Intel puts ATI and nVIDIA in it's crosshairs

sebastianlieken

Intel has unveiled details of the chip that will spearhead its move into computer graphics. It has revealed blueprints for the Larrabee chip that is scheduled to first appear in finished products in late 2009 or early 2010. Larrabee will be a stand-alone graphics processor unlike the onboard chips it produces for many PC makers. The move will bring Intel into direct competition with graphics specialists Nvidia and the ATI division of AMD. Intel is aiming to put Larrabee into graphics cards for PCs that help show games and video in very high detail. Like existing graphics chips from Nvidia and ATI, Larrabee is expected to have many separate processing cores onboard.

So far Intel has not said how many processing cores Larrabee will have onboard at launch or in subsequent generations. Future Nvidia and ATI graphics chips are expected to be made up of several hundred cores. While Intel will initially target the PC graphics card market, it expects the raw computer power in the chip to help with oil and gas exploration, medical imaging and financial services in the future. Many scientists and researchers already use coupled graphics cards as a desktop supercomputer that helps them carry out simulations far faster and cheaper than on a larger dedicated machine. Intel said it would release more details about Larrabee at the upcoming Siggraph computer graphics conference due to be held in Los Angeles from 12-15 August.

Source: BBC

This is pleasant news I must say. Nothing like a little bit of competition to challenge these two money making monopolies. Go Intel! :pac:

Although....yes....this means the graphic card market is going to get even more complicated.....dammit

(yes I realise Intel is a bigger money maker than the two comnbined...)

Overheal

from the press release it reads like they are aiming to fight on the commercial/industrial front - and by that I mean business solutions; not gaming.

sebastianlieken

Overheal wrote: »

from the press release it reads like they are aiming to fight on the commercial/industrial front - and by that I mean business solutions; not gaming.

The move will bring Intel into direct competition with graphics specialists Nvidia and the ATI division of AMD. Intel is aiming to put Larrabee into graphics cards for PCs that help show games and video in very high detail

Dartz

I will avoid them like the plague. Precisely because of the size of intel corporation. They may be perfectly suited to the job... but an Intel rpocessor on an Intel motherboard running an Intel Graphics card is a little bit like a monopoly to me.

Okay, so theres still a hundred other things in there, but you know what I mean.

PogMoThoin

Monopoly, You already have Ati and Nvidia competing ATM in the graphics sector, I welcome more competition.

Kinetic^

Moar competition pl0x!

I read the article earlier today, was quite happy to see someone else getting in on the scene (regardless of the size of the corporation). It reminds me of Microcòck getting in on the console market and while they haven't done an all that great job (particularly in the nex gen in relation hardware failzors) they have gotten Sony to stand up and pay attention. Intel will do the same to ATI/Nvidia.

Cuddlesworth

Intel sells more gfx chips then both ATI/AMD and Nvidia combined. This is just about taking more market share in the lower end gaming card market. Which is the only real place the two others make their money. This is really bad, if they succeed prepare to see R&D budgets drop and the timing on generation releases increase dramatically.

Overheal

I disagree. Nvidia and ATI did this to themselves by getting lax in the gaming market. the GTX 280 is a prime example of that. More competition can only be good for the consumer.

Cuddlesworth

Overheal wrote: »

I disagree. Nvidia and ATI did this to themselves by getting lax in the gaming market. the GTX 280 is a prime example of that. More competition can only be good for the consumer.

How is the 280GTX a prime example of that? Its currently the top end card, all top end cards have always been on a horrible price over performance ratio. The only difference this generation is that ATI can't compete on the high end, but they have significantly lowered production costs through the use of a smaller die. This means they can sell good chips for much cheaper then Nvidia and so they are pricing for value rather then speed. It worked for the 3870(after the 2900 failure), so they carried it onto the 4800 series.

projectmayhem

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

This is really bad, if they succeed prepare to see R&D budgets drop and the timing on generation releases increase dramatically.

are you telling me that nvidia and amd have pumped money into R&D? if they were then we wouldn't have slight upgrades on last models (geforce 9-series) and generations of horrendous drivers.

and i think the market would benefit greatly from generation release time increases. it's getting to a 6-monthly cycle at this stage. it's just uneconomic and doesn't help anyone in the PC gaming industry. i'd love to upgrade my machine, but there's no point. my 2900xt plays team fortress etc. fine. i would buy more new pc games just to see how they run and have a bit o' fun but i need a new card for that... and buying a new card is too expensive and there's always a new one very close down the road.

sure intel's a huge, horrendous multinational corporation that dominates various markets... but at least they do things marginally right. they haven't botched processor releases. even using the argument that they're too big to morally support... you're likely to be running windows in a box that's likely to have huge companies' logos all over them.

Cuddlesworth

projectmayhem wrote: »

are you telling me that nvidia and amd have pumped money into R&D? if they were then we wouldn't have slight upgrades on last models (geforce 9-series) and generations of horrendous drivers.

Yes they are pumping money into R&D like crazy. They are not slight upgrades, they are improvements to the way the chips are being manufactured. Both companys are spending tons of cash in order to shrink the dies to create less heat and more power. Architectural changes and implementation of new tech(dx10 etc) is a lot of work. Don't see Intel running around trying to implement a new SSE instructional set every 6 months.

projectmayhem wrote: »

and i think the market would benefit greatly from generation release time increases. it's getting to a 6-monthly cycle at this stage. it's just uneconomic and doesn't help anyone in the PC gaming industry. i'd love to upgrade my machine, but there's no point. my 2900xt plays team fortress etc. fine. i would buy more new pc games just to see how they run and have a bit o' fun but i need a new card for that... and buying a new card is too expensive and there's always a new one very close down the road.

You can pick up amazing cards like the 8800gt for just over 100. That would be the mid range of the high end cards. That would have been unheard of over the last 8 years. If you ignore the very top cards you can clearly see R&D research focusing on dropping production costs(die shrinks in favour of new cores) for the purpose of lower prices while still trying to maintain and edge. This is great for consumers.

projectmayhem wrote: »

sure intel's a huge, horrendous multinational corporation that dominates various markets... but at least they do things marginally right. they haven't botched processor releases. even using the argument that they're too big to morally support... you're likely to be running windows in a box that's likely to have huge companies' logos all over them.

Intel never botched processor releases? Why would they, they kept the same architecture for twice as long as they should have simply because they had no competition. The second AMD became a threat, out shoots Core2duo. They are not going to do the same thing to the gfx market, instead they are going to go in low and take out the revenue streams that give us the newer chips and cheap cards. And the use of their fabs and the pricing they get will be hard for Nvidia to compete with, let alone AMD.

Blazer

Good article about the possibilities.
Intel are releasing more info on 16/17th August.

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3367

sebastianlieken

I myself cant wait for intel to jump in. Very interesting article there Mathew of how it's going to work.

Obviously Intel will have a considerable budget to pour into this project, so I'm very curious to see what will come of this

Blazer

Can see my next pc already...8 core cpu + 64core for graphics..
tbh the video card companies have been promising real life graphics forever..
who knows..maybe if Intel get this working ray tracing could finally be here for games.

TerrorFirmer

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

How is the 280GTX a prime example of that? Its currently the top end card, all top end cards have always been on a horrible price over performance ratio. The only difference this generation is that ATI can't compete on the high end, but they have significantly lowered production costs through the use of a smaller die. This means they can sell good chips for much cheaper then Nvidia and so they are pricing for value rather then speed. It worked for the 3870(after the 2900 failure), so they carried it onto the 4800 series.

The 4870 is within 10% of the GTX280 in some tests at 200 euro less; it's not the same as the last 3870 line or the generation of the 8800GTX at all. not simply a case of a cheaper and clearly inferior product appealing to mass market, it's a marginally inferior product at a hugely superior price. No-one in their right mind would buy a GTX280 in my honest opinion, especially not when dual 4870's would absolutely smash a 280 at a few euro more, though I agree with you on hardware dropping to unprecedented price: performance ratios.