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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.
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.
Well, SONICblue (formerly S3 / Diamond) are essentially dead as well(chapter 11, most product lines sold off), but Matrox still survive with a 3-5% share of the market, and they're doing fairly well in niche markets - scientific, medical, military and financial. As for 3dfx, their assets (intellectual and staff) where purchased by NVIDIA; so any innovation from their prime years is probably still alive and well (to a degree).
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
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.
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 graphics part of S3 was sold to VIA at about the same time as it transformed to SONIC|blue. So the Chapter 11 thing is irrelevant.
As far as I know, the GMA 9xx series is a couple generations behind, performance wise. It should play quake3 and UT2k4 just fine, but it seems to have trouble with the Doom 3 engine, and I suspect the new UT engine will also be unplayable. On the windows side, it doesn't work with halflife2 either. Seems the most likely kind of game to fail is a new FPS. But I hear aero and Xgl/AIGLX work fine, so you may be satisfied with the current Intel offerings. The wikipedia page seems like a good place to start researching if you're still interested.
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