Does Ivy Bridge replace discrete video cards for gaming?

With Intel’s release of its new third-generation Core (aka “Ivy Bridge”) processing platform, the general consensus among tech reviewers seems to be that the processor company has finally made something of a breakthrough in how it handles its integrated graphics. AnandTech,Hot Hardware, Legit Reviews, Tom’s Hardware, and more — all are basically impressed. Heck, former ETer Loyd Case even pronounced that “Entry-level GPUs are dead.” Clearly Intel did something right this time, and people who buy Ivy Bridge CPUs will undoubtedly have more and better capabilities than were available on Sandy Bridge or its predecessors.

Which isn’t the same thing as saying they will be particularly good for gaming.

In the interests of full disclosure, I’m very anti–integrated graphics and have been for decades. Ever since I witnessed the wonder that EGA and VGA cards wrought on late-1980s/early-1990s computer games, I’ve insisted on having a discrete card in every system I buy or build for myself. (I felt, and feel, the same way about sound cards, but that’s a separate discussion.) But even if you believe that on-board video is somehow acceptable under specific circumstances, you should have your head examined if the idea crosses your mind — even for only a moment — that it’s somehow able to play games in a satisfying way.

In putting its Ivy Bridge chips out there (particularly the new flagship desktop model, the Core i7-3770K), Intel primarily touted their facility at handling games at a resolution most gamers wouldn’t be likely to consider: 1366×768. The most recent Steam Hardware Surveyshows that 15.54% most of that service’s users play at that resolution, compared to 25.36% for 1920×1080. So I couldn’t help but wonder: How well would the Core i7-3770K handle playing games at that higher and more popular resolution?

To find out, I pulled out six of the gaming benchmark tests I use on a regular basis — Aliens vs. Predator,Batman: Arkham City (that’s right, I sacrificed one of my precious installs for this project), Tom Clancy’s HAWX 2, Heaven Benchmark 3.0, Lost Planet 2, and Metro 2033 — and loaded them all onto a computer I’d thrown together specifically for Ivy Bridge testing (an Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe motherboard, 8GB of RAM, my go-to Western Digital VelociRaptor hard drive). I ran the benchmarks, with as many details as possible turned off (to give the Core i7-3770K CPU the best possible shot), at my 24-inch monitor’s native resolution (1920×1200, pretty close to my target).

Assuming a minimum threshold of 30 frames per second (fps) for basic playability, only one game made the cut: HAWX 2. This isn’t exactly surprising; it’s definitely one of the lighter tests I run, but I include it for purposes of balance between Nvidia and AMD GPUs (cards from the former company invariably get slightly better frame rates, as it’s a “The Way it’s Meant to Be Played” title). And its 54 fps result wasn’t too bad at all.

Wondering how much lowering the resolution further would help the other tests, I dialed them all down to 1680×1050 and reran the tests at the same settings. HAWX 2 was still the only one to get above 30 fps (61 fps), though Batman: Arkham City and Lost Planet 2 came extremely close (29 fps and 29.1 fps respectively). Things clicked considerably more at 1440×900, with only Heaven andMetro 2033 still holding out — which they also did at even the lowest resolution I tested, 1280×800.

But I wasn’t satisfied with the video quality at any of these resolutions; lots of things looked just a little too blobby for my tastes. So on every game that passed my first test, I upped the details just a tad to see whether it could hack a slightly more demanding challenge. HAWX 2 again flew at all four resolutions, Lost Planet 2 was fine up through 1440×900, and that was all. Nudging the settings up still further, HAWX 2 hit 33 fps and Lost Planet 2 made it to 35.2 fps at 1280×800, but neither could surpass 30 fps even at 1440×900, so that’s where I stopped.

Even with the minor detail improvements I implemented toward the end of the testing, you still have to forsake a fair amount in terms of video quality just to get these games to play — and then generally at frame rates most legitimate gamers would barely consider good. Don’t get me wrong: As far as I’m concerned, Ivy Bridge marks a significant leap forward for Intel, and definitely suggests some good things to come on the graphics side. But I can’t quite get myself to the point where I feel comfortable pretending that this is a major victory.

The main thing Intel has proven — or, if you prefer, proven again — with Ivy Bridge is that, if you want to play 3D games that both perform well and look good, even at lower (I would argue too low) resolutions, you absolutely need a discrete video card. There’s no way around this. It may not be news to most (okay, any) system builders, but the average consumer who buys an Ivy Bridge system and is attracted by the possibility of not having to shell out another three to five wallet-size portraits of Andrew Jackson just to get the newest titles to play is going to be disappointed.

Ultimately, the conclusion to draw here is exactly the one Loyd did: Intel has functionally obliterated any compelling reason to buy a $60 video card. I’ve been a bit skeptical of the need for them for years, to be honest, as I’ve generally questioned whether the gains you might see in tasks like video transcoding were worth the money if robust gaming remained elusive. But if Intel and AMD chips can handle all the basic stuff themselves and do it well — which they now do — the GPU guys will either need to devise a much better argument for the entry-level models, drop the prices across the board to edge the $100 cards (which I’ve found in most cases to be worth the money) closer to or even onto the lowest pricing tier, or give up on trying to court that segment at all. And once Ivy Bridge gets around, AMD and Nvidia will need to make that decision sooner rather than later.

So Intel definitely deserves to be congratulated on a solid release that will change our outlooks about processing and integrated video for at least the next year or so. Just don’t assume that Ivy Bridge’s strides translate into a revolutionary rethink of the graphics market for everyone. Those for whom gaming is, at most, a sometime thing will unquestionably notice some benefits. But everyone else should stick with at least a $100 standalone card (and preferably at least a $200 one if they can afford it) to ensure the games’ performance and appearance make them worth playing.

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Intel i7 3820 released, spiritual successor to i7 920; Ivy Bridge delayed until June

The Lord giveth and the Lord hath taken away: Intel has quietly released the Sandy Bridge-E Core i7 3820, a quad-core, mid-range, socket LGA2011 part that’s the spiritual successor to the i7 920 and 930 — but according to a report from Digitimes, mass roll out of Ivy Bridge has been postponed until summer.

The Core i7 3820 is the first sub-$500 chip to be released for the LGA2011 socket, the same socket used by Core i7 Extreme 3980X and 3860X, the i7 3930K, and the Xeon E5 server processors. Compared to its 6- and 8-core compatriots, the 3820 is “only” a quad-core, but it retains the same on-die 4x 64-bit DDR3 controller, 40 PCIe v3 channels, and dual-link QPI. There’s 10MB of L3 cache, too, and the base clock rate is 3.6GHz. The price? A miraculous $285. Yet again, it doesn’t look good forAMD’s top-of-the-line FX-8150, which is priced around the same point and yet significantly slower than Intel’s offerings.

According to VR-Zone, Intel achieved this price by creating an entirely new die. Where the Core i7 Extreme, 3930K, and Xeon E5 processors are all based on an octo-core LGA2011 die, the 3820 uses a brand new quad-core die that’s roughly 30% smaller, and thus cheaper. It is expected that this same die will be used in the upcoming Xeon E5 1620, which will also be a very cheap chip ($290).

In other news, “mass shipments” of Ivy Bridge processors have been delayed until after June.According to Digitimes, a weak global economy has caused a build-up of Sandy Bridge inventory both at Intel and OEMs. If Intel went ahead and mass released Ivy Bridge in April, these Sandy Bridge parts would have to be thrown away or sold at much lower prices. Now the plan is to release someIvy Bridge chips in April, but postpone mass shipments (presumably of consumer-oriented parts) until after June. System builders should still be able to get their hands on some mid- and high-end Ivy Bridge chips in April.

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x86 CPUs in 2012: What’s ahead for Intel and AMD

2012 is a major year for both Intel and AMD. For Chipzilla, it’s showtime for Atom and a suite of new high-end mobile products. AMD will also try to capitalize on the mobile momentum it built through 2011 while simultaneously re-positioning itself and dealing with product delays.

Intel: Smartphones and ultrabooks

Intel will spend 2012 primarily focused on two, relatively new mobile computing sectors: smartphones and ultrabooks. 2012 will likely be the year Atom finally picks up design wins and starts shipping in handsets. Even if it doesn’t do much volume, this is Intel’s foot-in-the-door year; the company’s stated goal is to launch a design that’s competitive with ARM products both in terms of performance and power consumption. If it can manage that, other concerns, like application compatibility, will come into line as the year progresses.

The other major focus of the year is ultrabooks. Intel has set an ambitious sales target of 40% by the end of the year and is investing in both component research and marketing funds for the new systems. Despite these factors, the company’s overall risk is low. If ultrabooks take off, Intel wins credit for driving innovation and helping to launch a new form factor.

If ultrabooks don’t gain traction in the mass market, Intel still has a suite of new low-power Ivy Bridge chips plus its investments in thinner form factors and lighter parts. All of these elements are useful in the long term, even if they aren’t deployed simultaneously in the company’s current vision of an ultrabook. OEMs could, for example, combine low-TDP and thinner components with a larger battery. Meanwhile, customers are still going to be buying plenty of Intel-powered desktops and laptops.

As for tablets, x86-powered Android flavors will exist, but it won’t be a particularly large market segment. This has less to do with Atom’s ability to scale into a tablet and is more the result of other market factors. The Android tablets meant to compete against the iPad 2 in 2011 barely managed to scratch Apple’s paint; the only signs of life in that market are at the lower end, where the Kindle Fireand Nook Tablet are doing fairly well. Neither product is a good fit for Intel at this point, if only because they target rock-bottom price points that Santa Clara probably doesn’t want to match.

In servers, desktops, and traditional laptops, 2012 will be the year of performance-per-watt. While Ivy Bridge’s integrated GPU is said to be much faster than Sandy Bridge’s, the CPU is only modestly faster. The big talking points across Intel’s product lines will be delivering improved efficiency. This will pass muster with virtually everyone because the shift towards laptops and other mobile devices means total battery life is now part of virtually any performance metric.

The relatively small handful of buyers concerned with speed above all other factors won’t find a lot to crow about in 2012. Ivy Bridge’s overclocking headroom probably won’t be much better than SB’s (at least, not on air). Multi-threaded performance should fare a bit better; Intel will launch LGA2011-compatible eight-core processors under the Xeon E5 family sometime next year.

AMD: Mostly mobile, talking tablets

The cloud of uncertainty surrounding AMD and the recent foundry debacle makes it harder to predict what the company will do in 2012. AMD won’t unveil its strategy for the year until February, where its CEO, Rory Read, will undoubtedly leverage his expertise in sales to put on a good show. Tablets will likely be a prominent feature, though the 28nm delay means that any parts AMD ships in this segment for 2012 will likely be demo units as opposed to commercially viable products.

The reality underneath the hype is probably fairly grim. AMD will launch Trinity early in Q1, possibly as early as CES. That chip pairs a second-generation Bulldozer core (Piledriver) with a GPU based on the HD 6000 series. Early performance suggests the GPU could be 20-25 percent faster than Llano’s. The interconnect between the two components has also reportedly been improved.

On the CPU side of the equation, however, Piledriver will likely struggle to match Llano’s performance and power consumption. AMD leaned heavily on Llano’s GPU performance and media capabilities when it came to marketing the chip, and it’ll likely do the same with Trinity. Tweaked Brazos products, still on 40nm, will round out most of 2012.

Read will almost certainly announce a new 28nm family of Brazos chips built at TSMC, probably with a late-2012 launch date. One of his major tasks, come February, is to sell investors and OEMs on the idea that AMD can still compete with comparatively low CPU performance on the one hand and a slow move to 28nm on the other. With Intel focusing on smartphones and relatively high-end laptops, AMD should be able to maintain a grip on the mobile market and keep itself in the black.

Graphics presents an interesting situation. The good news is that AMD’s next-generation, 28nm Radeon 7000 series — which launched today — will beat Nvidia’s 28nm “Kepler” GPU to market by several months. Current rumors suggest that Kepler’s high-end version could slip to the latter half of 2012, giving AMD a huge lead to market.

The bad news is that AMD’s earnings from graphics sales are pretty terrible. Sunnyvale paid $5.6 billion to acquire ATI in 2006, then wrote off half that amount (essentially admitting that it paid $2.4B more than it should’ve for the Canadian company). The chart above lists AMD’s recognized graphics revenue and operating profit/loss for each fiscal year. Note that neither APU sales nor the R&D associated with the development of Brazos, Llano, and Trinity are included.

In the five years since it acquired ATI, AMD has made a grand total of $190 million dollars on $6.3 billion in sales, for a net profit margin of 3%. This chart doesn’t capture the full value of that purchase; the ATI acquisition enabled the development of AMD’s current APU and contributed to the success of earlier integrated chipsets. Nevertheless, the data suggests that AMD’s ability to leverage graphics earnings to keep the company in the black is extremely limited.

Watch for Sunnyvale to emphasize its longer-term commitments to tablets and the cloud while shipping low-end desktops and laptops. Graphics will be a major focus in all areas; the HD 7000 series could grab market share from Nvidia if it delivers significant performance improvements. Intel’s bifurcated strategy on ultrabooks at one end and smartphones on the other creates an area of the market where AMD can effectively market its own products, and Read will try to take full advantage of it.

[Image credit: Sonic840]

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