How long is it going to be before we see any Threadripper APUs? I think having a 16 core with Vega graphics would make for a nice “budget” entry point into x399 platform. There’s plenty of room to replace some Zen dies with Vega ones. And we’d still have all the nice things like CPU to GPU communication via InfinityFabric and possibility to CrossFire with a discrete Vega card later.
Does anybody else think this would be useful? Do you think AMD is even considering this? Just late night thoughts/questions I thought I’d share
Whilst it could be possible i don’t think you’ll see it this generation. Not until AMD can put something properly powerful in there, and even then… the goal-posts for “properly powerful” are constantly moving forward.
If you’re looking for a budget entry point to X399, you can get a discrete GPU for say $200 that will greatly out-perform what you’d get on a socket with onboard Navi for example, and in terms of the total BOM for a threadripper box, that’s peanuts.
If you want something that is essentially just “dumb vga out” then you can pick up cards to do that for 20-30 bucks or less. You wouldn’t be saving much if anything. Except you’re sacrificing cores on the CPU and AMD potentially need to do more validation/testing/production lines… for very little gain.
The number of people who would jump on that cpu would be minimal… same reason AMD canned the 1900x threadripper. too niche, not worth putting out when Ryzen covers that segment pretty well anyway.
To my knowledge, X399 never specified any signal pins for video out. So there is no way to get a video signal from the processor to the mainboard. And consequently there are no X399 mainboards that have video ports on their rear I/O panel.
So no, APUs were not planned to be an option when X399 was designed.
I don’t think it will ever happen. Threadripper is about workstation/HEDT. This is this where system builders are spending serious money for performance. Having an integrated GPU that takes away from CPU performance makes no sense. Also system builders would probably want a better quality GPU than an integrated GPU could provide.
APUs only really make sense in two use cases: limited budget and/or limited physical space.
Limited budget for build where the system builders want to keep the BoM price tag down and need a video out but no intense video requirements.
Limited space is often laptops, ultra books, HTPC, and some appliances.