Why Do Integrated Graphics SUCK?
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2019-05-06
·
894 words · ~4 min read
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when you think gaming pc there's obviously one thing that differentiates
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it from a regular computer plenty of RGB lighting
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wait when you think of gaming pc there's obviously one thing that differentiates
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it from a regular computer a powerful graphics card even dropping a solid GPU
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into a boring office box will turn it into a capable gaming machine but have
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you ever wondered why this was a requirement i mean plenty of computers have cpus
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with integrated graphics sometimes called igpus but they have a reputation
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for being low performance and not good for much other than playing less
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graphically intensive titles at lower resolutions so why haven't we figured
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out a way to strap powerful graphics processing into our cpus well one
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concern is space if you have a look at how much room the GPU takes up on a
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graphics card it's not very much compared to the rest of the pcb but
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notice that it's about the same size or maybe even larger than your system's CPU
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and all it does is process graphics simply put there just isn't enough die
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space available on a CPU package left over for graphics processing for an
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integrated GPU to be as powerful as a discrete card but why can't we just make
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GPU smaller well the processing units that make up the chips are very tightly
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packed and as transistor sizes have gotten smaller and smaller the likes of
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a b and NVIDIA have continued to cram more and more of them onto their gpus to
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make them more powerful and they still tend to be larger than cpus so it isn't
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just that practical to combine both into
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one part not to mention that if you did try to devote a lot more space in the
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CPU package to graphics you generate a lot more heat think about how large the
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coolers are on high-end graphics cards then think about one cooler trying to
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draw heat away from a chip package that has both high-end GPU and a high-end CPU
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working hard during a gaming session that's a lot of heat
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unsurprisingly money has something to do with this too you see since gpus tend to
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be physically larger than cpus they take up more space on the large round wafers
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they're printed on at the factory and space on that wafer isn't cheap meaning
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that Intel and AMD can make more money turning out smaller more in-demand cpus
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instead further limiting how much space on a CPU can be reserved for graphics
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but wait there's more there are also memory limitations with integrated
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graphics if you ever buy a discrete graphics card you'll notice that it uses
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a different type of memory than your system such as GDDR or hbm which are
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special kinds of RAM engineered to work more quickly with a GPU which has a
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fundamentally different architecture than a CPU but integrated graphics have
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to instead share your system's main memory which is not only slower but
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there may be less of it available than what would be on a discreet card which
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can limit both resolution and texture quality in more intensive games however
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that doesn't mean integrated graphics are useless and that all gamers should
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go and pick up expensive dedicated cards as time has worn on smaller transistor
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sizes and greater power efficiency mean that both Intel and AMD have been able
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to make eye gpus that can play lots of popular titles at 720 or even 1080p as
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long as you don't go too crazy with the graphical eye candy
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especially more esport and competition-oriented titles like cs go
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that aren't quite as demanding so if you're primarily into games that don't
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have a reputation for punishing hardware or you're just rocking a lower res
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monitor give the graphics card that came with your CPU a shot before plunking
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down lots of money on a discrete card after all plenty of things can
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accomplish two tasks well just look at our good friend the spork
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