Improved IGPU (Fusion, Sandy Bridge) good for gaming industry?

[Terzo]

I dunno, I could see it going either way.

For one, I think it would really help designers by presenting a relatively ubiquitous graphics level, around which they can design minimum system requirements. Until Clarksdale, intel graphics seemed to be lackluster, as well as what most people had. AMD had better offerings, but probably didn't present enough users to justify making games compatible with the HD 3200/4200 chipsets. With Sandy Bridge being released soon and Llano later this year, I think we'll see a lot of "non gamers" who will have respectable graphics capabilities. Sort of akin to consoles, this will present a standard for developers to build around. Basically, they can reach a larger audience, but still allow for medium and high settings for gamers running dedicated video cards.

On the flip side, I can also see how developers might cater to that lowest common denominator since that would probably be where a lot of the money is. It seems to me that some already complain about the same thing regarding consoles, how they hold back pc games (many being ports) to dx9 and similar graphics.

Is the advent of more powerful integrated graphics going to be a game changer for pc gaming, or are things going to remain the same?

 

[Red Storm]

It will be an addition to what we have, but not a revolution of any kind. But it will be beneficial to all gamers at some point, even for those who buy and use dedicated cards. Why? As more and more things become GPU accelerated (for instance, physics), developers will be able to offload these tasks onto the on board GPU which will now be a fairly capable processor in its own right comapred to the IGPs we have today. In a few years everyone who buys a new PC or CPU will have a GPU capable of running offloaded tasks. That's a bigger market than PhysX's "only two Nvidia cards" will ever be, so devs will be more likely to utilize it.

Not to mention increased performance on the on board level just might pressure AMD and Nvidia to up their low level dedicated performance, which could maybe have a domino effect all the way up to the high end segment. A slight effect, but an effect nonetheless.

 

[Bateluer]

Is the advent of more powerful integrated graphics going to be a game changer for pc gaming, or are things going to remain the same?

Last reviews I saw from the Clarksdale IGPs had them around the same playing field as the Radeon 5450s and whatever nvidia's equivalent is? While this may be a big step up from previous Intel IGPs, its still not really where they need to be for serious gaming. the Fusion/SB IGPs will offer better performance, but the bottom rung of low end discrete chips won't sit still either.