Core i7, X58, and IGP's

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 12:02 pm

With the introduction of the Core i7 and its corresponding x58 northbridge chipset, the memory controller has now moved onto the CPU die. I was wondering how others here see this effecting IGP performance on northbridge chipsets, if at all. The way i see it, the thermal threashold on the northbridge should, in theory, go way down with the exclusion of a memory controller. This should allow more powerful/larger IGP onto the northbridge.

Now i'm sure a lot of people are thinking to themselves, "why do we care about IGP?", but many applications in the near future seem to be moving towards being graphics accelerated. Like the new adobe photoshop, or the vista OS desktop. IGP performance could quickly become a very important topic for non gamming applications.

mattthemuppet · Post by **mattthemuppet** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 3:07 pm

I'm sure we'll see IGPs on the lower end Nehalem chipsets eventually, but, given Intel's record, they're likely to be the bare minimum neccessary.

ame · Post by **ame** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 3:10 pm

If you consider the fact the IGP is mostly a solution for a budget cosideration, I think current generation IGPs handle both the tasks you metioned quite well for the budget level user. If its editing your personal digital photo album of running aero just any Intel 3100 or the likes would do.

If however you are a pro Photoshop user and need to do some highend filtering on huge resolutions for print ads on a tight deadline then you would likely own a system that has appropraite GPU/CPU/RAM to hadle your workload.

Regardless next generation of integrated graphics would likely be better than the current. that can't be a bad thing

jessekopelman · Post by **jessekopelman** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 1:19 pm

Intel has stated that the X4500 is their last motherboard IGP and that by late 2009 they will be including a GPU on the CPU die and then eventually as a component within the CPU itself. Basically, the same thing that happened with the FPU.

AZBrandon · Post by **AZBrandon** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 10:06 am

jessekopelman wrote:Intel has stated that the X4500 is their last motherboard IGP and that by late 2009 they will be including a GPU on the CPU die and then eventually as a component within the CPU itself. Basically, the same thing that happened with the FPU.

It seems that as dies shink, we're seeing more and more things move on die. I was impressed when I saw that Sun's new T5220 systems use a processor that actually has a pair of 10 gigabit network controllers built on die, so the network has as much bandwidth and as low latency as possible. Their motto is that it's a "system on a chip" which is a term I've seen before, but it seems like it's a catchphrase that is getting more and more accurate as technology progresses. It is, after all, why AMD decided they needed ATI, since the assumption is eventually all graphics will end up in the CPU.

tehcrazybob · Post by **tehcrazybob** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 10:56 am

AZBrandon wrote:It seems that as dies shink, we're seeing more and more things move on die. I was impressed when I saw that Sun's new T5220 systems use a processor that actually has a pair of 10 gigabit network controllers built on die, so the network has as much bandwidth and as low latency as possible. Their motto is that it's a "system on a chip" which is a term I've seen before, but it seems like it's a catchphrase that is getting more and more accurate as technology progresses. It is, after all, why AMD decided they needed ATI, since the assumption is eventually all graphics will end up in the CPU.

This is an interesting trend, because it's a logical continuation of the progression we've been making for the last two decades. Originally, computers were totally proprietary and not really user-serviceable. We can call these the Dark Ages. Then, everything became standardized, but there was no integration. A motherboard in this time period would have only a single DIN port, and all other features and I/O were handled by ISA expansion cards. As time went on, more and more basic hardware was integrated with the motherboard. This was generally a good thing, because it saved power and irritation for basic users, while still allowing expansion with higher-grade components by users who needed the extra performance.

Integrating these things into the CPU is much the same process, but it allows for much higher performance from the integrated solutions. Combining the CPU and GPU may also simplify general-purpose GPU implementations, which would be a huge boost in performance for a large number of tasks. As long as the integrated solutions don't interfere with high-performance expansion options, I can't really see a drawback.