AMD APUs with HSA look ground breaking
Just been looking at getting a new machine for my parents and concluded you cant beat AMD on price performance IMHO.
AMD APU 7800K with HSA looks potentially ground breaking.
48 Watts TDP with built in graphics enough to reasonably power most games/media with the potential to use Graphics CPU cycles to compute standard OS tasks.
That means I can use a mini or micro ATX case, near silent cooling, VERY low power usage and still get good performance. Small form factor lending itself to a media centre, small server or light desktop.
Giving me an upgradable PC I can keep up to date for circa £400 - not hardwired into a fixed OS unlike some laptops & tablets but far far far superior in every way.
So what if I5 & I7 are faster ? For most tasks including most games you just don't need nor can use the CPU cycles - far better to spend the money on Graphics Cards, Memory, SSDs, Displays and networking.
Regardless I5 & I7 require more expensive memory, motherboards, cooling, power supplies and hence a larger case - I would have thought with the domination of ARM the writing is on the wall for high power processors.