"These price increases have multiple intertwining causes, some direct and some less so: inflation, pandemic-era supply crunches, the unpredictable trade policies of the Trump administration, and a gradual shift among console makers away from selling hardware at a loss or breaking even in the hopes that game sales will subsidize the hardware. And you never want to rule out good old shareholder-prioritizing corporate greed.
But one major factor, both in the price increases and in the reduction in drastic “slim”-style redesigns, is technical: the death of Moore’s Law and a noticeable slowdown in the rate at which processors and graphics chips can improve."
Fascinating discourse here. Love it.
What about a Framework laptop motherboard in a mini PC case? Do they ship with AMD APUs equivalent to that?
Hrm uh… Framework laptops… seem to be configurable as having a mobile grade CPU with integrated graphics… and also an optional, additional mobile grade, dedicated GPU.
So, not really an APU… unless you really want to haggle over definitions and say ‘technically, a CPU with pathetic integrated graphics still counts as a GPU and is thus an APU’.
Framework laptop boards don’t have the PCI-E 16x slot for a traditional desktop GPU. As far as I am aware, Minisforum are the only people that do that, along with a high powered mobile CPU.
Note that the Minisforum Mobo model I am talking about, the AMD chip is not really an APU, its also a CPU with integrated graphics. Its a Radeon 610M, basically the bare minimum to be able to render and output very basic 2d graphics.
True APUs are … things like what more modern consoles use, what a steam deck uses. They are still usually custom specs, proprietary to their vendor.
The Switch 2 will have a custom Nvidia APU, which is the first Nvidia APU of note to my knowledge, and it will be very interesting to learn more about it from teardowns and benchmarks.
…
Currently, the most powerful, non custom, generally publically available, compatible with standard PC mobos… arguably an APU, arguably not… is the AMD 8700G.
Its about $315 bucks, is a pretty decent CPU, but as a GPU… its less powerful than a standard desktop RX 6500 from AMD… which is the absolute lowest tier AMD GPU from now two generations back from current.
You… might be able to run … basically games older than 5ish years, at 1080p, medium graphics, at 60fps. I guess it would maybe be a decent option if you… wanted to build a console emulator machine, roughly for consoles … N64/PS1/Dreamcast, and older, as well as being able to play older PC games, or PC games at lower settings/no more than 1080p.
I am totally just spitballing with that though, trying to figure out all that exactly would be quite complicated.
…
But now, back to Framework.
Framework is soon to be releasing the Framework Desktop.
This is a small form factor PC… which uses an actual proper APU, either the AMD AI Max 385 or 395.
Its listed as MSRP of $1100, they say it can run Cyberpunk at 1440p on high settings at about 75 fps… thats with no ray tracing, no framegen… and I think also no frame upscaling being used.
So, presumably, if you turned on upscaling and framegen, you’d be able to get similar fps at ultra and psycho settings, and/or some amount of raytracing.
There are also other companies that offer this kind of true APU, MiniPC style architecture, such as EvoTek, though it seems like most of them are considerably more expensive.
https://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-ai-max-395-strix-halo-mini-pc-tested-powerful-apu-up-to-140w-power-128-gb-variable-memory-igpu/
… And finally, looks like Minisforum is sticking with the laptop CPU + desktop GPU design, and is soon going to be offering even more powerful CPU+Mobo models.
https://wccftech.com/minisforum-ryzen-9-9955hx-x870m-motd-motherboard-9955hx-ms-a2-mini-pc-strix-nas/
So yeah, this is actually quite an interesting time of diversification away from … what have basically been standard desktop mobo architectures… for … 2, 3? decades…
…shame it all also coincides with Trump throwing a literally historically unprecedented senilic temper tantrum, and fucking up prices and logistics for… basically the whole world, though of course much, much more seriously for the US.