There are many reasons why there is currently no new batch platform with iGPU on your motherboard, but the market changes, needs move and companies try to optimize resources and money. What happened so that this type of product is not built today?
Graphics cards embedded in motherboards, extinct for 10 years
The truth is that the last batches of this type of product were manufactured at the end of 2012, but the end of its trajectory was conceived long before, on 2009, where Intel changed its business strategy in its processors and began to include a basic graphics card in said CPUs.
The objective was clear, to allow it to differentiate itself from the competition by offering a more complete product and at the same time to obtain simpler and cheaper motherboards for its manufacturers. Moving the iGPU to the processor made the connections of said board simpler, you did not have to integrate VRAM or take the one from the system and move it through a direct bus to it, costs were reduced for the user on the board and to top it off, it was achieved higher performance by being much closer to cores with direct access and lower latency with the PCIe controller and RAM.
Although AMD followed this path two years and a little later calling this type of product with integrated CPU + GPU APU, the truth is that Intel with the same approach always talks about CPU as such, we assume that for marketing reasons.
Why aren’t they made if there are more GPU manufacturers?
For many reasons. The first is of course licensing, since AMD does not allow GPUs outside of succulent and volume contracts for specific products. Intel also does not license outside its CPUs and NVIDIA runs a different path and has never really been interested in this sector, although it did launch some models at the time, but minority.
What about VIA Y SIS? They could be an alternative, but really AMD and Intel have eaten the market for these types of products with their iGPUs integrated into their CPUs. The development of a GPU for a motherboard requires a level of investment that neither of the two companies can assume and that has as secondary players the motherboard manufacturers, which have been immersed for more than a decade in a price war that has led for more than 20 years to greats in the sector such as ABIT or DFI.
Therefore, it is the industry itself that currently rejects this type of product for a more optimal one such as APUs, which have a very important development that in the case of Intel affects the entire line of Mainstream and input processors, something that AMD also seems to do in its next CPUs, leaving the HEDT and its specific dies.
