http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...t_look_at_.php
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If this is old news, sorry for posting
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...t_look_at_.php
Read the comments...
If this is old news, sorry for posting
There's a surprise. It means nothing until we see the perf figures though, and given Intel's past reputation (especially with OpenGL) I definitely wouldn't be betting the farm on it just yet.
Is that some kind of low budget spin-off derived from the hyped failure they called Larrabee ?
No; this is Sandy Bridge. Their on-CPU GPU much like Llano for AMD. Unlike their current on-CPU GPU, this one actually has performance. It isn't performance equivalent to a $100 GPU, but it's better than many integrated GPUs.Is that some kind of low budget spin-off derived from the hyped failure they called Larrabee ?
You have a lot of expectations Alfonse!Originally Posted by Alfonse Reinheart
$100 GPU == Radeon 5670 / Radeon 5750 || GeForce GT 430 / GeForce 450
Even if Intel chips has made some performance progress, I don't see it getting close to those chips. Without we are not speaking about drivers...
That's why I said, "It isn't performance equivalent to a $100 GPU".Even if Intel chips has made some performance progress, I don't see it getting close to those chips.
I'm really having a hard time seeing how a general purpose CPU can possibly be competitive with 15 years of accumulated knowledge of how to build high performing dedicated GPUs. I think it might be competitive with hardware from a generation or two back (which will be 2-4 generations back by the time it's publicly available) but the dedicated GPU should still be the preferred option. I'd love to be proven wrong though, and I'd especially love it if Intel really did have something special up their sleeves that would shake up the established players a little (not least because I have this perverse fondness for Intel parts; they're actually decent enough if you code to their strengths and don't try anything too fancy).
It's not a "general purpose CPU." It's a GPU on the same chip as the CPU. It's really not that hard to understand: they simply swap out one of the CPU cores for an actual GPU.I'm really having a hard time seeing how a general purpose CPU can possibly be competitive with 15 years of accumulated knowledge of how to build high performing dedicated GPUs.
Preferred for what? Crysis?the dedicated GPU should still be the preferred option.
The days of rampant explosion in graphics development is over. It simply isn't cost effective for games. I do a non-trivial portion of my PC gaming on an embedded HD-3300, which has only 80 shader processors. I'd love to be able to replace it with a Llano that has 400 SPs; I could play more games on my low-powered machine.
I don't know; I've heard that one before and it's always been wrong. In the past it was "once you go 3D there's nowhere left to go" or "once you go to hardware acceleration there's nowhere left to go", but it's always turned out that there actually were plenty of places left to go. Bill Gates' (in)famous "640k ought to be enough for anyone" is even symptomatic of the same kind of thinking.
Admittedly with a fully programmable device the situation is a little different these days, but at the same time one should not assume that the current triangle-based vertex/fragment rasterisation paradigm is going to continue unto eternity.
I can't predict the future and I'm not going to pretend to even try, but I would be cautious about declaring anything "over". If the past has taught us nothing else it's that there is always room for further development in completely unexpected areas.
First, Bill Gates never actually said that, so stop spreading apocrypha/urban legends.I don't know; I've heard that one before and it's always been wrong. In the past it was "once you go 3D there's nowhere left to go" or "once you go to hardware acceleration there's nowhere left to go", but it's always turned out that there actually were plenty of places left to go. Bill Gates' (in)famous "640k ought to be enough for anyone" is even symptomatic of the same kind of thinking.
Second, I never said that there was nothing more to be gained in graphics hardware. I said that the "rampant explosion" was over.
Much like with the incoming primacy of small devices (tablets, mobile phones, etc), making things smaller and more efficient is becoming more important than making them faster. The push for the absolute fastest GPU no matter what simply isn't there anymore.
Sound chips went through the same thing. Time once was that sound chips were add-in boards (AIB) like GPUs. Then, the first on-motherboard embedded sound chips came out. These weren't great, but they did steal the lowest of the low-end from sound chip makers. Time passed, and on-motherboard chips got better and better. Now, it is the AIB-style sound chip that is the anomaly; rare is the motherboard that lacks a quality, 5.1 or 7.1-capable sound chip.
Something similar has started with GPUs. As I said, I do quite a bit of gaming on a motherboard-embedded HD 3300. An on-CPU GPU with more shaders than the 3300 could do even better. No, it wouldn't be as good as a $150 or $200 GPU. But it does make the low-end AIBs obsolete.
Give it time. On-CPU GPUs will eventually become a standard feature. After a while, they'll start eating their way into the mid-grade GPUs. Game developers and other graphics software developers will start developing their games specifically for on-CPU GPUs, for that level of performance. Given time, an AIB GPU will be a luxury.
For sure, features will be added to GPUs. But it will not be at the pace that we've seen in the last decade.
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