The Future of APU Technology: When Will We See an Equivalently Powerful APU?

I recently learned something noteworthy.

While I was prepared to mention that the R9 Fury is a massive GPU with 8.9 billion transistors, I was vastly surprised to discover that the Vega 11 GPU on the AMD 2400G APU has an impressive 4.9 billion transistors on its own. That was at least four times my original estimation. The R9 has 3500 cores operating at 1GHz, whereas the Vega 11 features 704 cores with a frequency of 1.3GHz.

The R9 is approximately four times faster than the little APU but honestly, I would have anticipated a much greater performance gap, given that the AMD 2400G APU’s CPU and GPU, combined, use only 65W of power. In contrast, the R9 Fury can consume up to 275W on its own.

I sincerely feel that the new AMD 2200G/2400G APU is set to redefine a new era in SOC-level computing with numerous exciting new products to come from both AMD and Intel/AMD.

As for when an APU will be created to compete with the current R9 Fury/GTX 1060 level, I guess by 2023, with 7nm architecture, a viable APU/GPU with 9 billion transistors will be achievable. This APU will also incorporate HBM VRAM rather than relying on DDR4 system RAM.

Comparing AMD Ryzen 5 2400G vs Intel Core i7-2600K

In terms of actual APU performance, the AMD Ryzen 5 2400G barely outperforms the Intel Core i7-2600K in a CPU context. When we look at the GPU aspect, the AMD R9 Fury is already quite a capable card, barely outperforming a GTX 1060 6GB in certain benchmarks.

If you're considering upgrades, my suggestion is to go for a first or second-generation Ryzen CPU or an 8th-generation Intel processor. Get a full-featured DDR4 motherboard and an SSD for the best performance. That graphics card is still a powerhouse; you might as well give it a system to sit in—it's worth its weight in gold.

According to AMD, the Ryzen mobile processor combines award-winning technology from Ryzen CPUs with the revolutionary graphics of the Radeon "Vega" architecture for exceptional mobile performance for every task. AMD SenseMI processor intelligence technologies enable the Ryzen mobile processors to adapt to your needs, delivering the performance you want with astonishing efficiency, ultimately leading to amazing battery life.

The Current APU Revolution

APUs are already better than many processors and GPUs, let alone traditional computers. However, the real question is when the workload gets so demanding that this matters. Gaming graphics can only get so good; do we really need 4K gaming at 120 fps? Maybe we do, or maybe we don't. Anyway, AMD Ryzen isn’t something to sneeze at. It might already be there, but you probably wouldn't want to switch over because APU's appear to be more suited for laptops.

As the tech landscape continues to evolve, the role and capabilities of APU's will undoubtedly play a significant role in future computing needs.