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What Budget Gamers Should Do about Vanishing Mobile GPUs [FARS News Agency](FARS News Agency Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) TEHRAN (FNA)- Back when Intel first began pushing ultrabooks the overwhelming majority of systems deployed under the ultrabook moniker relied exclusively on Intel's integrated graphics. This trend has accelerated through the laptop world over the past two years. If you want to buy a boutique laptop or a gaming system for over a thousand dollars there are still plenty of options for a discrete mobile GPU, but what if you don't have that kind of money to spend? From the beginning, it's been clear that on-die graphics would cannibalize the low end of the GPU market in both mobile and desktop. What is surprising, however, is just how difficult it's become to find a discrete GPU — even as an option. When that option exits, it's almost always chained to the CPU — selecting a faster graphics card forces you into a faster CPU, which occasionally forces you into a higher-resolution monitor as well. It's impossible to accurately survey the entire mobile market in a single post, but with the Back to School period almost upon us, we're going to walk through the options at various vendors. Obviously boutique builders are still selling discrete cards, but our goal is to stick with the more mainstream manufacturers and (hopefully) take advantage of their economies of scale, Extremetech reported. AMD and Intel: Two entirely different value propositions In desktops, the AMD vs. Intel comparison is simple and straightforward: AMD's Kaveri and Richland APUs are priced to compete against Intel's Pentium, Celeron, and a few Core i3 products. As we discussed earlier this year, component pricing decisions have made it more difficult for AMD to compete with Intel in the budget desktop gaming market. In laptops, the situation is markedly different. Below $600, Intel laptops with discrete GPUs are either nonexistent or use the very bottom of Nvidia or AMD's product stacks — solutions so weak, in other words, that Intel's own integrated chip might actually be an improvement, or at least on equal footing. This is what a discrete laptop graphics card looks like, in case you've ever wondered. HP's AMD-equipped systems, in contrast, start fielding discrete GPUs below the $600 mark. The 17-inch HP Pavilion 17z Touch is based on the A8-6410 (Beema) with a maximum turbo clock of 2.4GHz and a modest R7 M260 (384 GPU cores) for $569. There's also a Pavilion 15z with an A10-5745M and the same R7 M260 at $569. AMD has wedged itself nicely into the $550-$650 segment, though HP appears to be one of the only companies that's capitalized on it. HP is virtually the only major OEM with an Intel CPU/Nvidia GPU combination for under $800, and the Intel rigs don't start until $649, with the relatively anemic GeForce 830M. If you're willing to sacrifice touch, you can buy an Intel/Nvidia system for $660. Performance comparisons between AMD and Intel in mobile gaming show a decisive advantage for Chipzilla when using high-end GPUs, but remember — we're talking about far more modest graphics cards, where AMD's weaker CPU performance is less likely to be a major problem. Which OEMs still ship discrete GPUs? One of the most interesting aspects to this situation is that the various OEMs have adopted dramatically different approaches. Dell Dell has all but expunged discrete GPUs from its sub-$1000 products; the cheapest non-Alienware laptop is $989 for a discrete GPU. If you want a discrete GPU in a Dell-built system, you're going to pay a huge premium — or you're buying an Alienware, at $1100 and up. Dell does get a nod for a better shopping experience — the company has revamped its entire website since we last went shopping, and the result is a much cleaner look, even if the choices we'd prefer are lacking. HP HP still offers the "classic" buying experience of way too many models with no clear way to differentiate between them and terrible search choices. As annoying as that is, it's also the only OEM to offer a wide range of GPU and CPU selections as we've mentioned above. A few systems, like the HP Envy 14T, include forced upsell tactics — choose the GeForce 850M, and HP requires you to shuck out an extra $50 for a 1920×1080 screen. HP appears to ship the most AMD options and has the lowest prices for both AMD and Intel when equipped with a discrete GPU. HP also has the best sub-$1000 options if you care most about gaming — it has multiple Intel systems with a GeForce GTX 850M in the $800-$900 range. Lenovo Lenovo has put a huge push behind its Y50 solution, calling the laptop (which starts at $1029) an "entry-level" gaming system. Wired savaged the laptop's display quality, which makes it a non-starter for us — a dim, hard-to-read 1920×1080 panel on a laptop is a product killer regardless of other specs. Other reviews, including reviews which ranked the laptop better overall, still pan the dim display. Lenovo's Y40 is actually a stronger option. It offers a small SSD cache drive (HP's systems in this price range don't) and a quad-core CPU compared to a dual-core model from HP. Unfortunately, the GPU is significantly weaker — the GTX 755M has 384 cores, compared to 640 cores on the GTX 850M. Asus, MSI, Acer We've combined these vendors together because they tend to sell through outlets, like Newegg.com, rather than on their own websites. For the most part, each of them follows the trends we've already described. Just a tiny fraction of the nearly 500 ultrabooks listed for sale at Newegg actually carry discrete GPUs, and it's difficult to find good gaming hardware even in the mainstream section. Acer does have an Intel laptop paired up with an AMD GPU for just $600, and there's a handful of Asus models below the $700 mark. MSI also has several systems in this category, but they're all paired with the GTX 820M — an anemic non-starter as far as any real gaming is concerned. Interestingly, there are just two AMD laptops with discrete GPUs for under $800. This is one area where HP delivers the goods more effectively than the other OEMs. Troubling trends Last year, we tore into the then-current crop of ultrabooks for being a confusing mess of SKUs, Ivy Bridge, Haswell, and touch versus non-touch options. Dell has cleaned its presentation up remarkably, HP at least retains some degree of utility to make up for the bewildering web design, and Lenovo is still a wretched, wretched website where two products with virtually identical specs can have vastly different price tags. All of that, however, is orthogonal to the really troubling issue — neither Nvidia nor AMD appear to have any place in the new, high-end ultrabooks, convertibles, or other cutting-edge form factors. The PC OEMs appear to have pursued what we'll call an "Appleization" strategy. Systems at the $1000 price point have been specced out according to what the MacBook Air offers — which means options like SSDs and discrete cards only start to appear around this price point for Intel systems. Ultrabooks typically eschew discrete options altogether unless you're paying well over $1000. There are a few exceptions from companies like Razer, but for the most part, the ultrabook revolution is an Intel-only club. That trend doesn't do anyone much good. We'd like to see more ultrabooks with discrete cards, even at the mid-range level — otherwise AMD and Nvidia will be locked out of the hottest growth areas for laptop systems. Takeaways If you're willing to buy an AMD system, you can walk away with a modest CPU and GPU for under $650. For Intel, the bar is higher — plan to pay at least $750 for most of your Intel options. It's still exceptionally difficult to find features like SSDs, discrete GPUs, and reasonable screen resolutions in the same place (the Lenovo Y40 probably comes closest to this). For now, the 2-in-1, convertible, and other high-end ultrabook systems are either closed to discrete GPUs or require a huge investment — budget buyers need not apply.      (c) 2014 Fars News Agency. All rights reserved Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info). |