Excitement rippled through the tech world when it was announced that Intel and Nvidia would be collaborating on CPUs featuring integrated Nvidia GPUs. What wasn’t immediately clear, however, was which specific chips would benefit. During a recent press conference, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang repeatedly highlighted the staggering 150 million laptops sold annually, strongly suggesting that this groundbreaking partnership is aimed squarely at the mobile market, leaving desktop PC users unaffected for the foreseeable future.
This powerful alliance between Intel and Nvidia isn’t just about datacenter solutions; it’s poised to dramatically reshape the laptop landscape. Currently, our top gaming laptop recommendations often feature separate Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPUs. While AMD has struggled to gain traction with dedicated laptop graphics, their integrated Radeon GPUs, as demonstrated in systems like the Asus ROG Flow Z13 and Razer Blade 16, have shown impressive progress.
Of course, this is still largely speculative. Jensen’s comments might simply highlight one significant aspect of the partnership, not its entire scope. Yet, if the Intel-Nvidia collaboration truly aimed to target the desktop PC market, we would have expected to hear clearer indicators in both the initial announcement and the follow-up press conference.
Intriguingly, there was no mention of gaming handhelds or consoles, segments where AMD currently holds a dominant position. With the exception of the Nintendo Switch, all major full-size consoles rely on custom AMD chips. Similarly, handheld devices predominantly feature AMD’s Ryzen Z1 Extreme and Ryzen Z2 Extreme processors, with even the popular Steam Deck utilizing a custom AMD CPU.
This strategy makes perfect sense. For desktop PCs, a dedicated graphics card almost always offers a significantly greater performance boost than any integrated solution. Even with Nvidia bringing its advanced RTX technology to integrated GPUs, the inherent physical limitations will restrict their raw processing power, much like what we see with AMD’s current integrated graphics-equipped CPUs.
Consider our review of the AMD Ryzen 5 8600G: despite its impressive power, it only achieved an average of 41 frames per second in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p on low settings. In stark contrast, a dedicated graphics card like the $250 RX 7600 can easily run the same game at high detail settings, pushing well over 60 frames per second.
All speculation aside, this development is poised to create significant waves across the PC and computing sectors. We’re particularly eager to witness the intense competition it will spark in the gaming laptop arena. What are your thoughts on this announcement? Do you feel it’s less impactful without a desktop PC focus, or do you believe AMD should be preparing for a formidable challenge? Share your opinions and discuss PC tech, gaming, and more with our community.