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Well, the article is a bit of a mess. ... so, what exactly makes it ambitious? The article itself brands AMD as afterthoughts in "GPU" (note: virtually no ref

Well, the article is a bit of a mess. ... so, what exactly makes it ambitious? The article itself brands AMD as afterthoughts in "GPU" (note: virtually no references to actual graphics, I get it, AI pushes all the investment these days), and then plops down performance graphs that generally show AMD to be better. It talks about "compromised" gaming as the stated bar in the opening paragraph. I understand that Intel has shown near-complete managerial incompetence in discrete graphics despite trying every five years or so. So maybe "not totally failing" is "ambitious". Maybe at some point, GPUs are "good enough", once you can 4k 120FPS enough aa textured triangles, it's more about art design, modelling, etc (something I actually think AI will be really beneficial for) Alas the tantalizing prospect of real time raytracing seems to be backburnered under the AI hype onslaught. So maybe the "lesser" iGPU will be a new sweet spot for a couple generations. Maybe having all the high end cards swooped up for LLM training will have the PC gaming market take a breather and work on optimizing for a somewhat stable hardware capability.

queuebert 3y ago
> Alas the tantalizing prospect of real time raytracing seems to be backburnered under the AI hype onslaught. Can you elaborate on this? Is that because ray tracing needs only simple vector units, while AI is driving tensor-type architectures?
- AkBKukU 3y ago
  Not OP, but to provide some historical perspective, RTX hardware raytracing is very firmly a gimmick and it isn't AI nonsense that's going to be the end of it. It's going to go the way of PhysX, 3D Vision, and EAX audio. Cool, but complicated and not worth the effort to game devs. Game designers have to make all the lighting twice to fully implement RT, and it's just not worth the effort to them. Nvidia's own site[1] lists a total of 8 Full RT compatible games, half of which they themselves helped port. There are far more games that "use" it, but only in additional to traditional lighting at the same time to minimize dev costs. Based on that and past trends, I would personally predict it to be dropped after a generation or two unless they can reuse the RT cores for something else and keep it around as a vestigial feature. [1] https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/nvidia-rtx-games-engines-apps/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/nvidia-rtx-games-e...
  - sgift 3y ago
    "Full RT" means the game uses 100% raytracing for rendering (in some mode), which currently needs still far too much power to be a mainstream thing and is only added in a few games to show the prowess of the engine (IIRC a review of the Cyberpunk 2077 Full RT mode only a 4090 is really able to provide the power needed). The important entry is "yes", which shows far more entries and means there's Raytracing enhancements in addition to rasterization. So, no, it's quite the opposite of what you stated: RT gets more important all the time, is not a gimmick and there's zero reason to assume it will be dropped in the future.
    - jorvi 3y ago
      It is a gimmick in that you have to sacrifice far too much performance. An RTX 4080 will need to run at 1080+upscaling+framegen to get above 60 (!) FPS with ray tracing. No thank you, I’ll take buttery smooth real 120 FPS at 4K. Especially because games have gotten so good at faking good lighting. Maybe with the RTX 6xxx series it’ll be viable.
      - josephg 3y ago
        It does look fabulous though. I have a 4090 and absolutely turn RT on for cyberpunk. Even with a 4090 I use upscaling for a good frame rate. But the resulting image quality is just spectacular. That game is really beautiful.
        jorvi 3y ago
        No contest there, it looks really great! But for me, not enough to go back to “choppy” gameplay.
      - sgift 3y ago
        Personally, I'd rather vote 120fps and 4k as gimmick. If I had to choose between Raytracing or 120fps? Always Raytracing.
        3y ago
nsteel 3y ago
I took the ambitious part to be changing how the gpu was connected to the rest of the system. Seems like a decent jump although not exactly risky. But the conclusion sums it up well: > Meteor Lake abandons the familiar Sandy Bridge client design that characterized Intel’s consumer CPU offerings for more than a decade. In its place, we get a flexible chiplet strategy that lets Intel pile on accelerators in response to market demands.
- FuriouslyAdrift 3y ago
  So they're basically following AMD's lead by going to a modular chiplet based package...
  - nsteel 3y ago
    I don't think it's really about followimg AMD. It's the only sensible thing to do given the state of scaling and economics. All interesting things Intel are doing are chiplet based. I think it's partly about showcasing their packaging tech in an attempt to differentiate their fab offering. You could argue there's nothing very special in that respect here, they've done this process and vendor mixing before elsewhere. Except this will be a high volume product line so they need good yield and capacity. But that's just my read on it, maybe it's just the cheapest way to stay relevent.
- clamchowder 3y ago
  I simply meant it was ambitious compared to prior Intel iGPUs, especially stuff like Skylake GT2 where you could be playing at 720P low and still not get 30 FPS. The chiplet strategy is kind of ambitious too because there's power overhead and they're targeting battery powered devices with Meteor Lake. Eh, writing is hard. I never liked English class anyway
  - gautamcgoel 3y ago
    Don't let the haters get you down, I love your articles.
darby_eight 3y ago
If you're not gaming or doing serious gpgpu stuff, the on-board GPU has been a sweet spot for well over a decade now.
clamchowder 3y ago
(author here) I appreciate the feedback, but I have trouble understanding where you're coming from. "what exactly makes it ambitious?" I thought I outlined that it was much more powerful than Intel's prior (RPL) iGPUs both in the first paragraph, and in the conclusion. It competes with the powerful iGPUs AMD has been getting into handhelds. "AMD as afterthoughts" - Can you explain how you got that impression? I opened by noting how AMD's APUs are extremely competitive if not downright dominant in handhelds (Steam Deck and ROG Ally called out as specific examples) and threatens Intel in the laptop scene too. "4K 120 FPS" - uh no, you're not getting that on an iGPU unless it's a game from 15 years ago. I suggest checking the very wide variety of other reviewers who run game benchmarks on devices like the Steam Deck or ROG Ally. 1080P or 720P 30 FPS is a good target, and you might need medium or low graphics to get there. That's what I mean by compromised gaming. It's not the same experience as say, gaming on a desktop with a midrange discrete card. "lesser" iGPUs imo aren't a new sweet spot, the sweet spot is just holding on to older cards that still deliver better performance than these iGPUs. For example check Steam's hardware survey (https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/ https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/). There are more people with a GTX 1080 than a RTX 4080. And PC games are optimizing for stable hardware capability. The latest games are usually playable on Pascal.
- vetinari 3y ago
  > "4K 120 FPS" - uh no, you're not getting that on an iGPU You are not going to get that from many dGPUs either. You might get that from the high end in the last or previous gen, but not from the midrange or 2-gen-old models.
  - josephg 3y ago
    It really depends on the game. I have a 4090 (for work, I swear…). Cyberpunk is smooth, but I don’t get 4k 120fps. But I also play a lot of little indie games. Terraria? Stardew valley? Slay the spire? This stuff doesn’t need a dgpu at all. And I suspect a significant percentage of global gaming hours go into stuff like this now. Games that really push the hardware are expensive. (Well, or badly made). Either way, it’s usually bad for business.
- 3y ago

queuebert 3y ago

> Alas the tantalizing prospect of real time raytracing seems to be backburnered under the AI hype onslaught. Can you elaborate on this? Is that because ray tracing needs only simple vector units, while AI is driving tensor-type architectures?

AkBKukU 3y ago
Not OP, but to provide some historical perspective, RTX hardware raytracing is very firmly a gimmick and it isn't AI nonsense that's going to be the end of it. It's going to go the way of PhysX, 3D Vision, and EAX audio. Cool, but complicated and not worth the effort to game devs. Game designers have to make all the lighting twice to fully implement RT, and it's just not worth the effort to them. Nvidia's own site[1] lists a total of 8 Full RT compatible games, half of which they themselves helped port. There are far more games that "use" it, but only in additional to traditional lighting at the same time to minimize dev costs. Based on that and past trends, I would personally predict it to be dropped after a generation or two unless they can reuse the RT cores for something else and keep it around as a vestigial feature. [1] https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/nvidia-rtx-games-engines-apps/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/nvidia-rtx-games-e...
- sgift 3y ago
  "Full RT" means the game uses 100% raytracing for rendering (in some mode), which currently needs still far too much power to be a mainstream thing and is only added in a few games to show the prowess of the engine (IIRC a review of the Cyberpunk 2077 Full RT mode only a 4090 is really able to provide the power needed). The important entry is "yes", which shows far more entries and means there's Raytracing enhancements in addition to rasterization. So, no, it's quite the opposite of what you stated: RT gets more important all the time, is not a gimmick and there's zero reason to assume it will be dropped in the future.
  - jorvi 3y ago
    It is a gimmick in that you have to sacrifice far too much performance. An RTX 4080 will need to run at 1080+upscaling+framegen to get above 60 (!) FPS with ray tracing. No thank you, I’ll take buttery smooth real 120 FPS at 4K. Especially because games have gotten so good at faking good lighting. Maybe with the RTX 6xxx series it’ll be viable.
    - josephg 3y ago
      It does look fabulous though. I have a 4090 and absolutely turn RT on for cyberpunk. Even with a 4090 I use upscaling for a good frame rate. But the resulting image quality is just spectacular. That game is really beautiful.
      - jorvi 3y ago
        No contest there, it looks really great! But for me, not enough to go back to “choppy” gameplay.
    - sgift 3y ago
      Personally, I'd rather vote 120fps and 4k as gimmick. If I had to choose between Raytracing or 120fps? Always Raytracing.
      - 3y ago

nsteel 3y ago

I took the ambitious part to be changing how the gpu was connected to the rest of the system. Seems like a decent jump although not exactly risky. But the conclusion sums it up well: > Meteor Lake abandons the familiar Sandy Bridge client design that characterized Intel’s consumer CPU offerings for more than a decade. In its place, we get a flexible chiplet strategy that lets Intel pile on accelerators in response to market demands.

FuriouslyAdrift 3y ago
So they're basically following AMD's lead by going to a modular chiplet based package...
- nsteel 3y ago
  I don't think it's really about followimg AMD. It's the only sensible thing to do given the state of scaling and economics. All interesting things Intel are doing are chiplet based. I think it's partly about showcasing their packaging tech in an attempt to differentiate their fab offering. You could argue there's nothing very special in that respect here, they've done this process and vendor mixing before elsewhere. Except this will be a high volume product line so they need good yield and capacity. But that's just my read on it, maybe it's just the cheapest way to stay relevent.
clamchowder 3y ago
I simply meant it was ambitious compared to prior Intel iGPUs, especially stuff like Skylake GT2 where you could be playing at 720P low and still not get 30 FPS. The chiplet strategy is kind of ambitious too because there's power overhead and they're targeting battery powered devices with Meteor Lake. Eh, writing is hard. I never liked English class anyway
- gautamcgoel 3y ago
  Don't let the haters get you down, I love your articles.

darby_eight 3y ago

If you're not gaming or doing serious gpgpu stuff, the on-board GPU has been a sweet spot for well over a decade now.

clamchowder 3y ago

(author here) I appreciate the feedback, but I have trouble understanding where you're coming from. "what exactly makes it ambitious?" I thought I outlined that it was much more powerful than Intel's prior (RPL) iGPUs both in the first paragraph, and in the conclusion. It competes with the powerful iGPUs AMD has been getting into handhelds. "AMD as afterthoughts" - Can you explain how you got that impression? I opened by noting how AMD's APUs are extremely competitive if not downright dominant in handhelds (Steam Deck and ROG Ally called out as specific examples) and threatens Intel in the laptop scene too. "4K 120 FPS" - uh no, you're not getting that on an iGPU unless it's a game from 15 years ago. I suggest checking the very wide variety of other reviewers who run game benchmarks on devices like the Steam Deck or ROG Ally. 1080P or 720P 30 FPS is a good target, and you might need medium or low graphics to get there. That's what I mean by compromised gaming. It's not the same experience as say, gaming on a desktop with a midrange discrete card. "lesser" iGPUs imo aren't a new sweet spot, the sweet spot is just holding on to older cards that still deliver better performance than these iGPUs. For example check Steam's hardware survey (https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/ https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/). There are more people with a GTX 1080 than a RTX 4080. And PC games are optimizing for stable hardware capability. The latest games are usually playable on Pascal.

vetinari 3y ago
> "4K 120 FPS" - uh no, you're not getting that on an iGPU You are not going to get that from many dGPUs either. You might get that from the high end in the last or previous gen, but not from the midrange or 2-gen-old models.
- josephg 3y ago
  It really depends on the game. I have a 4090 (for work, I swear…). Cyberpunk is smooth, but I don’t get 4k 120fps. But I also play a lot of little indie games. Terraria? Stardew valley? Slay the spire? This stuff doesn’t need a dgpu at all. And I suspect a significant percentage of global gaming hours go into stuff like this now. Games that really push the hardware are expensive. (Well, or badly made). Either way, it’s usually bad for business.
3y ago