http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/ Engadget Comments for Intel teraflopping into high-end graphics with "Larrabee" http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2008 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/
It'll be a dying market by then.

It's the same as the audio add-on card market. It took less time to integrate onto the motherboard since it required fewer transistors.

But in the end, much like serial ports, parallel ports and RTCs (AST SixPack Plus and later Super I/O chips), floating point coprocessors (8087, 80287, 80387 disappeared at the 486) and sound cards (Soundblasters), graphics will be part of the CPU or motherboard.

Discrete graphics will be a very small market.]]>Sep 19th 2007 4:15PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/
Nevermind the fact that a mobo is a terrible place for audio - EFI flying around all over the place, everything operating in the digital domain... onboard audio cards typically do not report their essential stats (freq response, S/N ratio, THD, IMD, dynamic range, max output) because they are so dismal. (See: Bose, but that's another discussion).

Anybody that wants anything approaching 'decent' quality out of integrated sound is dreaming. PCI cards are an improvement, but offboard DACs are the best.


Moving on to GPUs - dunno if you've noticed, but the topography of a GPU is wildly different than a CPU. Ever run a test like 3DMark? One of the tests shuts off the GPU and lets the CPU take over - the framerate drops from "smooth" to about 1 fps. CPU's are not massively parallel rendering engines and cannot fill that market.

Do some research/know what you're talking about before posting.]]>Sep 19th 2007 5:14PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/Sep 19th 2007 4:18PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/
The same thing goes for video, there are a fair number of low end motherboards which have integrated graphics, but it is not comparable to even the extremely low-end video cards. I just don't think video will be integrated into the motherboard with high quality anytime soon (5 years max :P)]]>Sep 19th 2007 4:23PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/Sep 19th 2007 4:32PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/Sep 19th 2007 4:42PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/
Just what was needed.]]>Sep 19th 2007 4:25PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/Sep 19th 2007 4:43PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/Sep 19th 2007 4:29PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/Sep 19th 2007 4:32PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/Sep 19th 2007 5:19PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/Sep 19th 2007 5:21PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/
If you use the integrated audio's digital output, what quality problems could remain? The stats ARE there: 5.1 (or more) channels, 96k or 192k sampling rate, 24 bits per sample. Want better quality? Use better speakers or headphones, upgrade your amp, etc...

The only reason that integrated graphics tend to 'suck' is that so far, most systems have lacked the horsepower to play advanced games. The stats ARE NOT there: low polygon count, etc... If you only need to type and surf the web, they'll do fine.

The PC audio area doesn't need much improvement, while the 3d graphics area is constantly trying to become more and more real: pushing the polygon count, texture quality, filtering, etc... Maybe one day, the advances will slow because they've come far enough, and then cheap, integrated graphics will cut the mustard (case in point: no one needs PCI DVD decoder cards anymore). Maybe then, the only graphics 'cards' will be for special use, analogous to soundcards that offer multitracking for musicians.]]>Sep 19th 2007 7:16PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/(The move to raytracing gaming was also hinted at by MS too, so it seems a real plan it seems)

]]>Sep 19th 2007 9:08PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/Double the transistor count every year, i don't see it being too long before we have whole desktop "system on chip" designs (including all the RAM, sound, graphics, controllers, etc.) The only thing needing to be separate is storage space, and only because it is the "fat" of the system. Sure, dedicated will be better for a long time, but it is inevitable, discrete everything will eventually go for the PC, and will be left to the specialty markets.]]>Sep 19th 2007 11:42PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/Sep 20th 2007 1:50AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/19/intel-teraflopping-into-high-end-graphics-with-larrabee/AMD bought out ATi]]>Sep 20th 2007 8:21AM