Actually x86 is quite a horrendous architecture its slow and plagued with problems that cannot be fixed due to "backwards compatibility".
The only reason x86 is used this gen is the APU. AMD is the only oem that currently has APU designs that gives them the advantage.

Lots of information in this thread. Yep games have been more expensive develop thanks mostly because of graphics, it would be even more expensive if it was a specialize chip used. Inflation still happens, just in form of DLC.

This is two years old and you probably know most of the technical stuff. I enjoyed reading it, it is about photogrammetry, 

http://www.theastronauts.com/2014/03/visual-revolution-vanishing-ethan-carter/

What problems do you speak of?

The amount of transisters that is set-aside for backwards compatability is inconsiquentual compared to the rest of the chips design, x86 is able to scale down to ARM levels of power whilst offering equivalent/greater performance. (I.E. Medfield and it's successors.)

Keep in mind that a full x86 processor was able to function fine with just a million transisters (Original Pentium).
Today we have multi-billion transister chips, really think less than a million transisters is a hefty price to retain backwards compatability? It isn't. It's less than 1% of the chips total die area.

When AMD released the Athlon 64, the 64bit extensions actually took up a fairly large percentage of die space, the chips were roughly 100 million transisters in size at the time... Today the 64 bit extension would take up less than 1% of die space on modern processors.

AMD is also not the only company to have an "APU". - APU's as we know it are when a company combines the CPU and GPU into the same silicon... Pretty much every Android manufacturer, Intel, heck probably even VIA does this.

"APU" is just an AMD marketing term... And you fell for it.

It's brilliant. Truly excellent.

After "Gothic", it's without a doubt my favourite architecture.

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