jonpad01 :
I love where the apu is going, but I don't think you are ever going to see the performance you are expecting. The apus use memory directly from your DDR3 system memory, and DDR3 is a serious drawback, I doubt DDR4 will even be able to compare to GDDR5(for graphics), they are designed for different applications.
GDDR5 Is designed to read and write at the same time, thus it can sustain high bandwidth, which is great for graphics rendering. DDR3 can only either read or write, but it has low write/read latency's. The point being they work very well for the processor they were designed to work with, not so well the other way around.
I don't understand why they didn't just solder on some dedicated GDDR5 to the motherboard.
Shared graphics is also a great idea, but again, the DDR3 from your apu is most likely going to hurt your performance as opposed to a just using a dedicated card by itself.
The APU's are probably one of the smartest moves amd have ever made.
They cant compete high end with the fx chips against intel,so they go for the lower end ,integrated chipsets with decent performance on the cpu & gpu front but nothing exciting - they pretty much have that market sector sewn up now imo.
Youll never see integrated ddr4/5 memory on the motherboards,the way it is now people have a nice choice price/preformance ratio for their actual needs & save everyone money - why pair a board with ddr5 ram with a low end a4/a6 apu at a massively expensive cost ( integrated ram motherboards would be 2-3 x as expensive at least) when you can throw a quad setup together for just over $100 the way it is.
with an a4 your betting going 133 ram /1600 at the max.
with the a8/10 chips the choice is down to the buyer whether they spend a little more on 1866/2133/2400 to push that extra graphics performance.
Ill liken AMD's fx range to the cheap american muscle cars with big V8s that are cheap but at the expense of fuel costs & maintenance - you wouldnt use one for the 30minute journey into work,but theyre fine for decent journeys & will even give you a good day out on a track if thats your thing.
The APU range are their family saloon up to hot hatchback of the cpu world,a lot of different models with varying engine sizes & prices to suit everyone upto the boy racer who wants a bit of grunt but would get eaten alive by the big boys on the track.
Intel are the asian manufactured hot hatches & sports cars,hi-tec ,fast ,with performance to match the muscle cars,smaller engines though more highly tuned,lower fuel consumption but a much higher cost to buy in the first place.