Intel's Sandy Bridge To Somewhere

[Hooch Tan]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.anandtech.com/show/3871/the-sandy-bridge-preview-three-wins-in-a-row/1' target='_blank'>http://www.anandtech.com/show/3871/...wins-in-a-row/1</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"That's all going to change starting next year. This time it's the masses that get the upgrade first. While Nehalem launched with expensive motherboards and expensive processors, the next tock in Intel's architecture cadence is aimed right at the middle of the market. This time, the ultra high end users will have to wait - if you want affordable quad-core, if you want the successor to Lynnfield, Sandy Bridge is it."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1283308804.usr20447.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>The huge force that is Intel continues moving along at a steady pace.&nbsp; While AMD is fighting back with its Bobcat and Bulldozer chips, Intel's Sandy Bridge seems to be a continuation of moves first seen with the Core i3 and i5 processors.&nbsp; Processing power is increasing, as expected, but the integrated graphics are what have caught my eye.&nbsp; While integrated graphics offered low power consumption and great 3D performance at a great price, its 3D capabilities were laughable at best.&nbsp; While Sandy Bridge will not be toppling the discrete GPU market, it is edging into the lower end and that means that the lowest bar for computing will offer something worthwhile.&nbsp; Programs like Google Earth will run even more smoothly, and 3D accelerated browsers are right around the corner.&nbsp; We might be watching the next push in computing fads!</p>

[ptyork]

Personally, I see the advancement of these integrated graphics chipsets as a wonderful thing. Yeah, as a sole source of graphics, they suck for high-end (or even mid-range) gaming and won't do a thing for video encoding, photo editing, or the cool massively parallel stuff you can do with CUDA and such.

BUT, combined with a dedicated card and some good power management software, you now have the ability to have a system that will do just fine 90% of the time (web surfing, video watching, casual gaming) without the graphics card sucking up tons of power (they all do) and creating hurricane force whirrings from inside the case (ditto, at least for the high end). And it adds maybe $10. You save $5 per month EASILY in power if you leave your PC on constantly--which sadly I do. And perhaps close to that if you don't. Lower noise and less heat. All great wins. It's about efficiency, not integrating a GTX 480 on-die.

This is the #1 reason I'm looking at upgrading my PC now. It runs fine, but my ATI 4870 is just crazy overkill for me 95% of the time (99% if you count the "idle" time).

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

On power savings: What I really want to see is a way for the computer to approach near sleep state while maintaining a network connection. This will need both hardware and software working together, so I guess it's not coming soon. :P

Integrated graphics: I'd like switching GPUs on the desktop too. Less heat means potentially longer lasting PC.

New CPUs: Seriously, my year old plus i7 920 still feels snappy. These things used to feel slow a year or so on but now with computing power being so abundant (netbooks are a prime example of this) I feel like I can go on for another 3 years on this CPU!

[Hooch Tan]

Personally, I see the advancement of these integrated graphics chipsets as a wonderful thing. Yeah, as a sole source of graphics, they suck for high-end (or even mid-range) gaming and won't do a thing for video encoding, photo editing, or the cool massively parallel stuff you can do with CUDA and such.

I believe that Intel is slowly working their way into parallel processing. NVidia and ATI have a massive head start but Intel does have massive resources at their disposal, and their further locking down of the whole CPU/GPU/Chipset configuration will give them an advantage.

I've always felt that the poor performance of integrated graphics has held some computing concepts back. Maybe we'll see some new and interesting programs and services in the next few years.