What was the motivation behind AMD only putting iGPUs on their APU chips?

Seeing as how Intel have managed to put iGPUs on their processors and still have them be good performers (in reference to both the iGPU and processor), what was the reason behind AMD not including iGPUs on their main CPUs? And will this trend be continuing into Zen?

Production cost. Made them cheaper to manufacture and then they could offer them to the consumer for considerably less than Intel CPUs in the same performance class market niche. They also figured that enthusiasts would be using a discrete video card anyway, which was a good assumption. It would have also added to the TDP which was already problematic.

And Intel's iGPUs were really not that good. It's only recently they were even acceptable. The graphics on a cheap AMD APU used to stomp Intel's attempts. A lot. Hard. It's why AMD's sales of APUs were so good for so long. That, and AMD offered the option to Xfire some of its APUs with a discrete card and give decent real graphics performance for not much money. An APU let you play Minecraft on high settings, Intels integrated graphics barely let you play Minesweeper-if you turned the settings down. LOL

Vishera said:

Seeing as how Intel have managed to put iGPUs on their processors and still have them be good performers (in reference to both the iGPU and processor), what was the reason behind AMD not including iGPUs on their main CPUs? And will this trend be continuing into Zen?

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I think most enthusiasts don't wan't an igpu on their chips.

^This!

It makes perfect sense. One has a good graphics solution, one has none. There is no reason to have an in between.

Saul Goodman said:

It makes perfect sense. One has a good graphics solution, one has none. There is no reason to have an in between.

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I think being able to order your CPU first and not worry about having a GPU is a nice bonus. And if your GPU dies, even just being able to still use the computer in general is a big help. There are some whose computer is what they use to make a living, and drop in the bucket or not, I think it's kinda unfortunate they might consider Intel the only option for their CPU because they can't risk being stuck without a GPU. Maybe I over think things though

Vishera said:

I think being able to order your CPU first and not worry about having a GPU is a nice bonus. And if your GPU dies, even just being able to still use the computer in general is a big help. There are some whose computer is what they use to make a living, and drop in the bucket or not, I think it's kinda unfortunate they might consider Intel the only option for their CPU because they can't risk being stuck without a GPU. Maybe I over think things though

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99.99% of the people who buy enthusiast level cpu's want nothing to do with an igpu. It is a waste of die space, and adds cost for no reason. Plus graphics using system memory don't perform in lock step with a very powerful cpu. I didn't want to use the term "bottleneck". That being said igpu's make great sense for cost conscious people who may do some light gaming.

Or no gaming. I would imagine a lot of money has been made by Dell, HP, etc. on inexpensive desktops that surf the web and put a picture on the display. And I've seen a lot of laptops built that same way.

Alaric said:

Or no gaming. I would imagine a lot of money has been made by Dell, HP, etc. on inexpensive desktops that surf the web and put a picture on the display. And I've seen a lot of laptops built that same way.

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Yes. I would imagine that most people today buy cheap pc's.

chrisjames61 said:

Yes. I would imagine that most people today buy cheap pc's.

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Might as well if the current one is 5-10 years old already. Time flies. "remember when we all had s462 and earlier chips?"... wasn't really THAT long ago lol.

Many more computers use IGP than discrete graphics. Even those who buy i5/i7 more often use IGP. It's because not all are playing games but still need higher CPU performance. Also Intel IGP isn't much worse than low discrete graphics cards from Nvidia or AMD. People often buy additional cards for more display outputs when new IGP can support up to 3 displays ( matter of mobo design ).
115x socket is not the highest series. 2011/3 is a socket designed for enthusiasts and workstations/servers and these CPUs have no IGP. FX at the beginning supposed to have the same target customers as 2011 enthusiast chips but somehow it failed and was matched with 115x chips. From 115x socket only K chips are considered as enthusiast series but who would change design of whole line of processors for a 2-3 chips which are not giving Intel the highest profit ( also there are users who can live with IGP ).

AMD APUs don't really have good graphics if you take a look at the specs of lower chips. You can play only on the highest chips which aren't so cheap. In reviews and users comments are almost only these top APUs matched with Intel IGP. Really if you want to play games then you buy discrete graphics. If not then who cares what IGP is there when all have similar features for 2D and general work including multi display support and higher screen resolution.

FX was overheating enough. It didn't need additional heater.

Until recently Intel's IGP sucked. People that even thought about it bought Intel chips because of market dominance, not IGP performance. I've seen a lot of laptops from Dell to Toshiba that used AMD APUs.

APUs were only in cheap and pretty bad series of laptops. AMD graphics were not that bad in general but everything with AMD CPU/APU in laptops was really bad comparing to Intel and was in lower series ( also lower quality in general ).
For maybe 2-3 generations there is no point of buying laptop with the lowest graphics from Nvidia or AMD. I mean you won't play anything on these graphic chips anyway so what's the point to pay more for additional graphics. Still a lot of series have something like GF910/920M or the lowest AMD whatever it was called but similar performance.
I don't think that anyone really cares about IGP performance in 3D. Those who want to play games buy gaming series. All others don't care if there is Intel, AMD or Nvidia as long as MS Office is working and they can browse web or use daily applications.

I am interested in APUs, but starting with the first Zen based APUs. One of those might make a really nice steam-machine. Stream from your desktop to your TV/steam box. Hardware decoding on the APU, and cheaper cost as you can for-go a dedicated card. The APUs should really benefit from DDR4 as well, but ultimately, time will tell.

Vishera said:

I think being able to order your CPU first and not worry about having a GPU is a nice bonus. And if your GPU dies, even just being able to still use the computer in general is a big help. There are some whose computer is what they use to make a living, and drop in the bucket or not, I think it's kinda unfortunate they might consider Intel the only option for their CPU because they can't risk being stuck without a GPU. Maybe I over think things though

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Then they should go with a cheap Intel Celeron, Pentium or i3.