I’M READY FOR AN INTEL-BASED GRAPHICS CARD
FROM TIME TO TIME, I reminisce about the old days of tech—the early 2000s, to be precise. I guess that wasn’t too long ago, but it feels like eons. So many things have changed. Actually, I probably think about those days because I’m hoping for some of what happened to reoccur. I’m talking about when there were lots of companies competing for each component in your PC. I thought those days were gone, leaving just a handful of large businesses competing, but some of what I’ve been hoping for is about to re-emerge.
At the tail end of 2017, after a year of 15 to 20 percent improvements in primary hardware components, and an ocean of RGB devices, Intel shocked the tech world with an announcement no one expected: It would be forming a partnership with long-time rival AMD, to bring a combined processor to the market. The CPU would have an Intel CPU core and an AMD Vega GPU core in a single package.
This is big. Huge. The announcement followed the surprising news that AMD’s Radeon boss, Raja Koduri, had resigned from AMD to join Intel. While the world held its breath, Intel was already fabricating its new mobile chip that incorporated AMD’s Vega graphics technology. Just several weeks after the announcement, I had the chance to play ay with a new Dell XPS that incorporated ed the new chip. Although I wasn’t allowed ed to run benchmarks, the new XPS is going to have graphics performance ce previously unseen in its class, coupled ed with battery life that rivals even Apple’s e’s legendary MacBooks. This is progress.
What I’m most excited about, though, is the possibility of Intel becoming a real third major competitor to jump into the fight with AMD and Nvidia. If you’ve been around long enough, you’ll remember that Intel once had its own graphics chip, called the i740. During a time when motherboards only had ISA and PCI slots, Intel used the i740 to move the industry on to the AGP bus, which was dedicated solely to high-performance graphics. Once the industry embraced AGP, however, Intel exited the discrete graphics chip market entirely.
While it’s hard to say for sure that Koduri will bring Intel back into the discrete game, where you’ll be plugging an Intel-based graphics card into a gaming PC, there is hope. What I think will likely happen first, though, is that Intel will focus on higher performance mobile parts—both laptop and cell phone chips. It’s a good entry point for Intel, because its for-laptop CPUs still dominate the industry, but its integrated graphics solutions lag behind offerings from both AMD and Nvidia.
In the original press release, Intel specifically said that Koduri would focus on both integrated and “highend discrete” graphics. So, maybe my sentimental feelings for the earlier years are coming back. C’mon, Raja, make my dreams come true. Again.