With the new Kaveri APUs from AMD coming out and new intel processors sporting Iris and Iris Pro integrated graphics, I wanted to open a discussion about which was better for both computing power and for gaming, what the pros and cons of both are, and what you think will come of these new graphics solutions.
IMO, I think Kaveri will be a nice push for AMD, but is far from a the big deal it needs to be to really make a dent. While it seems that Kaveri would beat out Iris Pro in benchmarks and FPS (I still haven't seen any good comparisons), I don't know if it'll be enough. I think that AMD needs to get these into the mobile market ASAP if they want them to catch on. But I'm interested too in the power consumption Kaveri will have versus Haswell with Iris Pro.
Also, I know that that Kaveri chips will be much more inexpensive than Intel chips with Iris Pro (as per the usual AMD vs. Intel pricing), but what about when all factors are considered? For these APUs to really show off, you need fast RAM and a lot of it (8 GB or more, preferably 1866 MHz or higher), which will add to the cost. I've heard a lot of people saying that Kaveri is a great for a budget build, but considering that a budget build in my mind usually has 4 GB of 1600 MHz RAM, maybe 8GB if you can get a good deal, I don't know how budget-friendly Kaveri will be. Like I said, you want to get a good amount of RAM and make sure it's a high speed, which adds not only to the cost of the RAM, but requires a motherboard to support that speed, which will be more expensive as well.
Take this hypothetical:
Typically, 8 GB of 1600 MHz RAM is about $70-80 US. Bump it up to 1866 and you're adding at least $20-30. Bump it up to 2133 and you're adding another $20-30. All in all, your RAM could go from $70 to around $140-150 US, or about twice as much. Same too with the motherboard. Motherboards are all priced differently based on all their features, but you'll need a more premium motherboard to support that RAM, which adds to the cost and could change other factors too, like form factor (I don't know of any ITX motherboards that support more than 1866), which will also affect the case, and heat output from the RAM.
All in all, it'll be interesting to see how AMD implements these new cores. I think it's a great step in the right direction, but there are still a lot of considerations to be... considered, I guess, and a lot of kinks to be worked out of this hose.
What do you guys think?
