Eyes-on with Intel's Pine Trail CPU/GPU hybrid and new Gulftown gaming chip (update)

See that tiny little thing? That's not just a CPU, it's Intel's next-gen Atom Pine Trail CPU / GPU hybrid, and it's set to pop in all sorts of devices here at IDF. Intel was demoing it in a nettop running 480p video, but they assured us it was capable of 1080p playback -- we'll believe it when we see it, obviously. Also on display here at IDF: demo machines running 32nm Arrandale chips, with Intel's Clear HD video playback system, and the next-gen Gulftown gaming chip, which has six cores and will slot right into your X58 mobo to provide more power than you possibly need sometime next year. Check it all in the gallery!

Update: So the first Intel rep we spoke to was a little confused -- Pine Trail only supports 480p playback, although it can apparently do 720p if pushed. Native HD isn't on Intel's roadmap until the next generation of these chips, so If you want HD right now, Intel's pointing manufacturers to the Broadcom Crystal HD video accelerator, which usually ends up costing about $30 extra at retail. So to recap: Intel's integrating graphics into its CPU dies, but in order to play back HD content, you still need a separate video processor to handle the decoding. How very efficient.

Intel Pine Trail, Arrandale, and Gulftown

[IanKen Posted Sep 22nd 2009 4:31PM]

"This is first gen tech"

Bullshit. It is tech that has no place in the current market.

1080p HD VC1 and H.264 content has been available for years now. This is a product that has no place in the current media ecosystem.

[xfbtmofx Posted Sep 22nd 2009 4:37PM]

So glad i got my 1366 and not that crappy 1156. Yes Im saving money because I wont need to buy a new mobo with the gulftown but Im kinda scared about the price of the gulftown itself.

[RKN Posted Sep 22nd 2009 4:40PM]

Initially, it will only launch in Extreme Edition branding at $999. : (

[xfbtmofx Posted Sep 22nd 2009 4:52PM]

Guess I should just start selling my body now. Not like I need the6 cores. Im just happy that next year I get to say "Haha I dont need to buy that new X58 and you do!"

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 30th 2010 12:44AM]

They are using the Project Offset development platform in one of those demos. o_o Its been 4 years since its creator, Sam McGrath, was on AOTS talking about it, and theres still no game. Its been over a year since Intel acquired offset and there are no apparent developments. Fuck Intel, they just saw a cool new toy and decided to buy it, and now development is at a standstill. =/

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 23rd 2009 3:10AM]

IMHO the video accelerator solution is sincerely the best choice for the netbook world.

What a netbook SHOULD be is powerful enough to run a web browser, audio/video at any resolution/quality and a couple more applications, with the smallest possible power consumption. This pine trail platform should draw negligible amounts of power, and having a discrete HD chip, to use only in case it's needed, seems far more reasonable than putting a "powerful-enough-to-play-WOW-and-crappy-enough-to-fail-at-anything-else" GPU which is just the same but sucking more power.

No body should be playing in a netbook, or at least he should think about it twice before doing it, so why should anybody choose ION over pine trail + video decoder? Cuda? C'mon... you can barely play World of Warcraft with that thing.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 22nd 2009 7:53PM]

release date?!