Intel's DX10 GPU.

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Perhaps, Intel Corp.?s graphics cores that are featured in the company?s chipsets are not the best on the planet, but it looks like Intel wants them to be as progressive as possible. According to a media report, the company?s new G965 chipset not only features shader model 4 capabilities, but also has progressive unified shader micro-architecture.

It has already been reported that Intel?s built-in graphics core of the company?s G965 chipset ? which will be called Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3000 (GMA 3000) ? will support the DirectX 10 functionality, particularly, shader model 4.0, which requires the part to handle vertex shaders, geometry shaders and pixel shaders. However, so far it was not clear how exactly the GMA 3000 family would implement the innovative features.

According to slides published by HKEPC web-site, the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3000 will feature ?multi-threaded array of execution units? as well as ?dynamic load balancing?, which means that the shader processing engines will be unified and all the features ? including vertex shaders and transform and lighting (T&L) engine which have been emulated by central processor ? will be implemented in hardware, something, which leaves hopes for significantly increased performance compared to predecessors.

The Intel GMA 3000 will be generally significantly more advanced compared to the current- and previous-generations of Intel?s built-in graphics cores. The new core: it will have improved early-Z technology which reduces the load on memory bandwidth, it will support 16x anisotropic filtering, 32-bit precision floating point calculations and so on. Additionally, thanks to unified shader processing engines, the GMA 3000 will support hardware decoding of H.264 and WMV9b high-definition video streams. In addition, the new integrated graphics core from the world?s largest chipmaker will provide HDMI output. It is unclear whether the new graphics core will support HDCP encryption as well.

Traditional graphics processing units (GPUs) or cores have dedicated pixel shader and vertex shader processors. In cases, where a frame being rendered contains a lot of geometry and just a few pixel shaders to determine colour, the performance is limited by vertex shaders, while pixel processors are standing idle. GPUs with unified shader processors will have special scheduler inside them, which will determine the load from pixel, vertex and geometry shaders and then assign appropriate number of processors for every kind of work. This will allow to utilize all the computing power of the GPU, believes graphics chip specialist ATI Technologies. The company currently has flagship graphics processor Radeon X1900 XTX, which is clocked at 650MHz and has 48 pixel shader processors and 8 vertex shader processors, which ? along with the other parts of the chip ? cost the company 384 million transistors. Definitely, built-in graphics cores should consist of much lower amount of transistors, however, it means that they will have lower amount of executing engines, hence, it is crucial to use all the available computing performance.

Despite of ATI?s optimism about unified shader micro-architecture, rival Nvidia Corp. believes that implementation of a unified shader engines should be gradual and cautious.

Potentially, a competitive built-in graphics core from Intel may pose some threat to entry-level offerings from companies like ATI Technologies, Nvidia Corp. and S3 Graphics Inc., even though generally Intel has not been known for providing smooth framerates in games. Usually those, who use the low-eng graphics cards do not care much about the best performance and quality, but about the price. In case Intel manages to offer speed similar to graphics cards which cost $50 - $79, graphics chip companies may lose a substantial part of the market.

Intel Corp. did not comment on the news-story.

Add to this, rumour has it that SiS is joining in the GPU market for DX10 with their upcoming mirage4.

5 competitors. SiS, intel, Ati, NV, S3!!

Let the fight begin!

 

[MBrown]

Sounds interesting.

 

[biostud]

probably only for low end GPU/Integrated market, and in that area the most important are stable drivers IMHO as you won't be able to play with much eyecandy no matter what.

The extra $ for a mid-end videocard is usually well spent if you want to game.

 

[Lord Banshee]

yeah but the low end GPU/Integrated is a cash cow. Intel and ATI have been battleing it out for a while with nvidia growing at their heels but it would be nice to see if Intel S3 or Sis bring something alittle more "Hey look at me i am a fast video card for gamers" if they make a 100% DX10.

 

[dug777]

would be awesome to see something half decent out of them

 

[Ika]

saw this coming a mile away. it's still good to see that intel wants to innovate in the graphics department. This could be a good solution for non-gamers.

 

[R3MF]

it is very easy to have a unified shader architechture when you only supply the ptoduct with one shader component!

 

[ElFenix]

so is it really just an ATi Radeon 10100?

can't wait for the Radeon 10800XTX myself

 

[A554SS1N]

Originally posted by: ElFenix
so is it really just an ATi Radeon 10100?

can't wait for the Radeon 10800XTX myself

X2800XTX more like?

 

[biostud]

Originally posted by: R3MF
it is very easy to have a unified shader architechture when you only supply the ptoduct with one shader component!

:laugh:

 

[beggerking]

as long as it is free and comes with the mb, I'm all for it. Good job intel.

 

[Greenman]

Originally posted by: beggerking
as long as it is free and comes with the mb, I'm all for it. Good job intel.

It might be cheap, but It won't be free.

 

[Nextman916]

why no comment?

 

[Nelsieus]

But wouldn't this be in the price segment below $100. And isn't nVidia's and ATI's primarily market at $100 above (being as that is around the price of their low-end GPUs).

Because I agree that the low-end and mainstream is where both nVidia and ATI get the brunt of their sales, but it seems like Intel's offering would still be lower than both nVidia's and ATI's "low-end" at that.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: biostud

Originally posted by: R3MF
it is very easy to have a unified shader architechture when you only supply the ptoduct with one shader component!

:laugh:

Oh, come on. They're Revolutionizing the way they think about integrated graphics!

I'm sure they'll have both a vertex and a pixel shader!

- M4H

 

[akugami]

Intel's solution as usual will be for integrated systems. They make a killing on motherboards that use their graphics chipset such as Dell, HP, Toshiba, etc. This updated and more powerful graphics chipset seems like it was updated so it can run Vista's Aero GUI effects and low end games and that's it. Nothing to get excited over.

 

[Powermoloch]

It's will be kind of funny when Nvidia hits the 9xxx series possibly a 9600 GT/ 9800GT / 9900 GTX.

 

[beggerking]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
I'm sure they'll have both a vertex and a pixel shader!
- M4H

 

[josh6079]

I'm glad to see more competition itching for DX10. That means that there will be even more good deals.

 

[Griswold]

Originally posted by: guoziming
saw this coming a mile away. it's still good to see that intel wants to innovate in the graphics department. This could be a good solution for non-gamers.

Why would non-gamers care about things like DX10 and SM4? As long as it supports DX9 for the eye candy in Vista, the paperclip warriors will be happy.

 

[AzNPinkTuv]

Originally posted by: Powermoloch
It's will be kind of funny when Nvidia hits the 9xxx series possibly a 9600 GT/ 9800GT / 9900 GTX.

9800xt>>9800gtx =)

haha i wanan see noobs by a 500 dollar 9800xt