{"id":85271,"date":"2016-01-13T17:30:24","date_gmt":"2016-01-13T15:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=85271"},"modified":"2016-01-13T17:39:35","modified_gmt":"2016-01-13T15:39:35","slug":"mainstream-gamers-no-longer-require-discrete-gpus-says-intel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/hardware\/85271-mainstream-gamers-no-longer-require-discrete-gpus-says-intel","title":{"rendered":"Mainstream gamers no longer require discrete GPUs, says Intel"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re awfully fond of the idea of an ultra-compact, small-form-factor gaming PC, like Intel\u2019s upcoming Skull Canyon NUC<\/a>, for example.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a surprising amount of performance to be had from such a small device, but we\u2019d never go so far as to call it a device for mainstream gaming.<\/p>\n

Well, according to the Vice President and General Manager for Intel\u2019s desktop client\u2019s platform, Gregory Bryant, integrated GPUs (iGPUs) are all mainstream gamers need these days, and only enthusiasts actually need discrete GPUs.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Bryant means something else when he says \u201cmainstream\u201d? He doesn\u2019t mean between 30 and 60fps at 1080p on medium to high settings, does he? Or perhaps that\u2019s the domain of the enthusiast for Bryant?<\/p>\n

In fact, claims Bryant, their top-end Iris and Iris Pro iGPUs, found in their latest chips, can outperform 80% of discrete GPUs.<\/p>\n

Intel must mean 80% of all discrete GPUs\u2026 ever \u2013 we\u2019re talking since the time of the Voodoo and Savage 3D cards.<\/p>\n

Joking aside, low-end, entry level discrete GPUs produced by NVIDIA and AMD are definitely slower than Intel\u2019s top-end solutions, but they\u2019re not the best choice for gaming.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re not only in no way sufficient enough for an acceptable gaming experience at 1080p, or at least what a gamer worth their salt would call sufficient, but what Bryant also fails to mention is that the CPUs that use their top-end Iris and Iris Pro iGPUs are far from cheap.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s far more cost effective to purchase a more capable GPU and relegate the number crunching to a more affordable CPU. Trust us, games are far more GPU intensive and you\u2019ll gain better frame rates as a result.<\/p>\n

iGPUs have certainly come a long, long way, there\u2019s no doubts about it. \u201cWe have improved graphics 30 times what they were five years ago,<\/em>\u201d Bryant said Bryant at a J.P. Morgan forum at last week\u2019s CES. But games are also quite a bit more demanding than they were five years ago.<\/p>\n

Their upcoming top-end iGPU, the Iris Pro 580, offers a lot of performance for an integrated solution, but it still only manages the sorts of numbers you\u2019d get from a GeForce GTX 750, which struggles at settings most would call \u201cmainstream\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n\n\n
Chip Name<\/span><\/th>\nGPU Core<\/span><\/th>\nGFlops (GPU Only)<\/span><\/th>\nGFlops (Whole Package)<\/span><\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n<\/table><\/div>\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\n
Chip Name<\/div>\n<\/th>\n
\n
GPU Core<\/div>\n<\/th>\n
\n
GFlops (GPU Only)<\/div>\n<\/th>\n
\n
GFlops (Whole Package)<\/div>\n<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
AMD Radeon R7 360<\/td>\nTobago Pro<\/td>\n1536 GFlops<\/td>\nN\/A<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti<\/td>\nMaxwell GM107<\/td>\n1389 GFlops<\/td>\nN\/A<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
AMD Radeon R7 250X<\/td>\nCape Verde XT<\/td>\n1216 GFlops<\/td>\nN\/A<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Intel Skylake Gen9 GT4\/e<\/b><\/span><\/td>\nIntel Iris Pro 580<\/td>\n1152 GFlops @ 1 GHz<\/td>\nTBC<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750<\/td>\nMaxwell GM107<\/td>\n1044 GFlops<\/td>\nN\/A<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
AMD Radeon R9 M370X<\/td>\nVenus XT<\/td>\n992 GFlops<\/td>\nN\/A<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Intel Skylake Gen9 GT3\/e<\/b><\/span><\/td>\nIntel Iris 560\/570?<\/td>\n884 GFlops (Estimation)<\/td>\nTBC<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
AMD Carrizo FX-8800P<\/td>\nGCN 1.2<\/td>\n819 GFlops<\/td>\n1070 GFlops<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Intel Core i7-5775C<\/td>\nIntel Iris Pro 6200<\/td>\n768 GFlops @ 1 GHz<\/td>\n883 GFlops<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
AMD Kaveri A10-7850K<\/td>\nGCN 1.1<\/td>\n737 GFlops<\/td>\n856 GFlops<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Intel Core i7-5557U<\/td>\nIntel Iris 6100<\/td>\n724 GFlops<\/td>\n845 GFlops<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
AMD Richland A10-6800K<\/td>\nVLIW4<\/td>\n648 GFlops<\/td>\n779 GFlops<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Intel Skylake Core i7-6700K<\/td>\nIntel HD 530<\/td>\n442 GFlops<\/td>\nTBC<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Intel Haswell Core i7-4790K<\/td>\nIntel HD 4600<\/td>\n400 GFlops<\/td>\n512 GFlops<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n

*Table courtesy of WCCF Tech<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

And consider this, the Iris Pro 580 is only going to be installed into high-end CPUs you absolutely don\u2019t need for mainstream gaming.<\/p>\n

Mainstream gaming is about a balance between your CPU and GPU performance. In what way is an enthusiast CPU and a \u201cmainstream\u201d GPU appropriate?<\/p>\n

We love what Intel and AMD are doing with integrated solutions, but there are a good portion of the gaming market that are constantly sold the wrong hardware, and it stymies their experience at every turn.<\/p>\n

\n

Source(s): Fudzilla<\/a>, PC World<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>\n

In other news<\/strong><\/h3>\n

AMD\u2019s Zen CPUs, and why you should care<\/a><\/p>\n

Foveated rendering may drastically reduce the minimum requirements for VR headsets<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019ll cost you R215 for this fully capable quad-core computer<\/a><\/p>\n

A computer for just R70: the Raspberry Pi Zero<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to Intel\u2019s Gregory Bryant, integrated GPUs are all mainstream gamers need these days, and only enthusiasts actually need discrete GPUs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":85273,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[16937,47,1085,16641,16941,1727,16939,11254,1969],"class_list":["post-85271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","tag-discrete-graphics","tag-gpu","tag-hardware-2","tag-igpu","tag-integrated-graphics","tag-intel","tag-iris","tag-iris-pro","tag-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}