Waiting for the RX 470 is one way to cut the budget. It will probably still be faster than an R9 380, and cheaper, too. And it's the same Polaris 10 chip as the RX 480, so it should be coming very soon.
But I'd still say that you just shouldn't replace the motherboard. If you want a faster CPU, drop a faster Ivy Bridge Core i5/i7 into your current motherboard. The upgrade to Sky Lake costs too much and doesn't gain you enough over that.
I wanted to give my friend my current parts except GPU, he already has a better one than me(which I bought him for his birthday) but it's just too expensive since I have to buy the OS as well. Guess he'll have to live with his aging CPU until he can afford to upgrade... Should be possible once he pays off his $700 phone lol.
I want to upgrade my RAM up to 16GB whether or not I buy a new mobo so I was thinking I might as well just get a new one but new another 8GB of ran is only ~$30 vs like $300 for a whole 16GB, mobo, and OS.
On game debate battlefield 1 recommends 16GB(probably because battlefront did) even though actual requirements aren't out yet. But I guess I can leave the memory out until it BF1 actually comes out to see how it does with 8GB.
The thing about memory is that it's really easy to add more later. You can try playing the game and check memory usage, but if it's a game where 8 GB genuinely isn't enough, I think their playerbase is going to be rather smaller than they hoped.
My advice here is, don't replace your motherboard without getting a new computer entirely. I see two directions that you could reasonably go here:
1) Get a faster Ivy Bridge processor (Core i5-3570/3570K or Core i7-3770/3770K) to drop into your old computer, add a Radeon RX 480, and use the leftover budget to get yourself a good SSD.
2) Sell the old computer excluding peripherals intact (potentially to the person you were planning on giving parts to) and use the revenue from that to expand your budget so that you have $800 or $900 or whatever to spend on a new computer.
If you try to replace the motherboard, then you also have to replace memory and your old OS license probably isn't still valid. That eats up so much of your budget that if you try to fit a Sky Lake quad core, you're stuck with a low clocked one that defeats the whole point of getting a Sky Lake quad core. I've seen recommendations for a Core i5-6400 above, but that will often be slower than a Core i7-3770 that can be had for much cheaper because you don't have to replace the motherboard and memory.
If you go with option (1), you could still gift your old video card to a friend, as you're replacing that outright. Depending on what CPU he has, even from 2008 might still not be completely terrible.
Is there a point where the options for this socket become a bottleneck? I happen to have a stock i7 3770K and have been deliberating over the upcoming GPUs and whether or not I would see performance gains without a complete upgrade.
My advice here is, don't replace your motherboard without getting a new computer entirely. I see two directions that you could reasonably go here:
1) Get a faster Ivy Bridge processor (Core i5-3570/3570K or Core i7-3770/3770K) to drop into your old computer, add a Radeon RX 480, and use the leftover budget to get yourself a good SSD.
2) Sell the old computer excluding peripherals intact (potentially to the person you were planning on giving parts to) and use the revenue from that to expand your budget so that you have $800 or $900 or whatever to spend on a new computer.
If you try to replace the motherboard, then you also have to replace memory and your old OS license probably isn't still valid. That eats up so much of your budget that if you try to fit a Sky Lake quad core, you're stuck with a low clocked one that defeats the whole point of getting a Sky Lake quad core. I've seen recommendations for a Core i5-6400 above, but that will often be slower than a Core i7-3770 that can be had for much cheaper because you don't have to replace the motherboard and memory.
If you go with option (1), you could still gift your old video card to a friend, as you're replacing that outright. Depending on what CPU he has, even from 2008 might still not be completely terrible.
Is there a point where the options for this socket become a bottleneck? I happen to have a stock i7 3770K and have been deliberating over the upcoming GPUs and whether or not I would see performance gains without a complete upgrade.
Not really.
Sure, you can get some situations where an 1155 will bottleneck, but those are pretty far outliers - and overclocking shortens that gap considerably.
Even a Sandy Bridge (the generation before your chip) is still holding it's own very strongly against Skylake (the current generation). The biggest reasons to upgrade your motherboard wouldn't be so much for a faster CPU - they are faster, but not by a huge amount - but rather for auxiliary features (such as USB 3.0, more SSD options, higher efficiency, etc).
My advice here is, don't replace your motherboard without getting a new computer entirely. I see two directions that you could reasonably go here:
1) Get a faster Ivy Bridge processor (Core i5-3570/3570K or Core i7-3770/3770K) to drop into your old computer, add a Radeon RX 480, and use the leftover budget to get yourself a good SSD.
2) Sell the old computer excluding peripherals intact (potentially to the person you were planning on giving parts to) and use the revenue from that to expand your budget so that you have $800 or $900 or whatever to spend on a new computer.
If you try to replace the motherboard, then you also have to replace memory and your old OS license probably isn't still valid. That eats up so much of your budget that if you try to fit a Sky Lake quad core, you're stuck with a low clocked one that defeats the whole point of getting a Sky Lake quad core. I've seen recommendations for a Core i5-6400 above, but that will often be slower than a Core i7-3770 that can be had for much cheaper because you don't have to replace the motherboard and memory.
If you go with option (1), you could still gift your old video card to a friend, as you're replacing that outright. Depending on what CPU he has, even from 2008 might still not be completely terrible.
Is there a point where the options for this socket become a bottleneck? I happen to have a stock i7 3770K and have been deliberating over the upcoming GPUs and whether or not I would see performance gains without a complete upgrade.
A game that doesn't perform well on a Core i7-3770K is a game that doesn't perform well, period. There's only so much you can do to try to fix bad software with better hardware. What video card do you have? And do you have an SSD?
I'm also wondering about the amd zen chips. From what I see they'll only have enthuziest chips though? The thing I like most about amd cpus is that they don't change their required socket type every other damn day. If their performance is at least equal to intel I'm guessing they'd also be cheaper. By the time they're released I'd also have more money to spend.
AMD is apparently starting with an 8-core Zen CPU. I'd assume that there will also be cut down 4-core and 6-core versions, with possibly a separate die entirely for quad cores in addition to salvage parts. That's due out this year.
If their past is any guide, then next year, they'll surely have an APU with Zen cores plus integrated graphics. From their history, 4 Zen cores are likely. I somewhat expect a dual-core version, too.
AMD hasn't announced this, but I'd be shocked if they don't eventually make a package with the CPU, GPU, and HBM all on package. That might eliminate the need for DDR4 entirely, which would allow making it an SoC with all the USB and SATA ports you expect in a desktop. And it would also mean a different socket.
I think it makes the most sense in laptops. If AMD builds such a part, they'd completely own the gaming laptop market to the extent that Intel and/or Nvidia options would be purely point and laugh at how bad they are outside of the low end, unless Intel is able to scale up GPU performance and do likewise.
And if AMD goes that route, there's no reason why they have to stop at lower end integrated graphics like they have in the past for desktops due to memory bandwidth constraints. They could readily make integrated graphics that beats out contemporary $300 discrete cards, drop the PCI Express bus entirely, and have no reason for the case to be bigger than a shoebox.
It might take a while to get there. But the technology exists that AMD could do it next year if they want to (and made appropriate decisions a few years ago to get there in 2017). Five years from now, discrete video cards will probably be rare in new gaming desktops and not even available in new gaming laptops.
That sounds awesome. I'll see if I can wait another year to upgrade. Hopefully there's no game that I absolutely must play that I can't play at acceptable frame rates. And if there is, I'll probably be able to get it on xbox one.
I like what microsoft is doing with the new play anywhere thing coming soon. Sometimes I like playing on console and other times I like playing on PC, so only buying a game once and being able to play it on either is a nice feature.
That sounds awesome. I'll see if I can wait another year to upgrade. Hopefully there's no game that I absolutely must play that I can't play at acceptable frame rates. And if there is, I'll probably be able to get it on xbox one.
I like what microsoft is doing with the new play anywhere thing coming soon. Sometimes I like playing on console and other times I like playing on PC, so only buying a game once and being able to play it on either is a nice feature.
If the XB1 low framerate is okay, then you probably will find that your games will have an acceptable framerate too. Not sure what MS is doing with the play anywhere thing, but if it involves using UWP, then you might need a more powerful PC anyway, jury is still out on that one tbh, it would be handy if you could stream a game from your PC onto your XB1 though, save messing around connecting your PC to your TV.
I currently have i3-3220 as CPU and AMD HD7770 as GPU and I'd like to upgrade. I don't OC. I play at 1920x1080 and don't mind medium settings. Would prefer 45+ fps. I prefer intel for CPU and AMD for GPU.
I'll need a new MOBO and RAM too. my budget is $600.
What are the best parts I can get?
Go here and make it simple on yourself. Build exactly what you want, order it and they will even tell you how to install things if you run into troubles.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
That sounds awesome. I'll see if I can wait another year to upgrade. Hopefully there's no game that I absolutely must play that I can't play at acceptable frame rates. And if there is, I'll probably be able to get it on xbox one.
I like what microsoft is doing with the new play anywhere thing coming soon. Sometimes I like playing on console and other times I like playing on PC, so only buying a game once and being able to play it on either is a nice feature.
Game consoles are going to push things in that direction and hard. There will never again be a game console with a discrete video card.
AMD's APUs have had "zero copy" for five years now. That is, if you want to copy data from the CPU to the GPU, it just has to pass a pointer and doesn't actually copy the data. That makes it possible to pick out chunks of work on the GPU at a far more fine-grained level than used to be possible, shuffling off work to the GPU when it used to be faster to do it on the CPU than to copy it back and forth over PCI Express.
And you'd better believe that AMD is going to encourage console game developers to take full advantage of this. Both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One can do it, and every new future console that ever exists will be able to do the same, even if it's not AMD hardware inside.
Now what happens when those console games get ported to PC? Suddenly you have a situation where a high end video card and a high end CPU can't run the game well because you have a massive PCI Express bottleneck. But an APU runs it great. So there will be pressure on gamers to get integrated graphics, because there will be certain games where it's the only way to get good performance.
What happens to Nvidia in this market? Nvidia doesn't have an x86 license. Intel would be able to compete if so inclined, and their GPUs, while still not competitive, have been gaining on AMD and Nvidia. With Tegra all but dead, and Nvidia locked out of the desktop and laptop markets, what's left? Cars and HPC? A desperate deal to put an Intel CPU and an Nvidia GPU in the same package, which Intel would probably be reluctant to go for? Try to convince people that the games are unfairly cheating by not using CUDA?
That's several years away, and I expect high end integrated graphics to be available well before there are games that really need it.
That sounds awesome. I'll see if I can wait another year to upgrade. Hopefully there's no game that I absolutely must play that I can't play at acceptable frame rates. And if there is, I'll probably be able to get it on xbox one.
I like what microsoft is doing with the new play anywhere thing coming soon. Sometimes I like playing on console and other times I like playing on PC, so only buying a game once and being able to play it on either is a nice feature.
Game consoles are going to push things in that direction and hard. There will never again be a game console with a discrete video card.
AMD's APUs have had "zero copy" for five years now. That is, if you want to copy data from the CPU to the GPU, it just has to pass a pointer and doesn't actually copy the data. That makes it possible to pick out chunks of work on the GPU at a far more fine-grained level than used to be possible, shuffling off work to the GPU when it used to be faster to do it on the CPU than to copy it back and forth over PCI Express.
And you'd better believe that AMD is going to encourage console game developers to take full advantage of this. Both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One can do it, and every new future console that ever exists will be able to do the same, even if it's not AMD hardware inside.
Now what happens when those console games get ported to PC? Suddenly you have a situation where a high end video card and a high end CPU can't run the game well because you have a massive PCI Express bottleneck. But an APU runs it great. So there will be pressure on gamers to get integrated graphics, because there will be certain games where it's the only way to get good performance.
What happens to Nvidia in this market? Nvidia doesn't have an x86 license. Intel would be able to compete if so inclined, and their GPUs, while still not competitive, have been gaining on AMD and Nvidia. With Tegra all but dead, and Nvidia locked out of the desktop and laptop markets, what's left? Cars and HPC? A desperate deal to put an Intel CPU and an Nvidia GPU in the same package, which Intel would probably be reluctant to go for? Try to convince people that the games are unfairly cheating by not using CUDA?
That's several years away, and I expect high end integrated graphics to be available well before there are games that really need it.
The battle between Nvidia and AMD and AMD and Intel, is not that straight forward though, and i am not sure that integrated GPU and CPU are even the way forward, at least, not for Desktop PC's and possibly not for Laptops either. I read an article in forbes recently that covered some of this, and while i wouldn't treat it as 100% solid info, its an interesting opinion piece. http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/05/25/why-did-nvidia-win-the-gpu-market/#4c5b76903559 The title of the article is a bit misleading, although it probably is true that Nvidia has a greater market share when it comes to gaming PC's, and its no surprise that for many, Intel is the CPU of choice, if you can afford it. Well, the market of GPU's and CPU's for that matter is a fairly fluid one, and a lot can change in just 1 year, so who knows, Nvidia and Intel might be 'winning' at the moment, but the future isn't written in stone.
I had an APU in the past and it didn't perform too badly but it was still fairly bad. Sold it off, and have the system I do now. I just looked up a video using one of the newer APUs running doom 4 at 20-30 fps but I doubt it's optimized for PC APUs. Probably is for the console ones though. I wonder how much using HBM on em would affect the price.
That sounds awesome. I'll see if I can wait another year to upgrade. Hopefully there's no game that I absolutely must play that I can't play at acceptable frame rates. And if there is, I'll probably be able to get it on xbox one.
I like what microsoft is doing with the new play anywhere thing coming soon. Sometimes I like playing on console and other times I like playing on PC, so only buying a game once and being able to play it on either is a nice feature.
Game consoles are going to push things in that direction and hard. There will never again be a game console with a discrete video card.
AMD's APUs have had "zero copy" for five years now. That is, if you want to copy data from the CPU to the GPU, it just has to pass a pointer and doesn't actually copy the data. That makes it possible to pick out chunks of work on the GPU at a far more fine-grained level than used to be possible, shuffling off work to the GPU when it used to be faster to do it on the CPU than to copy it back and forth over PCI Express.
And you'd better believe that AMD is going to encourage console game developers to take full advantage of this. Both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One can do it, and every new future console that ever exists will be able to do the same, even if it's not AMD hardware inside.
Now what happens when those console games get ported to PC? Suddenly you have a situation where a high end video card and a high end CPU can't run the game well because you have a massive PCI Express bottleneck. But an APU runs it great. So there will be pressure on gamers to get integrated graphics, because there will be certain games where it's the only way to get good performance.
What happens to Nvidia in this market? Nvidia doesn't have an x86 license. Intel would be able to compete if so inclined, and their GPUs, while still not competitive, have been gaining on AMD and Nvidia. With Tegra all but dead, and Nvidia locked out of the desktop and laptop markets, what's left? Cars and HPC? A desperate deal to put an Intel CPU and an Nvidia GPU in the same package, which Intel would probably be reluctant to go for? Try to convince people that the games are unfairly cheating by not using CUDA?
That's several years away, and I expect high end integrated graphics to be available well before there are games that really need it.
The battle between Nvidia and AMD and AMD and Intel, is not that straight forward though, and i am not sure that integrated GPU and CPU are even the way forward, at least, not for Desktop PC's and possibly not for Laptops either. I read an article in forbes recently that covered some of this, and while i wouldn't treat it as 100% solid info, its an interesting opinion piece. http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/05/25/why-did-nvidia-win-the-gpu-market/#4c5b76903559 The title of the article is a bit misleading, although it probably is true that Nvidia has a greater market share when it comes to gaming PC's, and its no surprise that for many, Intel is the CPU of choice, if you can afford it. Well, the market of GPU's and CPU's for that matter is a fairly fluid one, and a lot can change in just 1 year, so who knows, Nvidia and Intel might be 'winning' at the moment, but the future isn't written in stone.
Being able to combine everything into one package is a huge, huge technical advantage, the likes of which has never been seen in the history of GPUs apart from recent console decisions--which did not go well for Nvidia. In order for Nvidia to not quickly become a complete joke in laptops, they need to either:
a) be far, far ahead of the competition in GPU capabilities, in a way that they haven't been in nearly a decade (between the launch of the GeForce GTX 8800 and Radeon HD 2900 XT), and stay that far ahead forever, or b) pray that whoever is competitive with them in GPUs isn't remotely competitive in x86 CPUs.
(a) is not happening, full stop. You can, now and then, get ahead for several months here or there, but you don't stay ahead forever.
(b) probably ends with Zen. Zen doesn't need to be just as good as Kaby Lake for (b) to end; it just needs to be not that much worse. About as good as Broadwell, as is rumored, easily clears that threshold.
In desktops, it will probably take much longer to play out. A single package is still a big technical advantage, but not nearly as big of one as when you're space or power limited. But don't be surprised if Nvidia announces the end of the GeForce line entirely five or seven years from now.
I had an APU in the past and it didn't perform too badly but it was still fairly bad. Sold it off, and have the system I do now. I just looked up a video using one of the newer APUs running doom 4 at 20-30 fps but I doubt it's optimized for PC APUs. Probably is for the console ones though. I wonder how much using HBM on em would affect the price.
APU will never be a thing for desktops, it doesn't make sense economically.
Do not get fooled by long winded walls of text, more often than not, especially on these boards, the word count is there to supplement for lack of back up and reason....
I had an APU in the past and it didn't perform too badly but it was still fairly bad. Sold it off, and have the system I do now. I just looked up a video using one of the newer APUs running doom 4 at 20-30 fps but I doubt it's optimized for PC APUs. Probably is for the console ones though. I wonder how much using HBM on em would affect the price.
I don't think APU's really are aimed at anything other than Budget PC's, you can probably use them for gaming, but as you saw, the experience with low framerate is an issue that is probably to be expected, don't know if HBM would make much difference as i suspect there are other issues beyond the price that would complicate their use, having a seperate GPU that uses HBM, or HBM2 is more likely imo, and is probably the direction that GPU's will end up going, if the price doesn't end up being too exorbitant, and the performance really is improved enough over gddr5x without being too expensive to implement. I think a lot depends on what comes after DDR4 for system memory, and whether or not HBM2 will be successful for GPU's, there are issues that have to be resolved first by the looks of things, but either way, imo, APU's are not the way forward for Gaming PC's, but will have to wait and see.
Bandwidth actually has a pretty significant impact on the performance of an APU. From looking at some benchmarks with memory of varying bandwidth 12.8GBps vs 17GBps has around a 5fps difference in average fps with the A10-7850. I want to see what affect HBM would have on an APU.
Does an APU use zero copy automatically, or is it something developers have to handle?
jusomdude said: Even with the 380 I'm about $80 over budget at 683.
Then you are buying some pointlessly expensive parts.
All you need is one of the lower clocked i5 - $200, B150 board - $65 and 8GB RAM - about $35.
You should fit easily within $300.
R9 380 starts at $150.
There isn't much point waiting a year or more, there will always be something new coming up in a year, you will be waiting forever.
Not saying you have to buy something now or in a few weeks, just pointing out it isn't very good argument.
Get a lower clocked Core i5-6400 and you pay huge price premium for a part that is a downgrade from the Core i7-3770 that he could drop into his current rig.
Bandwidth actually has a pretty significant impact on the performance of an APU. From looking at some benchmarks with memory of varying bandwidth 12.8GBps vs 17GBps has around a 5fps difference in average fps with the A10-7850. I want to see what affect HBM would have on an APU.
Does an APU use zero copy automatically, or is it something developers have to handle?
Bandwidth is main bottleneck in APU, thats why new AM4 platform is good as you can plug in DDR4 3000-3200 MHz RAM so you can naturally increase speed by that much. HBM is next big step which would theoretucally remove bandwith issues and would make putting more SPs on APU meaningful.
Not sure when HBM APUs would be available, I'm guessing no less than a year. It would be nice to save money not having to buy a discreet GPU, but idk if it's worth the wait just to save ~150-200 over a years time instead of buying a 470 relatively soon, when it's unsure how much of an upgrade the APU would actually be.
Comments
But I'd still say that you just shouldn't replace the motherboard. If you want a faster CPU, drop a faster Ivy Bridge Core i5/i7 into your current motherboard. The upgrade to Sky Lake costs too much and doesn't gain you enough over that.
I want to upgrade my RAM up to 16GB whether or not I buy a new mobo so I was thinking I might as well just get a new one but new another 8GB of ran is only ~$30 vs like $300 for a whole 16GB, mobo, and OS.
Sure, you can get some situations where an 1155 will bottleneck, but those are pretty far outliers - and overclocking shortens that gap considerably.
Even a Sandy Bridge (the generation before your chip) is still holding it's own very strongly against Skylake (the current generation). The biggest reasons to upgrade your motherboard wouldn't be so much for a faster CPU - they are faster, but not by a huge amount - but rather for auxiliary features (such as USB 3.0, more SSD options, higher efficiency, etc).
If their past is any guide, then next year, they'll surely have an APU with Zen cores plus integrated graphics. From their history, 4 Zen cores are likely. I somewhat expect a dual-core version, too.
AMD hasn't announced this, but I'd be shocked if they don't eventually make a package with the CPU, GPU, and HBM all on package. That might eliminate the need for DDR4 entirely, which would allow making it an SoC with all the USB and SATA ports you expect in a desktop. And it would also mean a different socket.
I think it makes the most sense in laptops. If AMD builds such a part, they'd completely own the gaming laptop market to the extent that Intel and/or Nvidia options would be purely point and laugh at how bad they are outside of the low end, unless Intel is able to scale up GPU performance and do likewise.
And if AMD goes that route, there's no reason why they have to stop at lower end integrated graphics like they have in the past for desktops due to memory bandwidth constraints. They could readily make integrated graphics that beats out contemporary $300 discrete cards, drop the PCI Express bus entirely, and have no reason for the case to be bigger than a shoebox.
It might take a while to get there. But the technology exists that AMD could do it next year if they want to (and made appropriate decisions a few years ago to get there in 2017). Five years from now, discrete video cards will probably be rare in new gaming desktops and not even available in new gaming laptops.
I like what microsoft is doing with the new play anywhere thing coming soon. Sometimes I like playing on console and other times I like playing on PC, so only buying a game once and being able to play it on either is a nice feature.
Not sure what MS is doing with the play anywhere thing, but if it involves using UWP, then you might need a more powerful PC anyway, jury is still out on that one tbh, it would be handy if you could stream a game from your PC onto your XB1 though, save messing around connecting your PC to your TV.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
AMD's APUs have had "zero copy" for five years now. That is, if you want to copy data from the CPU to the GPU, it just has to pass a pointer and doesn't actually copy the data. That makes it possible to pick out chunks of work on the GPU at a far more fine-grained level than used to be possible, shuffling off work to the GPU when it used to be faster to do it on the CPU than to copy it back and forth over PCI Express.
And you'd better believe that AMD is going to encourage console game developers to take full advantage of this. Both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One can do it, and every new future console that ever exists will be able to do the same, even if it's not AMD hardware inside.
Now what happens when those console games get ported to PC? Suddenly you have a situation where a high end video card and a high end CPU can't run the game well because you have a massive PCI Express bottleneck. But an APU runs it great. So there will be pressure on gamers to get integrated graphics, because there will be certain games where it's the only way to get good performance.
What happens to Nvidia in this market? Nvidia doesn't have an x86 license. Intel would be able to compete if so inclined, and their GPUs, while still not competitive, have been gaining on AMD and Nvidia. With Tegra all but dead, and Nvidia locked out of the desktop and laptop markets, what's left? Cars and HPC? A desperate deal to put an Intel CPU and an Nvidia GPU in the same package, which Intel would probably be reluctant to go for? Try to convince people that the games are unfairly cheating by not using CUDA?
That's several years away, and I expect high end integrated graphics to be available well before there are games that really need it.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/05/25/why-did-nvidia-win-the-gpu-market/#4c5b76903559
The title of the article is a bit misleading, although it probably is true that Nvidia has a greater market share when it comes to gaming PC's, and its no surprise that for many, Intel is the CPU of choice, if you can afford it.
Well, the market of GPU's and CPU's for that matter is a fairly fluid one, and a lot can change in just 1 year, so who knows, Nvidia and Intel might be 'winning' at the moment, but the future isn't written in stone.
a) be far, far ahead of the competition in GPU capabilities, in a way that they haven't been in nearly a decade (between the launch of the GeForce GTX 8800 and Radeon HD 2900 XT), and stay that far ahead forever, or
b) pray that whoever is competitive with them in GPUs isn't remotely competitive in x86 CPUs.
(a) is not happening, full stop. You can, now and then, get ahead for several months here or there, but you don't stay ahead forever.
(b) probably ends with Zen. Zen doesn't need to be just as good as Kaby Lake for (b) to end; it just needs to be not that much worse. About as good as Broadwell, as is rumored, easily clears that threshold.
In desktops, it will probably take much longer to play out. A single package is still a big technical advantage, but not nearly as big of one as when you're space or power limited. But don't be surprised if Nvidia announces the end of the GeForce line entirely five or seven years from now.
All you need is one of the lower clocked i5 - $200, B150 board - $65 and 8GB RAM - about $35.
You should fit easily within $300. R9 380 starts at $150.
There isn't much point waiting a year or more, there will always be something new coming up in a year, you will be waiting forever.
Not saying you have to buy something now or in a few weeks, just pointing out it isn't very good argument.
Do not get fooled by long winded walls of text, more often than not, especially on these boards, the word count is there to supplement for lack of back up and reason....
I think a lot depends on what comes after DDR4 for system memory, and whether or not HBM2 will be successful for GPU's, there are issues that have to be resolved first by the looks of things, but either way, imo, APU's are not the way forward for Gaming PC's, but will have to wait and see.
Does an APU use zero copy automatically, or is it something developers have to handle?