Published: 1-28-2026

We have to face the fact that powerful graphics cards are getting harder and more expensive to source. The ongoing demand of massive AI data centers has a knock-on effect. It’s the tide that raises all boats, except in this case “boats” are prices.

But, what if you didn’t actually need a dedicated GPU for your workstation? The truth is that most of the workstations we sell don’t have particularly powerful GPUs when the use case for that workstation doesn’t need one.

It’s just that the integrated GPUs that have been bundled with powerful CPUs in the past haven’t been good enough for mainstream use. That’s changing, with iGPUs coming to market that have performance and features comparable to RTX 4060 or RX 6700 discrete GPUs.

Panther Lake Is The Latest iGPU Powerhouse

Image Credit: Intel


While it’s not the first example of such a powerful iGPU in a CPU package, the most powerful iGPU option in Intel’s new Panther Lake mobile processors compete head-to-head with a discrete RTX 4050 laptop GPU.

That is by no means an impressive GPU, but it is a highly performant GPU for mainstream 3D applications. So having a laptop with this class of iGPU is genuinely revolutionary. Not only that, but you are not limited by the VRAM of a card like the 4050. Since RAM is shared between the CPU and GPU, it’s possible to allocate as much RAM as you need. Which also opens up local AI applications that are usually limited by VRAM and not GPU performance.

What About AMD?

AMD’s 8060S GPU featured in the Ryzen AI Max 395+ stands toe-to-toe with the RTX 4060 in benchmarks and real-world performance. So Intel is just adding to what AMD’s already done in this space.

There are already numerous laptops on the market featuring this chip, so it’s worth including them in your search if you’ve only been looking at systems with a IGPU.

What About Desktop PCs?

This is where things are much more muddy. We have no idea if Intel or AMD will start offering these powerful iGPUs in their respective desktop chips.

Certainly the incentive wouldn’t traditionally be there, but we think that given current market circumstances, there’s now a use case for desktop CPUs with high end processing power also offering these faster iGPUs. They would be ideal for the types of workstations we usually sell with entry-level GPUs in them, and thanks to the RAM advantage they might be even more versatile. So Intel and AMD, if you’re listening, we’d like your new iGPUs wherever you can put them!