Larrabee Team Is Focused On Rasterization

Vigile writes "Tom Forsyth, a well respected developer inside Intel's Larrabee project, has spoken to dispel rumors that the Larrabee architecture is ignoring rasterization, and in fact claims that the new GPU will perform very well with current DirectX and OpenGL titles. The recent debate between rasterization and ray tracing in the world of PC games has really been culminating around the pending arrival of Intel's discrete Larrabee GPU technology. Game industry luminaries like John Carmack, Tim Sweeney and Cevat Yerli have chimed in on the discussion saying that ray tracing being accepted as the primary rendering method for games is unlikely in the next five years."

Comments

Duh

[Wesley Felter]

Creating a GPU that won't run existing games well (or at all) never made sense. Some people fantasized about forcing gamers to buy a rasterization GPU and a separate raytracing GPU, but those are probably the same fools who bought PPUs and Killer NICs.

Re:Duh

[frieko]

Creating a GPU that won't run existing games well (or at all) never made sense. Not to Intel, they've been doing exactly that for years!

No need to take them seriously

[Sycraft-fu]

It isn't as though they are only going to sell to true believers or anything. Just wait until it comes out, then evaluate it. At this point I don't really have an opinion one way or the other. Intel certainly has the know how and the fabrication tech to make a good GPU, but they also have the ability to miss the boat. I'll simply wait until it is real silicon that I can purchase before I concern myself with it. It'll either be competitive or it won't, we won't know until it is out and real tests are done.

Re:*Sigh*

[serviscope_minor]

Intel has been saying with each and every iteration of graphics hardware that it's created that it would be 'competetive'. None have been except at the very, very low end. I like Intel's CPU's quite a bit, but I have heard the boy who cried wolf too many times from them with regards to GPU's to take them very seriously at this point.

Hard to take them seriously? Are you kidding? The very low end is the massive majority of the market, and Intel has that well wrapped up. They are probably the #1 PC GPU manufacturer out there. If you want cheap or low power, you get an Intel GPU. Also, if you want 100% rock solid drivers that are supported out of the box and cream the competition in terms of stability (speaking about Linux here), you buy an Intel GPU.

So yeah, if you discount the market leader in terms of driver stability and volume of sales, and care only about speed then yes, Intel isn't competitive.

In my world, I will continue to take them seriously, since I always aim to but Intel graphics if I can. If they get faster, that's a nice bonus.