Mark Rein: “PC innovation suffered” from Intel’s decisions to not fix their graphics

[hawtdawg]

I can state with near certainty that intel's decision to enter the graphics market via iGPU had little to do with gaming. They want to drive graphics in ultra portable, ultra slim computing devices with high resolution or "retina" displays. For this market, the vast majority of consumers don't care about gaming performance, believe it or not.

It's just rather funny when someone states that a rMBP (the 13 inch variant uses HD4000) can't run bf3 very well. My first thought is, "yeah? So what?". That isn't what the device is intended for. Everyone here needs to get OUT of the mindset that everything and anything is designed for gaming. The mass market doesn't care, only the 1% of tech nerds do.

You're completely missing the point. Regardless of Intel's intentions, PC game devs were left with Intels shit IGP as the baseline. There are lots of people who play PC games without buying graphics cards.

 

[blackened23]

You're completely missing the point. Regardless of Intel's intentions, PC game devs were left with Intels shit IGP as the baseline. There are lots of people who play PC games without buying graphics cards.

This is absolutely no different than any point and time in the PC ecosystem. 10 years ago, pre-assembled PCs had (your words) shit GPUs. 15 years ago, pre-assembled PCs had shit GPUs. 5 years ago, guess what. Shit GPUs. Pre-assembled boxes from Dell, HP, gateway 2000, and going back in history - Packard Bell, e-machines, these machines all had without exception poor hardware for gaming. Once Windows 95 was released and the days of DOS gaming were done, the only option for acceptable gaming performance for D3D/OGL games was discrete. If you wanted to game, you had to go to (most likely) Best Buy and pick up a discrete GPU. This is how most got their start into PC gaming. My first Dell PC had a cirrus logic chipset for it's GPU/graphics. I don't know if you remember back that far, but I can assure you that it was absolutely worthless for any type of OpenGL or Direct3D gaming. S3 was also quite popular at this time, and they were great for 2D performance but for 3D? Garbage. S3 / Tseng labs chipsets were used extensively on systems in the late 90s - and were not usable for any type of serious OGL/D3D gaming.

So what changed? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I remember my first Dell PCs years and years ago. Guess what? Shit GPU. I went to Best Buy and bought a Voodoo II. So this is different from modern times, how? It's not. Unless you specifically went out to buy a 3000$ gaming PC, you bought a pre-assembled box which had a bad GPU - and if you wanted to game, you went and bought something suitable for gaming.

Again. Nothing has changed.

 

[Sohaltang]

Agree nothing changed. But had the industry changed its focus some years ago we would all reap the rewards. We pretty much hit a wall in processor speed. Intel is working in the iGPU because the market evolved and they dont have much else in the way of a major improvement. Currently all we are seeing is a small performance bump and maybe adding more cores. Remember when we were going from 600mhz-1200mhz-2.5GHZ-3.2ghz-3.2ghzX4.. years later its 3.6X4 plus HT.

 

[tential]

You're completely missing the point. Regardless of Intel's intentions, PC game devs were left with Intels shit IGP as the baseline. There are lots of people who play PC games without buying graphics cards.

So Intel should raise the price of CPUs for EVERYONE because of the small minority of people who game on integrated graphics? Does that sound like an intelligent and sound business practice for you?

If I told you that 1% of the market uses intel's integrated graphics for gaming, would you spend hundreds of millions in R&D to cater to them?

 

[hawtdawg]

This is absolutely no different than any point and time in the PC ecosystem. 10 years ago, pre-assembled PCs had (your words) shit GPUs. 15 years ago, pre-assembled PCs had shit GPUs. 5 years ago, guess what. Shit GPUs. Pre-assembled boxes from Dell, HP, gateway 2000, and going back in history - Packard Bell, e-machines, these machines all had without exception poor hardware for gaming. Once Windows 95 was released and the days of DOS gaming were done, the only option for acceptable gaming performance for D3D/OGL games was discrete. If you wanted to game, you had to go to (most likely) Best Buy and pick up a discrete GPU. This is how most got their start into PC gaming. My first Dell PC had a cirrus logic chipset for it's GPU/graphics. I don't know if you remember back that far, but I can assure you that it was absolutely worthless for any type of OpenGL or Direct3D gaming. S3 was also quite popular at this time, and they were great for 2D performance but for 3D? Garbage. S3 / Tseng labs chipsets were used extensively on systems in the late 90s - and were not usable for any type of serious OGL/D3D gaming.

So what changed? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I remember my first Dell PCs years and years ago. Guess what? Shit GPU. I went to Best Buy and bought a Voodoo II. So this is different from modern times, how? It's not. Unless you specifically went out to buy a 3000$ gaming PC, you bought a pre-assembled box which had a bad GPU - and if you wanted to game, you went and bought something suitable for gaming.

Again. Nothing has changed.

Well since you're such a PC gaming old-timer, I'm sure you can remember the software modes that every single game your Voodoo2 ever played also had as well, and how your Voodoo2 didn't do a damn thing other than double the resolution and filter the textures. GPU's weren't a requirement at all to play any game out at the time. GPU's were a novelty. Quake 3 was the first game to come along that anyone cared about, that actually needed a 3d accelerator, and that was nearly 2 years after the Voodoo2 was released.

Everything has changed. Graphics have advanced to the point that a software engine could never in a million years hope to compete with the shittiest GPU available 5 years ago.

Not to mention, but owning a computer 15 years ago that was new enough to play games at all was not something that many people enjoyed. These days though, every household has at least one computer thats fairly new. But just like people 15 years ago could play games in software mode, people who have a newer computer nowdays, expect to be able to play games on it too. The difference is that 15 years ago, the difference between a Voodoo2 and software mode, was 800x600 vs 400x300 and some filtered textures. Do I need to explain to you the gap in performance between an GMA 3100 and an Nvidia 260?

PC video game graphics have always been held back by the lowest common demoninator, and the gap between the lowest common denominator, and mainstream GPU's did nothing but widen for over a decade.

 

[hawtdawg]

So Intel should raise the price of CPUs for EVERYONE because of the small minority of people who game on integrated graphics? Does that sound like an intelligent and sound business practice for you?

If I told you that 1% of the market uses intel's integrated graphics for gaming, would you spend hundreds of millions in R&D to cater to them?

He's clearly talking past tense. Intel's recent IGP's have been considerably better than in the past.

 

[Sohaltang]

So Intel should raise the price of CPUs for EVERYONE because of the small minority of people who game on integrated graphics? Does that sound like an intelligent and sound business practice for you?

If I told you that 1% of the market uses intel's integrated graphics for gaming, would you spend hundreds of millions in R&D to cater to them?

I was just on Steam. The biggest GPU by percentage is the intel 4000. !% lol, its the majority

 

[hawtdawg]

I was just on Steam. The biggest GPU by percentage is the intel 4000. !% lol, its the majority

I don't see what the big deal is with this Mark Rein quote.

This is certainly not a new conversation in the realm of PC graphics, though this is definitely the first time i've seen people act as though it was an absurd thing to say.

 

[tential]

I was just on Steam. The biggest GPU by percentage is the intel 4000. !% lol, its the majority

So let me get this straight. Because of the people who use the STEAM platform for gaming happen to have a majority of people use the HD 4000, intel should spend it's resources on developing faster integrated GPUs on their processors.

Steam has 54 MILLION active users.
I couldn't find how many people own CPUs with intel but I took the top 5 countries who would most likely have citizens who could all afford PCs (USA, Japan, Germany, France, UK) and got their population and took HALF of that to say how many users of intel cpus are out there today. Lets be real, it's probably a LOT more than that.

There were 651.51 million people are in those countries. Half of that is 325.755 million.
Intel has 13.26% of the GPU market on steam (Your "Biggest GPU is the Intel 4000 is wrong by the way, it's the HD 3000 so learn your facts http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/). 13.26% of the 54 million users on steampowered is 7.1604 million users have intel graphics as their main source of gaming.

We already established approximately 325.755 million users (CONSERVATIVELY) own and ran intel CPUs in the WORLD.

So 7.1604/325.755 gives us 2.2% of people who purchase intel CPUs use it for gaming. Yet, you want to tell me that it's a smart decision for intel to invest into improving it's integrated graphics for gaming rather than invest their things in the things the other 97.8% of people ACTUALLY care about.

Come on man use your head I know you come to the same conclusion I do. You don't cater to 2.2% of your market. You cater to the moms, dads, grand fathers, etc. who purchase your CPUs. Not the 2.2% of people running intel CPUs gaming on steam's platform. And that number is conservative, we know full well that a lot more than 600 million people have PCs, and we know a lot more than 50% of the market is intel based. If I used real numbers it wouldn't even be over 1%.

 

[antihelten]

So let me get this straight. Because of the people who use the STEAM platform for gaming happen to have a majority of people use the HD 4000, intel should spend it's resources on developing faster integrated GPUs on their processors.

Steam has 54 MILLION active users.
I couldn't find how many people own CPUs with intel but I took the top 5 countries who would most likely have citizens who could all afford PCs (USA, Japan, Germany, France, UK) and got their population and took HALF of that to say how many users of intel cpus are out there today. Lets be real, it's probably a LOT more than that.

There were 651.51 million people are in those countries. Half of that is 325.755 million.
Intel has 13.26% of the GPU market on steam (Your "Biggest GPU is the Intel 4000 is wrong by the way, it's the HD 3000 so learn your facts http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/). 13.26% of the 54 million users on steampowered is 7.1604 million users have intel graphics as their main source of gaming.

We already established approximately 325.755 million users (CONSERVATIVELY) own and ran intel CPUs in the WORLD.

So 7.1604/325.755 gives us 2.2% of people who purchase intel CPUs use it for gaming. Yet, you want to tell me that it's a smart decision for intel to invest into improving it's integrated graphics for gaming rather than invest their things in the things the other 97.8% of people ACTUALLY care about.

Come on man use your head I know you come to the same conclusion I do. You don't cater to 2.2% of your market. You cater to the moms, dads, grand fathers, etc. who purchase your CPUs. Not the 2.2% of people running intel CPUs gaming on steam's platform. And that number is conservative, we know full well that a lot more than 600 million people have PCs, and we know a lot more than 50% of the market is intel based. If I used real numbers it wouldn't even be over 1%.

Not all pc gamers are on steam though. According to PCGA (of which Intel is a member), there are over 1 billion pc gamers globally, with over 250 million defined as "core" gamers:

http://pcgamingalliance.org/press/details/pc-gaming-alliance-releases-two-member-exclusive-reports

That would change your percentage to about 40% (counting all 1 billion), or 10% (counting only the 250 million "core" gamers).

 

[tential]

Not all pc gamers are on steam though. According to PCGA (of which Intel is a member), there are over 1 billion pc gamers globally, with over 250 million defined as "core" gamers:

http://pcgamingalliance.org/press/details/pc-gaming-alliance-releases-two-member-exclusive-reports

That would change your percentage to about 40% (counting all 1 billion), or 10% (counting only the 250 million "core" gamers).

Even at 250 million "core" gamers" who "care" about graphics, we can still assume that the same ratios steam has acquired apply. 13.26% of people using intel integrated graphics is 33.15 million. Over a billion people use intel graphics but lets be nice and say 600. About 70% of people use intel but lets be nice and say 65%.

We still get 5% use it for real gaming. Either way you put it, it makes 0 business sense for intel to focus on their upgrading their integrated graphics for gaming. Hell, just THINK of how many people you know that use integrated graphics for gaming. There simply isn't an argument for it. Any idea of intel pooling serious resources into improving their integrated graphics would be a waste of money, an increase in processor price that wouldn't be needed, which would hurt sales.

I didn't think I'd need to explain this on a hardware forum how stupid this would be.

 

[R0H1T]

Even at 250 million "core" gamers" who "care" about graphics, we can still assume that the same ratios steam has acquired apply. 13.26% of people using intel integrated graphics is 33.15 million. Over a billion people use intel graphics but lets be nice and say 600. About 70% of people use intel but lets be nice and say 65%.

We still get 5% use it for real gaming. Either way you put it, it makes 0 business sense for intel to focus on their upgrading their integrated graphics for gaming. Hell, just THINK of how many people you know that use integrated graphics for gaming. There simply isn't an argument for it. Any idea of intel pooling serious resources into improving their integrated graphics would be a waste of money, an increase in processor price that wouldn't be needed, which would hurt sales.

I didn't think I'd need to explain this on a hardware forum how stupid this would be.

You don't have to because Intel is proving you wrong, for instance releasing GT3e on desktops, with their renewed focus on IGP & drivers, the last release improved OpenCL & gaming performance IIRC, so that should be testament to anyone who thinks that Intel can be let off the hook for not raising the bar as far as graphics is concerned & they are indeed the lowest common denominator in all of this !

 

[styrafoam]

So Intel should raise the price of CPUs for EVERYONE because of the small minority of people who game on integrated graphics? Does that sound like an intelligent and sound business practice for you?

If I told you that 1% of the market uses intel's integrated graphics for gaming, would you spend hundreds of millions in R&D to cater to them?

The meat of the point that Rein is making is for the last 14+ years(since 3d acceleration took off) an off the shelf computer didn't run an off the shelf game. There was a pretty good stretch where el cheapo computers had no agp/PCIe slot, so it was hopeless for a person living in a family with such a computer. Intel made the cheapest solution, OEMs bought it on the cost basis alone, Intel did the bare minimum, developers moved to consoles.

I can confidently say that out of all of the computers that have made it into homes,an overwhelming majority would at some point had someone wanted to play a game, would have asked for/bought a game but didn't because the computer wasn't up to it,tried to play a game and gave up and so on and so on. All of these customers, disappointed in Intel and they don't even know it. Kids who walk down the aisle at walmart and don't bother to look at the pc game section because Intel can't make a video chip to save their life.

People can defend Intel for making a cut rate product all they want, it doesn't change the fact that they stifled an entire market. They should have gotten out of the way for ATI and Nvidia. Trying to do the math on dedicated gamers vs. overall users is a crock, and its exactly what Rein was getting at. If Intel tried, everyone would be used to being able to play whatever you wanted on your computer. It maybe wouldn't be the best, but how much sooner would we have hit the "barely passable" stage like we did with the hd4000 just recently. Here we are, still having to check the minimum requirements after all these years. How many companies does this supposed niche market that is too small for Intel to worry about support? How much bigger would it be if the sloths at Intel had tried? How many software etc stores did there used to be and how much bigger was the selection at best buy a few years ago?

 

[Jaydip]

Even at 250 million "core" gamers" who "care" about graphics, we can still assume that the same ratios steam has acquired apply. 13.26% of people using intel integrated graphics is 33.15 million. Over a billion people use intel graphics but lets be nice and say 600. About 70% of people use intel but lets be nice and say 65%.

We still get 5% use it for real gaming. Either way you put it, it makes 0 business sense for intel to focus on their upgrading their integrated graphics for gaming. Hell, just THINK of how many people you know that use integrated graphics for gaming. There simply isn't an argument for it. Any idea of intel pooling serious resources into improving their integrated graphics would be a waste of money, an increase in processor price that wouldn't be needed, which would hurt sales.

I didn't think I'd need to explain this on a hardware forum how stupid this would be.

You have a valid point.I believe all the recent "igpu" advancements are due to increased pressure from AMD apus.Intel can't forget "larrabee" that easily.