Intel building its own "XBox" sequel???
- Thread starter Deadmeat
- Start date
PC games, I would think. This isn't a console concept, but a small form-factor-like PC setup that is intended to run XP Media Center Edition.
And I do not hold high hopes for "Extreme" Graphics 3, even a GFFX 5200U is faster/better than today's gaming consoles, but that still makes it almost completely useless as a DX9 gaming card. To get good DX9 performance you need to throw tons of trannies at the problem, and if it's one thing integrated graphics are famous for, it's NOT spending much on that.
If Intel spent nearly as much on pipeline design and layout on IG3 as they do on their CPUs, they could make a tiny 1 or 2 pipe deferred rendering device that runs at 1-2GHz and gets decent gaming performance, but the chances of that happening I see as almost nil. Likely, we'll get an underwhelming 1 or 2 pipe immediate mode renderer that runs at around 300MHz instead and while performing better than current consoles, still totally lacks the oomph neccessary to handle tomorrow's games at anything but the lowest of resolutions, especially considering the shared framebuffer memory it'd use.
The audio side of the chipset seems interesting though, remains to see how much of it runs in software on the host CPU. Considering it'll be a pretty hefty chip driving this thing, I'd expect it to do most of the sound, but also vertex processing for 3D rendering for example.
I don't think Intel really wants to get into the console biz, more likely they're targetting Joe Average that isn't much interested in a regular PC, but instead wants to watch movies and play MP3s, and likely do some Tivo-style harddrive recording. Preferably, it should also look nice, maybe like a hifi component and go into the entertainment center stack along with other audio/video equipment.
This thing won't have the specs neccessary to take on upcoming consoles, but that won't be its main goal anyway. If the user wants to play games it's supposed to be capable of playing games, but it won't be uber at it. It'll be a nifty jack-of-all-trades, and probably pretty good at it too if one doesn't expect too much. Intel usually makes pretty decent stuff (except fast integrated graphics *cough*).
And I do not hold high hopes for "Extreme" Graphics 3, even a GFFX 5200U is faster/better than today's gaming consoles, but that still makes it almost completely useless as a DX9 gaming card. To get good DX9 performance you need to throw tons of trannies at the problem, and if it's one thing integrated graphics are famous for, it's NOT spending much on that.
If Intel spent nearly as much on pipeline design and layout on IG3 as they do on their CPUs, they could make a tiny 1 or 2 pipe deferred rendering device that runs at 1-2GHz and gets decent gaming performance, but the chances of that happening I see as almost nil. Likely, we'll get an underwhelming 1 or 2 pipe immediate mode renderer that runs at around 300MHz instead and while performing better than current consoles, still totally lacks the oomph neccessary to handle tomorrow's games at anything but the lowest of resolutions, especially considering the shared framebuffer memory it'd use.
The audio side of the chipset seems interesting though, remains to see how much of it runs in software on the host CPU. Considering it'll be a pretty hefty chip driving this thing, I'd expect it to do most of the sound, but also vertex processing for 3D rendering for example.
I don't think Intel really wants to get into the console biz, more likely they're targetting Joe Average that isn't much interested in a regular PC, but instead wants to watch movies and play MP3s, and likely do some Tivo-style harddrive recording. Preferably, it should also look nice, maybe like a hifi component and go into the entertainment center stack along with other audio/video equipment.
This thing won't have the specs neccessary to take on upcoming consoles, but that won't be its main goal anyway. If the user wants to play games it's supposed to be capable of playing games, but it won't be uber at it. It'll be a nifty jack-of-all-trades, and probably pretty good at it too if one doesn't expect too much. Intel usually makes pretty decent stuff (except fast integrated graphics *cough*).
Intel doesn't have a great record with graphic, parallelism and new architectures.
A zillions-stage cpu with extremely limited execution units, 3 registers with weird instructions in an incredibly hand fine-tuned multi-gigahertz architecture is great for desktop computers. But for something like a console... They certainly have the ressources and the brains power, but is there some inspiration somewhere ?
Don't get me wrong, I love Intel, always have, gotta like programming those x86 bitches, which offer you a mixture of bad, great and evil designs. But I think Intel only got inspiration when they designed the 386 and then lost it
Still, the competition may awaken them.
A zillions-stage cpu with extremely limited execution units, 3 registers with weird instructions in an incredibly hand fine-tuned multi-gigahertz architecture is great for desktop computers. But for something like a console... They certainly have the ressources and the brains power, but is there some inspiration somewhere ?
Don't get me wrong, I love Intel, always have, gotta like programming those x86 bitches, which offer you a mixture of bad, great and evil designs. But I think Intel only got inspiration when they designed the 386 and then lost it
Still, the competition may awaken them.
Maybe they want something to look really good on their 50" LCOS TV's?
nondescript
Regular
VIA, now Intel?!
Sweet, bring it on - the more the merrier.
Sweet, bring it on - the more the merrier.
Guden Oden said:
SMarth,
How can you SAY that about the 386, it didn't even have any caches, whereas Moto's 020 already had that... Anyway, the evil of x86 must surely be hidden pretty well these days with the very VERY mature high-level language compilers we have these days.
Besides, apart from heat emissions and power draw, Prescott would be one helluva central processor for a console I'm sure. Still, that's a moot point now, MS surprised me completely when they went the PowerPC (or so I assume) route instead. Maybe they got a better deal from IBM, or maybe the high power and heat of the P4 just killed Intel from the start; G5 @ 2.5GHz is said to be around 25W and something like half the die size of Prescott if I'm not mistaken. Now, a Prescott at 3.4GHz is likely faster, at least in most cases, but with 4x power draw and a large difference in physical size the performance difference in Intel's favor probably isn't worth it, at least not in a consumer device...
How can you SAY that about the 386, it didn't even have any caches, whereas Moto's 020 already had that... Anyway, the evil of x86 must surely be hidden pretty well these days with the very VERY mature high-level language compilers we have these days.
Besides, apart from heat emissions and power draw, Prescott would be one helluva central processor for a console I'm sure. Still, that's a moot point now, MS surprised me completely when they went the PowerPC (or so I assume) route instead. Maybe they got a better deal from IBM, or maybe the high power and heat of the P4 just killed Intel from the start; G5 @ 2.5GHz is said to be around 25W and something like half the die size of Prescott if I'm not mistaken. Now, a Prescott at 3.4GHz is likely faster, at least in most cases, but with 4x power draw and a large difference in physical size the performance difference in Intel's favor probably isn't worth it, at least not in a consumer device...
Well they could liscense the series 5 chip and uses that as the new extreme graphics . They already have the mbx liscense .
If its cheap , small and plays pc games alone with mabye dvd movies and music then i see no problem with it being sold and it might even cut into some of the xbox 2/ ps3 sales .
If its cheap , small and plays pc games alone with mabye dvd movies and music then i see no problem with it being sold and it might even cut into some of the xbox 2/ ps3 sales .
jvd said:
If anything, it would cut into some of the PC sales...
jvd said:
If that was the case, I'm sure there would have been press releases issued about it. Also, if PVR series 5 appears as Intel's EG3, that seriously diminishes my hopes of a line of discrete series 5 graphics cards, one of which could find a home in my AGP slot...
Guden Oden said:
Well i know they have liscenses for mbx . I think i remember a liscense for series 3. Perhaps they already have one for series 5 . THey could have them and not plan on using them .
Anyway if anything having intel produce power vr graphics chips could only help powervr . Having a player who has what 30% of the market selling your chips intergrated is a good way to get app support. ALso a series 5 on a northbridge would be worlds faster than a nforce 2 video chip and most likely a 9700 moblie chip and cost less .
jvd said:
Series 3 was the Kyro line, which ST owned the license to. Series 4 wasn't licensed to anyone, and that seems to be true of series 5 as well. At least so far.
Intel's something like 45% or such, or almost anyway. ATi and NV are both very close to 25, and Intel has almost everything of the remainder of the market. Still, it sounds too good to be true, and I don't think Intel wants to license someone else's tech either, they probably reason they can make more money doing the R&D themselves...
Anyway, as long as series 5 support the major APIs, they don't really NEED app support; that would come automatically by itself since apps support those APIs...
Megadrive1988
Veteran
I will laugh my ass off if Intel attempts to produce its own entertainment platform.
One would think they'd interfere with the DISCover consoles or whatever form of the Phantom comes out if they ever make it to market, but I don't really see and of the PC-gaming consoles interfering with consoles as we know them--there are too many differences in the development markets and many "problems" with PC gamng that will still persist even on small, dedicated machines that makes people prefer consoles to begin with.
With luck, though, popularity of such machines (if they acheive a decent amount) will increase the amount of porting and the types of games ported from one to another (the majority I would imagine being from console to PC), giving owners of either a wider selection.
With luck, though, popularity of such machines (if they acheive a decent amount) will increase the amount of porting and the types of games ported from one to another (the majority I would imagine being from console to PC), giving owners of either a wider selection.
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