Okay, you're clearly not thinking of what I intended with this thread. 8c16t Zen + Vega = at least 200W TDP, and at the very least $6-700. An APU to compete with this would be DOA, no matter how compelling its performance - less upgradeability, no sensible way of cooling it ... No thanks.
Are you sure about that? A "console killer" is basically going to be AMD's best GPU tech crammed onto the APU die, and in a few weeks/months that's going to be Vega. It doesn't have to be the full monty but it does have to be more shaders than what's in the PS4 Pro/XBox One APUs today. PS4 Pro already has 36 CUs on it.
And to build off what The Stilt said it would need something like HBM or one hell of a fat l4.
I am not exactly sure what would be the most marketable option for AMD to approach something like this, but with so many of the motherboard's functions going onto SoCs already, it might almost make sense to sell APUs like that soldered in BGA format onto a board (or daughtercard) with high-speed memory soldered right on there. The only thing you would configure yourself would be a bank of DDR4. Maybe have HBM2 soldered onto the board with RAM slots elsewhere? And you just buy the whole thing wholesale. If the rumours are true about the UEFI being stored on the SoC itself . . . which granted, is unproven at this point. Anyway, it would make sense. If you want to upgrade, you upgrade the board/daughtercard all at once, getting a new APU with more/better CUs and different configuration of HBM2 (or whatever).
What I'm asking for is something (significantly) better than the current high-end iGPUs. The CU stagnation in AMDs APUs in recent years is getting to look pretty bad, and the move to 14nm should prompt SKUs with a significant increase in CUs. The current state of iGPUs is a rather sad state of affairs, and leaves a rather large performance gap between $100 GPUs and iGPUs.
Okay, look at Snowy Owl and ask yourself: how can consumers leverage something like that?
AMD's challenge to market a "fat" APU is that - again, to go back to what The Stilt said and to return to my original reply to this thread - consumers can just choose a standard AM4 CPU + dGPU. If you look at the cost/benefit analysis the APU is probably never going to be there unless devs start really utilizing OpenCL2 (HSA, hah!) for low-latency iGPU-based compute functions. Then the "serious" enthusiast can choose fat APU + Vega over Summit Ridge + Vega for gaming or . . . whatever.
Now granted the whole BGA motherboard/daughtercard setup would be hella cool if I could still set up the DDR4 the way I wanted and if the added cost of the PCB for the APU + HBM2 would be low enough that generational upgrades would be possible/plausible. It would be cost-prohibitive if I had to swap to an entirely new board every time (think cost of eternal connectors, SATA/M.2 connectors, stuff like that). But for most PC users, swallowing that would be difficult. As your reaction indicated.
Also, I'm obviously not imagining this as a high-end gaming SKU - hence the term "console killer."
It has to at least be midrange then, which is where PCs have to go to really step out above and beyond consoles in power. PCs, by default, require superior computing performance on all ends to make up for bad ports/bloated software. You need at least a 480 in that APU.
Not sure if anyone has mentioned yet, but isn't this what the whole Steam box is? How has that performed in the marketplace?
No. There isn't a desktop APU that exists today to exceed the graphics power of the PS4 Pro APU, for example.