News Intel: the GPU gives no benefit to non-gamers

I agree.

nVidia already has a substantial installed hardware base, with all the GeForce 8 series cards out there (on PCs and Macs....). Throw in some basic photoshop CUDA-based plugins - blur, rotate, noise, transform - and some encoders for Premiere, Final Cut and Quick Time, and let's see Intel scrambling to produce more Powerpoints!

 

Some games do depend on CPU 'grunt' (if not actually utilising multiple cores at the minute) , eg source engine games. I've played Day of Defeat Source and TF2 using a Phenom 9600 clocked at 2.3ghz and a QX6800 clocked at 3.2ghz (the Phenom with a Radeon 3870 X2 and a single 3870 in Crossfire X, the Core 2 Extreme with a single Radeon 3870 X2) and get almost double the average frame-rates on the Intel system. On the other hand, the 3 GPU's with the Phenom offer a far better framerate in COD 4 than the QX6800 with a single 3870X2.

 

I think if you're benchmarking towards the high end you want the best of everything, but if someone is getting choppy framerates in any game then unless they have a really old processor (socket a athlon for example) then a graphics upgrade would provide the best and most instant improvement. Even if I underclock my CPU it still doesn't impact game performance noticeably, only on benchmark scores.

 

In the end every level has its own requirements. Use the internet and do some light gaming? Onboard graphics with a Core 2 anything will get you by just fine. Hardcore gaming and video encoding/rendering, then you need the big toys to get good performance. Seems obvious that someone who cruises the web most has no use for an 8800 GT for example, it will not render a web page any faster.

 

Of course, the bottom end of the spectrum, integrated graphics, will be no worse than a dedicated graphics card when it comes to the boring stuff. But, I don't agree that a CPU AND GPU upgrade will help. A GPU upgrade will help; the CPU upgrade has been proven time and time again to have a small to non-existant performance increase.

 

One of the incentives for companies to put in an expensive GPU must be Vista's "Windows Experience Index" scoring method. Never mind the fact that you just want to do office work and surf, a base score under 3 is basically inferring your computer is crap, even if CPU, memory, and HDD are scoring 5.9. Numbers are what we've been trained to react to.

 

IIRC, Folding at Home has found a way to make a GPU a useable feature in calculating its protien folding. if that could be incorporated into a normal PC wouldn't that make a better use of it? It already prooves intel wrong.

 

Wait, it's a pretty elementary question, but who reads these powerpoints anyway?

 

Kinda hypocritical dont yah think. If Intel proves that having a GPU dosnt have a major effect on non-games than why bother putting one intergrated into a CPU? Note: Dont follow what Intel says, follow what Intel does.

 

or he is talking about using a skulltrail board.

 

It depends on the upgrade guys. I have a P4 3Ghz and a 1900GT. Now tell me upgrading my CPU wouldn't help a bit. I need to "update" = replace my rig.^^

 

Thanks for making me laugh... I thoroughly enjoyed that one.

 

Depends on the games. I don't know of any casual Starcraft, World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Counter-Strike 1.6 players around the world who need a 9800 GTX. Likewise, a LAN cafe doesn't need to have a Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme processor and multi-card graphics in every one of their computers to be considered gamer-class.

 

both are talking BS.

GPU and CPU are both very important, you cannot have 1 super powerful and 1 really weak. so you really need to upgrade both at the same time.

 

Greetings!

TechReport has made some comparisons:

Examples:

 

The next big thing on the net is web3d (or web3d 2.0 ). This will put a demand on a sufficiently powered gpu to be able to actually display it. People may pooh-pooh Second Life et al, but then back in the 90's, the internet we have today seemed unbelievable back then. The trouble is the installed base of Intel based laptops - the majority of which will only have Intel's GMA chip at best, which tbh is just about enough to play The Sims or Roller Coaster Tycoon, but little else - this could be a major factor in the 'holding back' of web3d. As more shop shelf PC's (desk and laptops) come with half decent gfx cards, it'll be a while before web3d can take off with a sizeable userbase.

Obviously, the other factor is the speed of the internet (or lack thereof).

 

As CUDA becomes more widely used most of this will become completely false as the GPGPU will start helping out a lot in these areas. Certainly it will be tough to tell whether money is better spent on a better CPU or a GPU.

Also, no **** having a powerful graphics card does nothing in "music performance." Who are they kidding? And what kind of "performance increase" does a powerful CPU give you? iTunes switches tracks faster?