Because of events in California, in Silicon Vallley, I've been editing my several reference articles here in these forums, and did bring a couple of them nearer the top of the cyclic pile recently. This particular thread hadn't been updated in awhile, and it won't hurt for it to bump its way upward tonight.
Two different approaches to the integration of graphics into the actual central processor functions are appearing soon. One is a bare minimum effort**, from the champion of bad video, Intel. The other is AMD's far more creative and in my opinion, more useful, contribution. Intel's Sandy Bridge is due this coming April or May, when the same basic low quality Intel video now riding along piggy back inside the processor package of the i3, i5, and i7, is entirely integrated in the next series of CPUs. But "Fusion" is practically already here.
The AMD device combines a far more capable graphics capability, closely related to the Radeon HD 5n00 generation as an integrated function to their multi-core CPU, and the mobile versions are already in the (figurative) hands of Netbook, Notebook, and laptop manufacturers, with the PCs using them originally expected about the turn of the year or perhaps at CES 2011. The desktop Fusion APUs were expected in mid-February.
The latest news on a long-standing feud between Intel and nVIDIA over whether nVIDIA's contract with Intel included the right to design chipsets for the newer Intel CPUs was about to go into court, after six years of wrangling (when Core Duo was a mere embryo). But both agreed to ask for a continuance because they were back in negotiations now.
The conjecture going around is that Intel wants to protect its dominant lock on the Netbook market, which the Fusion threatens, given its many times superior graphics. nVIDIA's ION is a low-current device that offers almost-competitive graphics performance to the Fusion for games, and superior performance in some other areas. Intel may hope to save a bigger part of their Netbook market if they can pair up ION and Atom at a good price, which right now, they cannot.
** (Added in Edit Jan 3rd: Previews of the Intel Sandy Bridge are appearing now, any the mobile versions are being compared to the ATI HD 4200 and 4250, and it's supposed to be better than that. According to Anand Tech's reviewer, one of the Sandy Bridge laptops was even able to run Mass Effect 2 as well as the Mobile HD 5450, which surprises me, given the disparity in shader processors.)
Why is this pertinent here? Fusion is going to be available for standard laptops at a much smaller cost than discrete GPUs plus a CPU without graphics of a similar quality, and no one else is going to have anything for laptops that competes. Private ownership of PCs is concentrated in laptops, not desktops. Initially, the business grade, like an HD 5450, will probably be priced at almost what similar AMD processors without graphics have cost. That will really put a dent, potentially, in nVIDIA's sales of chipsets for AMD processors, and for discrete cards like the G.210 Geforce.
Although pricing isn't being discussed yet, the presumption is that the difference between an APU with business graphics, and one with the equivilant of the HD 5570 graphics integrated will be relatively small compared to a card, probably less than $15 to the OEMs, translating to maybe $25 retail (my guess there).
THOSE APUs will run games such as DAO & ME2 without any separate GPU card, which is why it's significant to this article. We can expect to see what the Mobile Fusion products will look like at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) 2011, which opens on January 6th. Until mid-December, it had been my understanding that products would actually shipping by January 6th.
The current expectations put the shipping date closer to the end of January, 2011.
Gorath
Modifié par Gorath Alpha, 03 janvier 2011 - 07:57 .
Retour en haut
)
