GPUs have become an essential resource in personal computing. Forget spreadsheets, emails, and navigating GeoCities; it’s all about video, art, and AI, and this crowd wants a piece of your graphics card. It’s also true that PCs are costing more than in recent years thanks to demand for chips from the AI-based tech industry, which is driving GPU prices back up from their post-cryptomania lows.
The economics being what they are, it’s only fair that you consider going for a new computer without a discrete card and sticking to the integrated graphics capabilities of your processor. For those building their own PC (Steam machines included), this might be a good idea if you’re able to spend the money on a fairly decent CPU and motherboard as well as fast RAM – the latter being a particularly tough ask right now. On the other hand, those on a budget or those looking for a laptop should look for options with a discrete GPU, as there are suitable options across the entire price range.
It’s true that integrated GPUs have come a long way, even if they have to share RAM with the CPU instead of hogging their own GDDR memory. However, most options in desktop and mobile chip lines with a decent iGPU tend to be less competitive in terms of performance/price ratio than a cheaper CPU paired with a discrete GPU.
Do you save money by buying a desktop computer with an integrated GPU?
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The integrated GPUs on the latest high-end chips are about the best they’ve ever been in terms of raw power. ETA PRIME on YouTube tested the iGPU on Intel’s high-end Arrow Lake-based Core Ultra 9 285K and recorded results at 60fps or higher on titles like “Overwatch” and “DOOM Eternal” at 1080p on mostly medium settings. The synthetic benchmarks shown in this video put it on par with Nvidia’s entry-level GeForce GTX 1050 Ti from 2016. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but this is a $500 processor. You can get comparable results for about half the price on the AMD side: the Ryzen 7 8700G and its Radeon 780M GPU perform similarly to a 2017 Radeon RX 570 or something between a GTX 1050 Ti and 1060.
However, budget calculations aren’t just about the GPU. After all, the age of your processor will determine the type of RAM it will need – the older, the cheaper – as well as define any applicable upgrade path. On Intel’s LGA1700 socket, for example, you can buy a motherboard that supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory, so you can start with a 12th generation processor with DDR4, then upgrade to a 14th generation chip and DDR5 when you’re ready. The consequence is that this will leave you with a basic iGPU, but the later hope is that this will allow your budget to open up for a half-decent GPU.
In other words, if you want to prioritize future-proofing and can afford a new CPU with a good iGPU, associated RAM, and mobo, go for it. Money lovers, on the other hand, may prefer to budget for a suitable graphics card and shave a few dollars off each part.
Do you save money by buying a laptop with an integrated GPU?
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When it comes to a mini PC, laptop, or other portable item, you’re likely dealing with mobile processors, many of which feature competent iGPUs. Portable consoles like Asus’ ROG Xbox Ally series and Lenovo’s Legion Go panels are the best specimens in the category featuring AMD’s Ryzen Z processors that blend into all sorts of recent Radeon mobile graphics. However, Intel is not left behind as its Arc 130 and 140 graphics have pulled their weight on Core Ultra laptops.
The same general rule of the desktop realm applies here: you should be able to get general low-to-medium 1080p gameplay (with framegen and upscaling) in many titles. The big problem here is that if you look at the $800 to $1,000 range, you’ll find a handful of laptops with the iGPUs we just talked about, many more with basic graphics, and maybe a few with a dedicated GPU like an RTX 4050.
Sure, it may have been sitting in the warehouse for several months; you might even be dealing with a refurbished or open box unit, but it still scores twice as well in benchmarks for about the same amount of money. To be clear, if you’re looking for frames per second or test points or whatever performance metric you want per dollar, you might be better off looking for a machine with a discrete GPU.
