The case of the vanishing mobile GPU (and what budget gamers should do about it)

The case of the vanishing mobile GPU (and what budget gamers should do about it)
Back when Intel first began pushing ultrabooks I noticed a trend — the overwhelming majority of systems deployed under the ultrabook moniker relied exclusively on Intel’s integrated graphics.

Back when Intel first began pushing ultrabooks I noticed a trend — 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.

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 15zwith 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.

Next page: Which OEMs still ship discrete GPUs?

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