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Intel Discrete Graphics Chips Confirmed
Arun Demeure writes "There have been rumors of Intel's re-entry into discrete graphics for months. Now Beyond3D reports that Intel has copped to the project on their own site. They describe it as a 'many-core' architecture aimed at 'high-end client platforms,' but also extending to other market segments in the future, with 'plans for accelerated CPU integration.' This might also encourage others to follow Intel's strategy of open-sourcing their Linux drivers. So, better watch out NVIDIA and AMD/ATI — there's new competition on the horizon."
Try reinstalling the drivers.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Competition is almost always good, so I look forward to this. I'd like to see Intel push ATI and Nvidia to create more power efficient chips, as it's quite rediculous right now.
And if they enter the gaming video market, I can assure you that my next videboard will be an Intel one.
Intel drivers for Linux Just Work(TM). I installed Ubuntu 6.10 on my Acer notebook, with a i915g video adapter, and everything worked without any extra effort. And I'm even able to use Beryl/Compiz as my default window manager, without any stability issues.
Both nVidia and ATI should learn from Intel.
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
Intel is years behind in this market. And they tried this once before, with dismal results: http://news.com.com/Intel+retreats+from+graphics+c hips/2100-1001_3-230019.html
If anything the graphics market has gotten even more specialized since then. I don't know why they think they can succeed this time.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
I am guessing in this context "discrete" means seperate from the motherboard.
...who can compete with ATI and Nvidia.
Intel has technology, has brains, has money, has plants. They can do something "as good as" the two others. Competition is a good thing (prices falling, etc); only two main actors for videocards is a bad things.
S3 can't compete. Matrox can't compete. 3dfx can't compete (they're dead). Others can't compete. Intel is our only hope.
-- Rastignac was here.
If you look at the vast majority of chips either ATI or nVidia sell, they're actually pretty efficient.
But they invariably _have_ to have some benchmark-breaking super-card to grab the headlines with. The way it works is that while only a minority of people will actually buy the top-end graphics card, there are millions of people who just need a reminder that "nVidia is fast" or "ATIs are fast". They'll go to some benchmark site to see some "nVidia's 8800 GTX is faster than ATI's X1900XTX!" article (not entirely unexpected, it's one generation ahead), end up with some vague "nVidia is faster than ATI" idea, then go buy a 5200. Which is the lowest end of two generations behind the ATI, or 3 behind that 8800 GTX.
Both ATI and nVidia even went through times of not even trying to produce or sell much of their headline-grabbing card. And at least ATI always introduces their latest technology in their mid-range cards first, and they tend to be reasonably energy efficient cards too. But it's like a chicken contest: the one who pulls out loses. The moment one of them gave up on having an ultra-high end card at all, the benchmark sites and willy-waver forums would proclaim "company X loses the high performance graphics battle!"
I don't think Intel will manage to restore sanity in that arena, sadly. Most likely Intel will end up playing the same game, with one overclocked noisy card to grab the headlines for their saner cards.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Will Intel be clever enough and innovative enough to have a "GPU" socket on such motherboards? Maybe even GPU-specific memory sockets rather than shared memory?
One can always hope.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
That socket is usually called a "PCIe slot" these days. If you use a socket instead of just integrating the graphics chip into one that is onboard anyway, you might as well use the established solution.
Another interesting approach (albeit not for high end machines and somewhat OT here) is AMD's plan to integrate the GPU with the CPU. That way, you might have some more choice than with a soldered in chip, and GPU cooling could profit from the availability of decent CPU coolers.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Intel has a chance. Intel has the experience with cpu's. Intel can also interface with their new processors. I think Intel could atleast put up a good fight. Why do you think Amd bought ati? They know that intel can do gpus and really good ones if they tried and the only way amd would be able to compete would be buying a gpu maker wich they did.
I've been waiting for years for such kickass videocards. I've seen running protoypes in labs/universities; quite impressive videos. After a few years, now, the technology should be ready for the big market ? Pixar-like technology at home !
Real-time raytracing needs a lot of power; so, a multicore videocard is a great idea ! With raytracing, each core can compute one part of each picture. Better than SLI.
Using their knowledges, Intel can build a very fast multicore real-time raytracing videocard. It will be "something different", and it will compete with ATI and Nvidia in a new innovative way...
-- Rastignac was here.
If I wanted to run binary kernel modules I would just buy a 6xxx series NVIDIA and be done with it. :)
I specifically said "Open Source"
Until this new hardware will let me display fractional polygons I'm sticking to my continuous graphics board.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Intel's previous foray into the Discrete Graphics Market was the Intel i740. I got one, agreeing with PC salesman "Hey, you can't go wrong with Intel can you?" It was quite a decent chip for its time, and the driver was very stable. I don't ever recall graphics hanging once! It was disappointing when Intel bailed out of the 3D market, but to their credit they continued to update the drivers whenever a new version of DirectX rolled out.
Intel have already made a return of sorts to 3D with their Media Accelerator 9XX series chips you'll find in many Intel laptops. It's funny, because you'd expect an embedded chipset to be lame; lowest common denominator, shared RAM and akk. But this lappie has it and the graphics scream. It's faster than my nVidia 5700 which is two years old. The driver is stable too; never crashed. If they can do this with an embedded chipset 3d, imagine what they can do when they really put their mind to it?
nVidia and ATI have the market to themselves these days. nVidia has got pretty lax regarding driver stability for these days, and it's damned near impossible to get support out of them. They've fobbed off support to OEMs, who slap electronics onto cards and are in no position to help with driver problems. That's the sort of thing that happens when a company dominates a market.
If Intel can come out with some high performance electronics and stable drivers, well, Welcome back, Intel! I for one welcome you as my new Overlord!
Has anyone considered that the reason ATI/NVidia won't open source their drivers/firmware is because there are blatant copyright and patent violations in their code? I'm not saying there are violations, but if there are, then I would expect each to violently defend against anyone seeing their source code. To date, the best argument heard is that access to the code would provide their competitors an unfair advantage into their optimization techniques, which most of us recognize to be hog wash. At worst, they wrap it up in "we have licensed proprietary algorithms" declarations and refuse to give the community a chance to work around those algorithms.
There is only one way forward. NVidia should fund the effort to rewrite their firmware/drivers, providing only the hardware register descriptions and nuances. I'm quite sure others have asked NVidia to do this already, but Intel moving forward with this plan should force the other's hand. I'm surprised that Microsoft hasn't chimed in here because for every open specification we get in the OSS world, they also get. That's where all those Microsoft drivers come from. And only on occasion is a vendor-supplied driver better that the Microsoft one. Open sourcing any drivers also helps Microsoft support more hardware out of the box, without a multitude of licensing agreements and royalty schemes.
And of course, NVidia (and now ATI) have been adding more treasure to their war chests with the PCIe motherboards. I just bought a new motherboard and it's extremely hard to find a new board with PCI-Express that doesn't have an nForce or ATI chipset.
It's going to be a tough game for Intel because it's not just graphics drivers. AMD could play into this game if they took a decisive maneuver with their GPU integration into the CPU. Remember that AMD now owns ATI.
The Intel GMA950 is the one Apple's using in the Mac Mini and MacBook laptops, and doesn't seem too horrible for an integrated shared-memory GPU; it runs all the spiffy OS X eye-candy nicely, and I've had people tell me that playing games (World of Warcraft natively, or City of Heroes after installing BootCamp and XP) on it is fine.
;-), I imagine the GMA950 chipset (or something newer) would be great for KDE/GNOME/etc. even when they start using OpenGL.
Since gaming isn't really your focus if you're running Linux
Maybe something like Asus' P5B motherboards (P5B-VM and P5B-V)?
(Note an Asus employee or stockholder, just a happy customer of an ASUS P4G8X Deluxe).
- chrish
I've been monitoring this thread with some interest. I'm looking to build a new home computer that will run Linux exclusively (most likely Kubuntu). Mostly, it will be my personal workstation but I do plan to install some games - mostly 1st person shooter types. While I don't require "cutting edge", I would like decent performance. Can this chipset handle things like the latest UT or Doom III on Linux?
I mean, I like nVidia, but if Intel is supported out-of-the-box with open source drivers, then that works for me as well.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
I believe in competition being good, but I'm not sure it's all about just competition. This likely could be the move to save PC Gaming as a whole. Technology-wise PC's will always have superiority over consoles, but there are rare arguments to the economics of top-end gaming PC's against consoles. Microsoft and Sony take huge losses to push their hardware, and slowly but surely it does pay off - Gears of War on the Xbox 360 has sold 3 million copies in just a hair over 60 days. Name one PC title that is using every bleeding-edge technology and has sold that many copies that fast. You won't find it, because the segment of people who will pay between $2500 and $5000 for a PC to play those kinds of games (Crysis, Oblivion) is so small you can't hope to sell that many copies. Intel knows how to make computer chips quickly, and on the cheap. That is what I feel they are bringing to this contest. I think Intel believes they can make a graphics platform just as powerful or more powerful than Nvidia/ATI and can do it for less cost. That is how you generate competition not just in the graphics sector, but you make PC's more competitive against the consoles. The PC has endless amounts of good games to sell, the problem is there aren't cheap PCs that will play them with the slickness that consoles provide. Ultimately this move should make the top-end PC cheaper, which is good for everyone because the inherent competition will force Nvidia/ATI to lower prices. I like this move. Go Intel!
But will they include DVI? Better yet, dual DVI for those who run either dual monitors or really large monitors which require dual link?
No, in fact they aren't even going to include DSUB outputs. They are going to use modulated RF outputs like you got on the ATARI ST and AMIGA. They will be capable of displaying NTSC resolutions at anything up to 60Hz refresh rate.
What the fuck do you think?
The GMA950 is a crap 3D card. Even the most basic google research shows that it is NOT a return of Intel to 3D and no reviewer worth a dam has said the graphics "scream". Poor performance and incomplete 3d support are the hallmarks of the GMA950. If you play nothing but Quake II than yea, the GMA950 is for you.
4 ,00.asp7 &p=3- gma-950-terrible-opengl.html
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,182181
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=242
http://everythingapple.blogspot.com/2006/03/intel
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
MacBooks and MacMinis ship with DVI on board.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.