The price is that you essentially glue CPU and GPU together, which limits total compute, from a size and thermal perspective.
This is really not a limit because of unified memory -- in principle, PCIe GPUs could read/write main memory without the CPU. But it's a limit for /fast/ unified memory, because fast means close.
So unified memory is great as long as the integrated GPU is strong enough. Then it has two advantages:
a) probably faster transfer CPU<->GPU (but that's an implementation choice for the non-unified case
b) If you either need a lot of memory for the CPU or the GPU, but not for both at the same time, you pay for memory only once.
This is really not a limit because of unified memory -- in principle, PCIe GPUs could read/write main memory without the CPU. But it's a limit for /fast/ unified memory, because fast means close.
So unified memory is great as long as the integrated GPU is strong enough. Then it has two advantages: a) probably faster transfer CPU<->GPU (but that's an implementation choice for the non-unified case b) If you either need a lot of memory for the CPU or the GPU, but not for both at the same time, you pay for memory only once.