AMD’s new CPU hits 132fps in Fortnite without a graphics card

I have routinely been impressed with AMD integrated graphics. My last laptop I specifically went for one as it meant I didn't need a dedicated gpu for it which adds significant weight, cost, and power draw.

It isn't my main gaming rig of course; I have had no complaints.

Same. I got a cheap Ryzen laptop a few years back and put Linux on it last year, and I've been shocked by how well it can play some games. I just recently got Disgaea 7 (mostly to play on Steam Deck) and it's so well optimized that I get steady 60fps, at full resolution, on my shitty integrated graphics.
I have a Lenovo ultralight with a 7730U mobile chip in it, which is a pretty mid cpu... happily plays minecraft at a full 60fps while using like 10W on the package. I can play Minecraft on battery for like 4 hours. It's nuts.

AMD does the right thing and uses their full graphics uArch CU's for the iGPU on a new die, instead of trying to cram some poorly designed iGPU inside the CPU package like Intel does.

I was sold on AMD once I got my Steamdeck.

same here. or at least i finally recognized their potential. but it's not just the performance, it's the power efficiency too!
Everything I see about AMD makes me like them more than Intel or Nvidia (for CPU and GPU respectively). You can't even use an Nvidia card with Linux without running into serious issues.
I mean they make the chips in PS5 and xbox too.

AMD's integrated GPUs have been getting really good lately. I'm impressed at what they are capable of with gaming handhelds and it only makes sense to put the same extra GPU power into desktop APUs. This hopefully will lead to true gaming laptops that don't require power hungry discrete GPUs and workarounds/render offloading for hybrid graphics. That said, to truly be a gaming laptop replacement I want to see a solid 60fps minimum at at least 1080p, but the fact that we're seeing numbers close to this is impressive nonetheless.

I hope red and blue both find success in this segment. Ideally the strengthened APU share of the market exerts pressure on publishers to properly optimize their games instead of cynically offloading the compute cost onto players.

Hell yeah, I want EVERYONE to make dope ass shit. I’ve made machines with both sides, and I hate tribal…ness. My current machine is a 9900k that’s getting to be… five years old?! I’d make an AMD machine today if I needed a new machine. AMD/Intel rivalry is so good for us all. Intel slacked so hard after the 9000-series. I hope they come back.
- Intel has slacked hard since the 2000-series. One shitty 4 core release after another, until AMD kicked things into gear with Ryzen.
  
  And during that time you couldn't buy Intel due to security flaws (Meltdown, Spectre, ..).
  
  Even now they are slacking, just look at the power consumption. The way they currently produce CPUs isn't sustainable (AMD pays way less per chip with the chiplet design and is far more flexible).
- In fairness, computers have aged a lot better than they did 20 years ago, in the far-off year of 2000.
  
  My computer is a desktop from 2013 or so (With an i7-4770) , and other than some upgrades to the RAM (8 -> 16 GB) and the graphics (GT640 -> RX570), it's still fairly solid, and will run most things fairly decently.
  
  By comparison, trying to use a computer from 2005 in 2015 was a much tougher ask, since it struggled a lot more with even just bare Windows 10.

Common W for AMD

Now, if they stick one in a framework laptop, I’ll be a few thousand dollars poorer.

The good news is, Framework is shipping with AMD CPUs now. :)

Currently 7th gen Ryzens, not sure when the 8th gens become available.
- Yeah, I was looking at them earlier, before I saw this.. would be great to not need the graphics expansion, doubt I could have stopped myself from clicking “buy” if it had been an option :).
Amen!
That's not how this works
- What do you mean?

Oh, oh ok I thought one of the new Threadrippers is so powerful that the CPU can do all those graphics in Software.

It's gonna take decades to be able to render 1080p CP2077 at an acceptable frame rate with just software rendering.
- It's all software, even the stuff on the graphics cards. Those are the rasterisers, shaders and so on. In fact the graphics cards are extremely good at running these simple (relatively) programs in an absolutely staggering number of threads at the same time, and this has been taken advantage of by both bitcoin mining and also neural net algorithms like GPT and Llama.

For people like me who game once a month, and mostly stupid little game, this is great news. I bet many people could use that, it would reduce demand for graphic card and allow those who want them to buy cheaper.

Only downside if integrated graphics becomes a thing is that you can’t upgrade if the next gen needs a different motherboard. Pretty easy to swap from a 2080 to a 3080.

Integrated graphics is already a thing. Intel iGPU has over 60% market share. This is really competing with Intel and low-end discrete GPUs. Nice to have the option!
- Yeah, I know integrated graphics is a thing. And that’s been fine for running a web browser, watching videos, or whatever other low-demand graphical application was needed for office work. Now they’re holding it up against gaming, which typically places large demands on graphical processing power.
  
  The only reason I brought up what I did is because it’s an if… if people start looking at CPU integrated graphics as an alternative to expensive GPUs it makes an upgrade path more costly vs a short term savings of avoiding a good GPU purchase.
  
  Again, if one’s gaming consists of games that aren’t high demand like Fortnite, then upgrades and performance probably aren’t a concern for the user. One could still end up buying a GPU and adding it to the system for more power assuming that the PSU has enough power and case has room.
AMD has been pretty good about this though, AM4 lasted 2016-2022. Compare to Intel changing the socket every 1-2 years, it seems.
That's true but I'm excited about the future of laptops. Some of the specs are getting really impressive while keeping low power draw. I'm currently jealous of what Apple has accomplished with literal all day battery life in a 14inch laptop. I'm hopeful some of the AMD chips will get us there in other hardware.
Could you not just slot in a dedicated video card if you needed one, keeping the integrated as a backup?
- Yeah, maybe. I commented on that elsewhere here. If we follow a possible path for IG - the elimination of a large GPU could result in the computer being sold with a smaller case and lower-power GPU. Why would you need a full tower when you can have a more compact PC with a sleek NVMe/SSD and a smaller motherboard form factor? Now there’s no room to cram a 3080 in the box and no power to drive it.
  
  Again, someone depending on CPU IG to play Fortnite probably isn’t gonna be looking for upgrade paths. this is just an observation of a limitation imposed on users should CPU IG become more prominent. All hypothetical at this point.
And the shared RAM. Games like Star Trek Fleet Command will crash your computer by messing with that/memory leaks galore. Far less crashy with a dedicated GPU. How many other games interact poorly with integrated GPUs?
AMD keeps the same sockets for ages. I was able to upgrade a 5 year old Ryzen 5 2600G to a 5600G last month. Can't do that with Intel in general.
or it may end up making for a push for longer lifetimes for motherboards

Mind you that it can get these frame rates at the low setting. While this is pretty damn impressive for a APU, it's still a very niche market type of APU at this point and I don't see this getting all that much traction myself.

I think the opposite is true. Discrete graphics cards are on the way out, SoCs are the future. There are just too many disadvantages to having a discrete GPU and CPU each with it’s own RAM. We’ll see SoCs catch up and eventually overtake PCs with discrete components. Especially with the growth of AI applications.
- People will be building dedicated AI PCs.
- I agree, especially with the prices of graphics card being what they are. The 8700G can also fit in a significantly smaller case.

$US330 for the top 8700G APU with12 RDNA 3 compute units (compare to 32 RDNA 3 CUs in the Radeon RX7600). And it only draws 88W at peak load and can be passively cooled (or overclocked).

$US230 for the 8600G with 8 RDNA 3 CUs. Falls about 10-15% short of 8700G performance in games, but a much bigger spread in CPU (Tom's Hardware benchmarks) so I'm pretty meh on that one.

Given the higher costs for AM5 boards and DDR5 RAM, you could spend about the same or $100-200 more than an 8700G build you could combine a cheaper CPU and better GPU and get way more bang for your buck. But I see the 8700G being an solid option for gamers on a budget, or parents wanting to build younger kids their first cheap-but-effective PC.

I also see this as a lazy mans solution to building small form factor mini-ITX Home Theatre PCs that run silent and don't need a separate GPU to receive 4K live streams. I'm exactly in this boat right now where I literally don't wanna fiddle with cramming a GPU into some tiny box, but also don't want some piece of crap iGPU in case I use the HTPC for some light gaming from time to time.

itll be a great upgrade for these little nuc like things , thin laptops, and steamdeck competitors

That's pretty damn impressive. AMD is changing the game!

Is this a pun?
Meh. It's also a $330 chip...

For that price you can get a 12th gen i3/RX6600 combination which will obliterate this thing in gaming performance.
- Your i3 has half the cores. Spending more on GPU and less on CPU gives better fps, news at 11.
- But isn't the point of this post being that the CPU still runs games okay without a dedicated video card?
  
  It's hardly a useful comparison to compare the CPU on its own against a Video Card + CPU.
  
  If it was the i3 on its own, that might be a different story.

So will this be a HTPC king? Kind of skimped on the temps in the article. I assume HWU goes over it and will watch it soon.

What services use the graphics card and are fine with the low end?
The page on AMD's website says 65W TDP so much the same as any other desktop CPU. Might be a bit much for HTPC depending on cooling? I dunno

I'm interested in this for my TrueNAS server to offload Plex transcoding. I'm about due for an upgrade, the current hardware is about 10 years old.
- From my understanding, transcode quality is a concern. I've unfortunately read AMD's implementation just isn't very good. That one is better off going Intel particularly from the last few years.
  
  Jellyfin's docs specifically talk about the issue.
  
  Intel's transcoding is also faster in the same generation.
  
  Been debating which way to go for my next rebuild as I'm over due myself.

The playstation 5 also does this.

Aaaaand the 7950x3D is not top tier anymore

Back in my day the 7950 was a GPU!

Yelling at clouds
- Mine is still running nicely :)

I wonder how well it does AI workloads.

It's about the same performance as a 1050ti, which is a 2016 gpu. It's still very much behind entry level discrete gpus like Rx 6600.

Might make sense for a laptop or mini pc, but dont really see the point for desktop considering the price.

I think I might be the target market. I'm very happy with my 1070. I need a CPU and mobo upgrade imminently. I might just snag this and not think about a discrete GPU for a while.
- Do you plan to replace your 1070 or use it alongside it?
It's a cpu... So that's pretty impressive..
- It's a GPU. It's just integrated with the CPU, so you don't need a dedicated graphics card.
Can I put a 1050ti in my 14" laptop?
- This is exactly why I said it may make sense for laptops, where mobile chips like rx6600 mobile will still be better performance wise, but you don't have to worry about thermal throttling with igpus. This is nice for graphics intensive tasks on the go, but with the right laptop design I think a dedicated mobile GPU will still be the better option as a mobile workstation.
  
  If the 15in laptop is too big, there's many 14in laptops with mobile GPUs better than iGPUs; again, at the cost of increased thermal throttling. So if your goal is to play a game on battery with the laptop on your lap, and you want to optimize for price and size, then an APU will make sense.

A bit misleading, what is meant is that no dedicated GPU is being used. The integrated GPU in the APU is still a GPU. But yes, AMD's recent APUs are amazing for folks who don't want to spend too much to get a reasonable gaming setup.

Wow, it's almost like that's why they said you didn't need a graphics card, instead of saying you didn't need a GPU!
- Reading is difficult for some folk.
- Because the title is still vague, and yes GPU and "graphics card" are often used interchangeably by the internet (examples: https://www.hp.com/gb-en/shop/tech-takes/integrated-vs-dedicated-graphics-cards and https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/help/connectivity-and-performance/article/switching-to-your-pcs-dedicated-gpu/000081045 ).
  
  "New CPU hits 132fps" could wrongly suggest software rendering, which is very different (see for example https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/rad-launches-pixomatic----new-software-renderer ) and died more than a decade ago.
I can see Single Board Conputers with this on for powerful TV boxes. hello Emulators and Steam OS‽
They state in the title and description graphics card, not GPU. Implying a dedicated graphics solution not an integrated one.
Yeah slightly misleading but I guess they did mention a card specifically, not GPU.

But for a moment I was like wow, 100FPS in software rendering, that's impressive even for an EPYC.
- But for a moment I was like wow, 100FPS in software rendering
  
  Thank you, that exactly was my point.
That's what the article says...