Intel will be showing off a new chip design dubbed “Sandy Bridge” next week. This clever little part will be Intel’s “first chip design that has graphics capabilities built into the processor” and is supposed to frighten AMD and Nvidia.
The basic idea is that it should give the company a cost advantage while marking a shift in the chip-making industry:
The new approach marks a shift for the industry, potentially eliminating the need for separate graphics cards in most personal computers. AMD got a jump on that change with the 2006 purchase of ATI Technologies Inc., giving it access to a stand-alone graphics maker. It’s been using ATI’s capabilities to craft a new line of processors called Fusion. Intel’s existing graphics features, included in chips attached to the processor, haven’t been good enough to replace rival products.
We’re a bit sceptical as Intel is notoriously bad when it comes to graphics, but we’ll see how this new design will be. [BusinessWeek]
matt
Friday, September 10, 2010 at 11:57 AMok, a little confusing.
Intel has been putting graphics chips in it’s CPUs for atleast a year now. the first dual core, corei5s and i3s all had these in them.
so this is not new.
what I think perhaps IS new, is that they are now putting them ON DIE.
previously, they were just on the same chip, but not on the same die, this also meant moving the memory controller from the cpu die to the gpu die, because the gpu is more memory intensive – this of course degraded cpu performance (theoretically, in practice, probably not that much).
so now everything, the cpu, gpu, and memory controller will all be on the same die, eliminating any degradation caused by moving the memory controller, and basically making everything faster, smaller, and more efficient.
and yes, from what I’ve heard, the gfx is still as weak as intel integrated graphics ever was, its just now cheaper, smaller, and more efficient, and especially useful in laptops, as it has allowed for nicer integrated/ discreet switching, giving you great choice between decent graphics performance, and ultra power savings.
Nodeity
Friday, September 10, 2010 at 12:09 PMThat’s fine if you don’t need the full on power of a game card, what happens when you need to upgrade because it can no longer cope??
Frogztar
Friday, September 10, 2010 at 12:26 PM…buy a full on game card