Will the arrival of 4k monitors require better iGPUs in APUs?

[Fjodor2001]

So Dell has finally announced a 24" 4k monitor at a price within reach for at least enthusiast consumers at $1300:

http://flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1386054703

It's still a bit too expensive for most people, but likely prices will fall going forward so it'll become more common.

Now the question is whether the current APUs (Intel Haswell / AMD Richland) will have enough graphics performance to handle the 3840x2160 pixel resolution smoothly? Or will the introduction of 4k monitors put focus on improving iGPU performance in coming APUs? After all it's 4x the amount of pixels compared to 1920x1080. Perhaps Intel Broadwell or AMD Kaveri will be sufficient. Obviously not for 3D gaming, but at least maybe for handling 2D graphics smoothly at that resolution. What do you think?

Not really a CPU question (iGPU is even in the title), so sending this over to the GPU forum
-ViRGE

 

[ShintaiDK]

IGPs wont improve faster or slower just because of 4K.

Haswells IGP for example handles 4K perfectly fine. I am sure AMDs as well.

 

[monstercameron]

hell, apple's a5x and samsung ex5 arm socs supported 2.5k so I doun't see why full fledged desktop igps couldn't manage a few million more pixels...

 

[Fjodor2001]

IGPs wont improve faster or slower just because of 4K.

Haswells IGP for example handles 4K perfectly fine. I am sure AMDs as well.

Do you mean it's sufficient for 2D graphics at 4k resolution? And are you then not just talking about rendering it properly, but also that it's fast enough to be perceived as smooth, even with complex 2D graphics being re-rendered at high FPS? Because simply supporting the resolution is one thing, rendering fast enough at that resolution is another thing.

Also, what about 3D graphics? And not just for gaming, but also normal desktop / web use.

I mean Intel/AMD are improving the iGPUs with each APU generation for a reason right, even though most people are using ~1080p displays. So if Intel/AMD thinks the iGPU has to improve even for those resolutions, surely the need to improve iGPU performance must increase even further when moving to 4k displays, right? After all it's 4x the amount of pixels...

 

[ShintaiDK]

A note on the 1300$ 24" 4K.

Dell will sell you a 28" 4K Ultrasharp P2815Q in early 2014 for under 1000$. Expect the 24" to get a rather high pricecut.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2356907
http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/usc...&cid=271006&lid=4970696&acd=12309188680294295

 

[ShintaiDK]

You mean it's sufficient for 2D graphics?

Well, what about 3D graphics then? And not just for gaming, but also normal desktop / web use.

I mean Intel/AMD are improving the iGPUs with each APU generation for a reason right, even though most people are using ~1080p displays. So if Intel/AMD thinks the iGPU has to improve even for those resolutions, surely the need to improve iGPU performance must increase even further when moving to 4k displays, right?

Uhm...they work perfectly fine in 4K browsing, using areo desktop, watching youtube, 4K movies or whatever.

 

[Homeles]

The 28" isn't an Ultrasharp model.

 

[ShintaiDK]

The 28" isn't an Ultrasharp model.

I see the press release is changed.

The UltraSharp 28 Ultra HD Monitor (P2815Q) will be available in early 2014.

Is changed to:

The Dell 28 Ultra HD Monitor (P2815Q) will be available in early 2014.

Interesting, and a tad sad. Guess I skip 4K a while longer on the homefront.

 

[Fjodor2001]

Uhm...they work perfectly fine in 4K browsing, using areo desktop, watching youtube, 4K movies or whatever.

So how come Intel and AMD primarily is focusing on improving the iGPU performance these days, if you say it's already good enough even for 4k resolution? I don't think many people are gaming on APUs anyway, so I don't see that as being a reason.

 

[ShintaiDK]

So how come Intel and AMD primarily is focusing on improving the iGPU performance these days, if you say it's already good enough even for 4k resolution? I don't think many people are gaming on APUs anyway, so I don't see that as being a reason.

Because its better value than adding more cores.

 

[bononos]

Do you mean it's sufficient for 2D graphics at 4k resolution? And are you then not just talking about rendering it properly, but also that it's fast enough to be perceived as smooth, even with complex 2D graphics being re-rendered at high FPS? Because simply supporting the resolution is one thing, rendering fast enough at that resolution is another thing.

Also, what about 3D graphics? And not just for gaming, but also normal desktop / web use.
.......

igpus would choke and fall over for gaming at 4k. The same for discrete cards. I think monitors would just have to run at lower res for a while until the performance of cards catches up.

 

[Fjodor2001]

Because its better value than adding more cores.

What value does additional iGPU performance add if you say the iGPU performance is already good enough?

 

[Zodiark1593]

What value does additional iGPU performance add if you say the iGPU performance is already good enough?

GPU compute, or more precisely, OpenCL. The slowdown in per-core performance seems to indicate difficulty getting more performance on current architectures, Intel's push for iGPU performance seems to suggest this (I seriously doubt Apple was the sole reason Intel pushed iGPU performance so high). AMD is definitely in a decent spot themselves having gotten the APU into consoles. If developers can use the GPU portion to push physics, things will look quite good for the future of GPGPU.

 

[3DVagabond]

What value does additional iGPU performance add if you say the iGPU performance is already good enough?

The same value anything has by getting better.

 

[Fjodor2001]

The same value anything has by getting better.

That assumes there is value in getting better. For most stuff there is, but not for all. In some cases, once you've passed a certain threshold there is no use in additional performance. E.g. if you have a game that already renders at max quality, max resolution, and max FPS, then changing to a faster CPU or GPU will be of no use.

In this case it was said that the iGPU was already good enough for 2D use in Haswell/Richland, even for 4k resolution. Hence increasing the iGPU performance would be of little to no value (unless you're gaming, which not many do on an APU anyway). That of course assumes that the original statement that the iGPU performance is already good enough is actually true. :hmm:

 

[3DVagabond]

That assumes there is value in getting better. For most stuff there is, but not for all. In some cases, once you've passed a certain threshold there is no use in additional performance. E.g. if you have a game that already renders at max quality, max resolution, and max FPS, then changing to a faster CPU or GPU will be of no use.

In this case it was said that the iGPU was already good enough for 2D use in Haswell/Richland, even for 4k resolution. Hence increasing the iGPU performance would be of little to no value (unless you're gaming, which not many do on an APU anyway). That of course assumes that the original statement that the iGPU performance is already good enough is actually true. :hmm:

You are looking at way too limited a scenario. There are more uses for an APU than the set of circumstances you have outlined.

Eventually there won't be discrete any longer. APU's will get good enough that discrete cards won't be needed. Eventually we will have holographic displays. It's tech. It will continue to evolve and advance. There will be new uses and capabilities that will push the parameters of "good enough".

We now have terabytes of storage on our PC's. There was a time when people couldn't even imagine needing that much data storage on a PC. We have 32/64 GB of RAM capability. We can now do RAM discs, we have so much available. we have 12 core/24 thread processors. We have video cards with more VRAM than we used on entire systems just a few years ago.

If anything does manage to be "good enough" and we can't find anything that it's not good enough for, we'll invent something that needs more.

 

[Fjodor2001]

You are looking at way too limited a scenario. There are more uses for an APU than the set of circumstances you have outlined.

Eventually there won't be discrete any longer. APU's will get good enough that discrete cards won't be needed. Eventually we will have holographic displays. It's tech. It will continue to evolve and advance. There will be new uses and capabilities that will push the parameters of "good enough".

We now have terabytes of storage on our PC's. There was a time when people couldn't even imagine needing that much data storage on a PC. We have 32/64 GB of RAM capability. We can now do RAM discs, we have so much available. we have 12 core/24 thread processors. We have video cards with more VRAM than we used on entire systems just a few years ago.

If anything does manage to be "good enough" and we can't find anything that it's not good enough for, we'll invent something that needs more.

So what you're saying is that for current use cases additional iGPU performance is not needed, but it may be useful for the future? But by that time people will probably have bought a new computer anyway...