News Intel details first CPU with integrated GPU

You seem to forget that am2 and am2+ are compatible (and the performance differences are very small). First 775 boards could only work with P4 and Celeron, and Intel has WAY more chipset-confusion than AMD. s754 was seen only for a small while, it disappeared so quick that most people didn't bother buying. And those not being ignorant knew from the beginning not to bother with it.

And by the way, take a c2q and do real, server simulations on all cores. As soon as you try to use all cores, individual performance drops dramatically. Do the same with the first Phenom, not to mention the second. You'll be quite surprised. And now check how many of the 10 fastest supercomputers run on Intel chips. Ouch? (to those lazy ones - 7 run AMD chips, one runs POWER architecture and only two use Intel - and they are two times bigger and eat three times more power, despite being in the second five)

 

I dont really care about sockets.

If it requires a new board, it just means i compare my current machine to the potential upgrade and see if the speed increase is worth it.

Like recently when my board died, i debate for a good two weeks reading reviews between a I7 920 and my Q6600, in the end the cost wasn't worth it. If i was going from a single core 939 system then yeah i would go I7.

Say this technology developement has nothing wrong with it. As i said before, its great news for future netbooks and such devices.

 

The mainboard logistics of having a combined CPU/GPU seem interesting to me. Quite certain it'd mean another socket...

 

It would be cool for even smaller form factor PCs since there would be no GPU

 

In 3D performance, yes... crap it is. However, the bulk of the market is not 3D focused for IGP. While nVidia and AMD IGPs can give > 30 FPS, even these are at resolutions and quality settings not acceptable for even the casual 3D gamer.

IGPs have not been nor never will be a gamer choice HW solution, they lack fundamental capabilities to support high quality gaming. What they should do and do do, even Intel's crappy IGP implementation, is enable a means to provide visual IO to the user for applications that are not 3D intensive. I.e. it needs to be good enough for corporate enterprise to run productivity for workers, as an example. Corporations are not interested if their employees can run Quake 4 at 35 FPS for fun, they are more interested in the ability to run Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Email clients in parallel (which is not a GPU intensive activity).

This is why Intel sells ooooodles of these things, and remains on top as the overall GPU supplier, even above nVidia and AMD/ATI. The corporate market is huge and the drive there is not for 3D Graphics or accelerating HD video.

AMD has indeed provided a much more compelling mobile platform than what they offered in the past, but their high octane 3D graphics HD accelerating IGP has not helped them crack the most lucrative markets as they have lost share in mobile consistently for the past few quarters (even after PUMA). Why? Because the target market does not need nor want the key features AMD is providing. Consumer space, yes perhaps to some degree, but mobile computing is not about gaming in general.

 

what about gta IV. runs much better on quad core.

 

Where do folk see the core numbers getting to......16,32,64,128,256,512???