The problem with putting GPU and CPU on the same chip is that the hardcore gamers might not get the best performance. Unless manufacturers made it a cracking GPU and made the price so low, so that when a gamer needed a graphics upgrade he could pay a few pounds more and upgrade his CPU at the same time?

I wasn't around at the time, but I'm sure people must have said the same thing when the FPU was integrated with the CPU and that turned out to be a great idea!

I fail to see what "hard core" gamer would even THINK of using a system with a combination CPU/GPU. The concept is for very low power sub-notebooks, not gaming machines. Why not try to stick with the subject at hand next time?

The kinds of people who would be purchasing these sorts of kit aren't likely to be doing much in the way of "hardcore gaming". They're most likely looking for the maximum battery life while they sit in the starbucks with their teeny, tiny vogue laptops, pretending to look busy and/or important. Because who wouldn't look busy and/or important with such a sleek, manilla-envelope-sized laptop in front of them, sipping their incomprehensably-named caffinated beverage? Who I ask you? WHO?

Mine's the one with Tim Horton's spilled on it.

Back to the good ol' 80's when CPU FPU GPU APU were all buried in the same resin drop, OK forget about FPU & APU. Can't wait for the day the inside of a laptop will look like the inside of a pocket calculator ... and laptops will be able to run for months on a couple or AA size batteries.

Mr AMD, if I may, the CPU load of a laptop aboard a flight is brought by Solitaire only, so embed an ASIC that takes over and shuts down Windoze when Solitaire is launched ... should extend the ultimate gamer's experience by a nice 2 AA factor.

/ZX-81 enclosure for me.

You bastard ... that's me comprehensively nailed

Why would a business traveller tolerate the compromises of an high-graphics-capable laptop, when an ultraportable/EeePC (for work) and an iPod (for video) will do the job better?

The important thing here is that you were honest.

Kudos.

I'm a hardcore gamer and the logic of merging the two is disastrous (then again so is being a hardened gamer with an AMD chipset.) you would need water cooling just to cope as a LAN session of 24 hours are going to leave you a smoking melted mass of a CPU.

GFX are the upgrade items, everything else is fairly steady at being released, linking the CPU to it means you can't just take out you 8800 card and put in a 9800 card, you have to go back to the mother board and do the whole thing, taking hours out of your day and costing a lot more.

Not to mention AMD / ATI gfx are crap. Any seasoned gamer worth his salt wouldn't risk it compared to the NVidia's range of cards. Neither would they use a laptop.

...but for casual gamers who play solitaire and old games from the late 90's, which AMD are good for, having the two merged might be a good idea, free up a PCI slot for your wifi, network, tv card etc.

The merging of CPU & GPU will not be a disaster, its just that the use for that system is not yet here.Everything is becoming aimed at parallel computing (since dual core became the new black) and its daft not to hook the GPU upto that system to share more workload.

When fusion arrives you will still have a PCI express slot for better graphics but I really have the feeling that the combined CPU/GPU will be great for running flashier interfaces and touch interfaces (Windows 7 etc.)

Architecture is changing to cope with the fact that CPUs are starting to hit a wall that only optical computing will solve, Fusion will in no way ruin gaming don't be so daft!

We are not losing dedicated GPUs its just that CPUs are evolving so a sole CPU can do as much as possible therefore saving power and allowing greater size reduction in motherboards, cases and laptops

At the risk of sounding like a flamer, RTFA.

The point is that you can have the space heater graphics *as well* as the stodgy 6 months out of date cpu/gpu.

The question is, do/will amd have an answer to CUDA?