s APUs do suffer the lower IPC throughput of their host processing architectures. However, Iris Pro 6200 is still significantly faster than any integrated graphics solution that we’ve ever tested, even without help from the Broadwell architecture's efficient x86 cores. Sure, the delta would shrink if we were testing lower-clocked CPUs. But there's just no way around it: the ball is in AMD's court now.

 

[cbn]

Wait i am not sure what a GT4e is. Is it Iris Pro 6200 desktop or Intel hd 530?
I thought toms hardware benchmark showed Iris Pro 6200 beating A10-7850k with ease and almost matching Gtx 750.
Here's the benchmarks

The graph above shows a i7 5775C and i5 5675C 19 and 21 FPS slower respectively compared to a Athlon x 4 860K + GTX 750.

If the GTX 750 used the i7 577C or i5 5675C for the CPU no doubt the FPS would have been much higher.

Same goes for the result with the R7 250 (which also used a Athlon x4 860K for the CPU).

 

[TheELF]

The graph above shows a i7 5775C and i5 5675C 19 and 21 FPS slower respectively compared to a Athlon x 4 860K + GTX 750.

No you see the x4 get 15 and 19 FPS lower minimums respectively compared to the i7 5775C and i5 5675C ,obviously if you get more than 100fps you will be more then happy,but those minimums are what gets ya.

 

[sm625]

I'm kind of surprised we dont have any more benchmarks. It seems to be constant source of irritation these days, but seriously where are the benchmarks? And why would they use an 860K anyway? Why not an i3 at least?

 

[DrMrLordX]

I did use the R7 250X many times in the past as an example to compare value of Athlon x4 860K +dGPU vs. A10-7850K and the like. (re: for over the course of a year the R7 250X would cycle between $59.99 After rebate and $79.99 After rebate so it fit the budget).

However, the Athlon x4 860K CPU can handle more GPU than the R7 250X. In fact, it works great with my GTX 660.

Sadly, prices on low-end cards seem to be creeping upwards, and they certainly aren't shifting downwards (which is the expected trend). AMD and Nvidia aren't doing much to offer new products in the sub-$100 price range, keeping things expensive. "Budget" desktop buyers are still going to be buying more CPU than is required for the dGPU, and the overall trend favors iGPUs instead, such as the 7890k and a hypothetical i3 with GT3e or GT4e. Preferably GT4e.

 

[Cerb]

Sadly, prices on low-end cards seem to be creeping upwards, and they certainly aren't shifting downwards (which is the expected trend). AMD and Nvidia aren't doing much to offer new products in the sub-$100 price range, keeping things expensive. "Budget" desktop buyers are still going to be buying more CPU than is required for the dGPU, and the overall trend favors iGPUs instead, such as the 7890k and a hypothetical i3 with GT3e or GT4e. Preferably GT4e.

The cards seem to have pretty stable prices. It's that the market for anything not 2-4x as fast as IGP is almost gone, and soon will be gone, except as a niche for added display connectors. Right now, a GTX 750 is about the minimum worth buying.

I doubt it costs Intel enough to add extra cores for them to worry about designing and validating another die. If the eDRAM gets cheap enough (such as being able to make it on the same die as the CPU itself), they'll make a beefier 2C IGP. For now, it's premium, not because it's so costly for Intel to make 4 cores instead of 2, but because it's so costly to add a big memory package, and that it does provide enough performance benefit to be worth it for potential customers.

 

[cbn]

Sadly, prices on low-end cards seem to be creeping upwards, and they certainly aren't shifting downwards (which is the expected trend). AMD and Nvidia aren't doing much to offer new products in the sub-$100 price range, keeping things expensive.

The GTX 750 has dropped in price (eg, MSI N750-1GD5/OC cycles back and forth from $69.99 AR, $59.99 AR and $49.99 AR).

So overall, because of the price drop on the GTX 750, the value at this low end is getting better.

 

[DrMrLordX]

The cards seem to have pretty stable prices.

Well, that's kind of the problem, isn't it? Stuff like the 250X, 260, and 260X cost about the same as they did 6 months ago. AMD didn't push out any new cards to replace or complement that lineup when they launched the 3xx series, at least not that I know of. The closest is the 360 which is right at the $100 mark:

http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/video-card/#c=308,309&sort=a8&page=1

I doubt it costs Intel enough to add extra cores for them to worry about designing and validating another die. If the eDRAM gets cheap enough (such as being able to make it on the same die as the CPU itself), they'll make a beefier 2C IGP. For now, it's premium, not because it's so costly for Intel to make 4 cores instead of 2, but because it's so costly to add a big memory package, and that it does provide enough performance benefit to be worth it for potential customers.

The eDRAM costs them $3 for a 128mb chip. I would expect the L4 would be restricted to the fastest, most-expensive 2C/4T desktop chip sporting it (assuming they made one), though it would still be a good deal.

That being said, I fully acknowledge that it does not seem that Intel has any such processor ready to go anytime soon, so what I say is largely irrelevant.

The GTX 750 has dropped in price (eg, MSI N750-1GD5/OC cycles back and forth from $69.99 AR, $59.99 AR and $49.99 AR).

So overall, because of the price drop on the GTX 750, the value at this low end is getting better.

Okay, so where's the 9xx replacement card for the 750 at the same price point? They do not exist. The cheapest card Nvidia has from this generation is the 950, and it ain't so cheap:

http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/video-card/#sort=a8&page=1&c=329,208

Neither Nvidia nor AMD are serious about keeping cards in the sub-$100 price range. Unless they keep making 250Xs and 750s, the supplies will dry up and that will be it.

 

[cbn]

Okay, so where's the 9xx replacement card for the 750 at the same price point? They do not exist. The cheapest card Nvidia has from this generation is the 950, and it ain't so cheap:

http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/video-card/#sort=a8&page=1&c=329,208

I don't think we will ever see Nvidia make a Maxwell 2 card for the 9 series low end. They will just rebrand Maxwell 1 for that:

Some possibilities:

1. GT 940 (rebranded GTX 750/GTX 750 Ti)

2. GT 930 (desktop GM208, 384 Maxwell 1 cores with 64 bit GDDR5. This will replace the Kepler based GT 730 GDDR5)

3. GT 920 (desktop GM208, 256 Maxwell 1 cores with 64 bit DDR3. This will replace Kepler based GT 720)

 

[cbn]

Well, that's kind of the problem, isn't it? Stuff like the 250X, 260, and 260X cost about the same as they did 6 months ago. AMD didn't push out any new cards to replace or complement that lineup when they launched the 3xx series, at least not that I know of. The closest is the 360 which is right at the $100 mark:

http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/video-card/#c=308,309&sort=a8&page=1

I sure hope AMD plans to beef up their low end because up to this point Nvidia has been beating them pretty good in that area.

For example, during the time the Anandtech entry level video card hot deals thread was active most of the activity was from Nvidia sales. (In fact, there was not one R7 250 (Oland) sale reported. Ironically the R7 250X (Cape Verde) was often times cheaper than the R7 250 (Oland) which rarely if ever budged from $69.99)

 

[cbn]

One thing that needs to be considered when discussing any desktop APU vs. dCPU + dGPU is CPU throttling under iGPU load;

For example, take a look at the graph below and notice how an Athlon x 4 860K + R7 240 beats a A10-7850K (with DDR3 2400 RAM) in GTA V at low resolution:

(Note: Both the Athlon x 4 860K and the A10-7850K have the same specs on the CPU, but the Athlon x 4 860K has a dGPU (that is much weaker at 320sp) outside of its power budget. Whereas, the A10-7850K has to share its power budget with a stronger 512sp iGPU that when active reduces the clocks on the A10-7850K to a level well below what the Athlon x 4 860K)

So if Intel releases a 2C GT4e (or any other large iGPU desktop APU in the future), either the TDP needs to be set high enough so the CPU throttling under iGPU load doesn't happen or the processor needs to be priced lower to account for the performance reduction.