News Gigabyte Z68 boards to use ‘virtual GPU’ software

I wait with baited breath for the first benchmarks that prove that under certain very specific conditions you get a 15% benefit in either performance or power management, but for everything else it either makes no difference or actually makes performance / power drain / stability worse.

Oh, and for of course the feature to last no longer than one season - to be dropped for the next big marketing thing - be it overclocking doo-dads, gaming sound cards, low latency gaming NICs or other useless power management acronyms (UPMA's)

 

Unless there's marked performance benefits (which I find unlikely versus my 5870, but who knows) I'm not terribly excited, the small power savings from a technology like this just aren't worth it since the addition of this software will likely come with a higher price tag. If you're really trying hard to save power there's much lower hanging fruit in your average household.

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/...-core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/9

This is one of the better, more detailed comparisons out of the SB reviews. Looking at this data, I would place SB above a high end GPU.

 

Sounds good - if it works. The manual switchable graphics on my laptop not be the most convenient solution in the world, but it seems human beings and Optimus sometimes disagree on which GFX chip should be active and I like my manual control, thanks all the same.

Of course, get a decision making system that actually works properly and I'll be all over it.

 

If you are concerned about power consumption, and are also an avid gamer.. Easy solution..
Buy cheap basic PC for if you just want to check emails, and use your e-peen gaming machine just for games.. That way you have 0 chance of driver clashes, or the software deciding that crysis2 will run better on the intel GPU.

Or better yet, use your phone for email/web! Most ppl have smartphones these days..

 

I could care less about this in my desktop unless they create a way for me to use all the gpu power I have all at once as I only care about max top end performance. In addition I run bonic so power efficiency is no issue as I am donating that cost to help science.

Now for my laptop this would be great b/c I do not run bonic on that and a laptop is something that I really want to be able to optimize the power usage of so that I can keep using it while on battery.

 

SB is almost at the quality level of CPU rendering here, but much faster.
What made me wonder is the poor quality performance of CUDA in this article...

The 4-in-1 pictures should be in a similar test here on bit-tech, they're great.

 

This tech words wonderfully well on the 2011 MBP, Intel HD3000 and AMD 6750M swaps with no issue, no noticeable lag or anything like that, just a little notification to tell me the card has changed.

So I am sure if a sandy bridge mac can do it, a Intel board should be able to do it. And it works just as well with a external monitor connected for dual screens

Kimbie

 

Whats the betting that it performs worse than their last outing, the Hydra chipset?

 

You'd lose...