Reza Pahlevi

Integrated graphics in laptops have long been the butt of jokes among PC gamers, as that technology so worthless that it comes free with your laptop. But times and technologies are changing, and believe it or not, the latest integrated solutions are finally due some respect.

Integrated graphics that didn’t stink actually started with Ryzen 3000, and continued with Intel’s 10th-gen Ice Lake and again with Ryzen 4000. Intel, however, took it up another notch when it introduced its 11th gen “Tiger Lake” CPUs with Iris Xe graphics.

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Q: Not too long ago, you’d buy a used Intel Xeon processor to get more than four cores in a CPU without going broke. Is that still a worthwhile route to take?

That trick isn’t dead, but most PC builders will find AMD and Intel’s consumer CPUs the simpler way to buy affordable processors with more than six cores.

When AMD released Ryzen, it upended the market by lowering the cost per core. Four years ago, you had to pay big bucks for a 10-core processor—$1,723 MSRP for Intel’s high-end Core i7-6950X, which also required an expensive high-end motherboard. But starting in 2017, AMD began a steady release of CPUs with more and more cores without raising prices. This year, Intel released the 10-core Core i9-10900K at an MSRP of $488, and it’s compatible with motherboards aimed at mainstream consumers. Competition has done wonders.

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