Friday May 25, 2012 1:57 AM AEST

Atomic MPC > News > Build > CPUs, Motherboards & RAM > Intel confirms that DX11 processor graphics are in the pipeline.

Intel confirms that DX11 processor graphics are in the pipeline.

Video: At this week's Sandy Bridge launch Atomic grabbed a few minutes with Intel VP Mooly Eden to talk about the relevance of integrated graphics to a hardcore audience.

Sandy Bridge has been a massive launch for Intel. These new CPUs deliver a noticeable performance boost over previous generations of products, and also pack in the least sucky graphics core that Intel has ever developed. The architecture itself has come from Intel’s mobile team, the ones responsible for Centrino and the like, and earlier this week one of the stars of that team, Mooly Eden, swung through Sydney to launch the CPUs.

Mooly is now a Vice President of Intel, and handles the PC Client Group. He is also one of the most entertaining speakers that Intel has, and is an engineer to boot, so the launch proved both entertaining and informative. Unfortunately one of the side effects of the processors being launched to a broad audience was that there was little deep tech talked about in the presentation.

We did get to see Portal 2 in action, running on the processor graphics of a Sandy Bridge processor. It actually looked pretty impressive, despite the obviously lower than ideal settings used. As part of the demo Intel also showed off the Razer Hydra PC game controller (also first seen at CES), which will have special Portal 2 levels designed to take advantage of the Hydra’s motion controls.

The post-keynote question and answer session was largely taken up with journalists trying to beat up stories about the Intel Insider technology (essentially a DRM engine designed to enable Hollywood studios to stream HD video to a computer securely). They ranged from worries that it would stop pirated movies from working to it being a backdoor into peoaple's systems. Intel obviously denied all these accusations (which had been raised by the US press at CES and denied weeks before), but it did mean that the question and answer session was remarkably information poor.

Thankfully we managed to catch Mooly after the presentation and ask him some geekier questions concerning the state of processor graphics and what Intel’s future plans were, especially with regards to DirectX 11 and GPGPU support through OpenCL and DirectCompute. As a background to the video, some technologies like QuickSync (which offers really impressive video transcoding) will only work when you are running processor graphics. If you are running a P67-based desktop system, for example, you won’t get any advantage from the technology.

The term ‘Switchable Graphics’ refers to technology like Nvidia’s Optimus, which was conceived to get around the on-package graphics in the first generation Core I mobile processors. There has been talk of bringing the technology to desktop systems now that all new Core I CPUs will have graphics on-die, but we are yet to see a working implementation.

As for the stuff that Mooly isn’t able to talk about at the moment, we’d suggest keeping an eye on his keynote at Cebit in Germany at the start of March. That is the next big PC-focused event that he and his 20-person demonstration team will be presenting at.

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13 Comments

GhostFaceKilla Jan 20, 2011 2:44 PM	Ok I am going to say this once - please tell me why I should bother upgrading my graphics card any more considering most games these days are designed firstly with Consoles and console hardware in mind which place a greater emphasis on raw CPU power than basic graphics power.Yes, PC will be able to run a game at a higher resolution perhaps, but for most of us that isnt important as many console games can now run at 1080p which is really high enough. The track record so far is that games are increasingly being badly optimised for PC hardware. I am currently running a GTX480 which is supposed to be a top of the range card. I also run an e8500 cpu which traditionally is a bloody good CPU yet my frames in many contemporary games such as BFBC2 and so forth are woefully beneath what I would expect them to be because so much processing is now done on CPUs. In other words, for upcoming games you would be far better off buying the fastst CPU you can get and sticking with a mid range GPU at the best. Gone are the days where I could have my CPU last 3 years yet continue to see performance gains by installing a new model GPU. Sorry NVIDIA and ATi - I am going to need more convincing before I fork over any more of my money.
Hawkeye Jan 20, 2011 3:11 PM	Well, it depends on the games you play. For me, it comes down to one question: will my machine run Total War at max effects with smooth frame rate? And that usually does require beefy graphics. Sure, the FPS situation these days is pretty dire, but there are still a lot of games which can really scale when you throw the right hardware at them. Lord of the Rings Online is another game that comes to mind in the serious AMAZING graphics stakes.
GhostFaceKilla Jan 20, 2011 3:23 PM	Yes, you are right about the games that you play. Youve actually got me thinking. Perhaps we will witness in the future, as the backlash against the current state of the PC gaming industry gets into full swing the reemergence of a more hardcore focused PC gaming scene. It may just be that PC gaming may return to its roots - Games will be produced that provide more mature and intelligent gameplay, and again push the limits of computing hardware.
GhostFaceKilla Jan 20, 2011 3:24 PM	Of course I meant to say, that there are games out there that ARE focused around the PC and are excellent games - Bravo to Creative Assembly for example.
Hawkeye Jan 20, 2011 3:29 PM	You do make a good point, though - so many games are frame-limited these days that it seems useless to even worry about high-end hardware. Sadly, the games I mentioned are far more the exception than the rule.
Opy Jan 20, 2011 3:45 PM	I noticed some ghosting when playing Minesweeper. So I went quad SLI and fixed it. I believe Minesweeper was never ported over from console. More likely it was revised and ported over from Battleship. Hopefully I will never have a use for a console. Well, unless Twister comes out on the Wii...
jdog Jan 20, 2011 4:11 PM	with a lot of games becoming console focused i think that high end hardware is still required in some game types (like RTS) but with FPS games been console ports then such high end hardware isnt needed anymore. the resurgence of PC gaming is immanent....be scared console kiddies....
Ekythump Jan 20, 2011 4:31 PM	you forgot the evil laugh
alex8337 Jan 20, 2011 8:23 PM	They ALWAYS say "These new CPUs deliver a noticeable performance boost over previous generations of products" Then why does my core2 quad still kicks ass? There are allot of nerds n geeks out there that need to learn how to see through these big companies bullshit spin and save some of that money until there actually will be a noticeable technological jump.
oscarcharliezulu Jan 20, 2011 9:43 PM	Ok, why are these called Core I ? Aren't they Core I 2 ? Also, why should I really care about Open-CL? Where does this tech really give us benefit now?
codecreeper Jan 20, 2011 10:30 PM	I think really if they throw more data at the CPU it allows the GPU more processing power. What we see now is lower frame rates and more graphics. It really comes down to is the structure of the coding and the data handling.
GhostFaceKilla Jan 21, 2011 10:05 AM	The GPU can only be utilised to its best advantage IF the coding and so forth allows for it. Off loading processing to the CPU does not equate to more frames at all. In fact the opposite effect will occur most likely. CODBLOPS is the current perfect example of this. And its why we are seeing no real gains in graphical performance (or real development in graphical engines) in new games because they are coded initially for console hardware which emphasises CPU data processing over GPU processing. MY GTX480 is more than capable of handling anything thrown at it from a technical perspective. Yet it is being hobbled by dodgy coding, particularly in games such as CODBLOPS which by the developers own admission emphasises CPU over GPU. There are literally 10's of thousands of other CODBLOPS users who have the same issue. As I said above, traditionally for a gamer the focus was on getting the best video card as it would generally equate to increased frames. This is no longer the case. The GPU is actually becoming LESS important for gaming if current trends are any indication. Though of course as David Hollingworth pointed out there are still some games (particularly those aimed at PC) that do utilse the GPU to its full ability (or at least make an effort too). I mean who cares if the GPU can pump out 200 Frames when so many new games on the market are frame limited at 30 or 60 frames because of their console roots. I mean it is a total waste of money to put anything into you rig beyond a mid range card. You just will not see the real benift in so many (not all of course) games.
Athiril Jan 22, 2011 3:05 PM	Spell check. BC2 runs great on my Q6600/GTX260. There's been a lot of video transcoding hooha in prvious products.. yet to see it go anywhere.

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Atomic Magazine

Issue: 137 | June, 2012

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