What a world! What a world! - The Wicked Witch of the West
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Intel launched Sandy Bridge today
CHIPMAKER Intel has released its next line of chips today.
Code-named Sandy Bridge, the chips combine a graphics processor and one or more CPU microprocessor(s) on one silicon die.
Intel announced the release of its latest chip family in advance of the Consumer Electronics Show, which is one of the biggest technology events on the calendar, to allow its partners to show off their products made with the chips.
Shedloads of computer, telly and gadget makers will introduce hundreds of products based on what Chipzilla calls the second-generation Intel Core processor family.
Sandy Bridge's main advantages are for laptops but it will face some stiff competition from AMD, which will be releasing its Fusion chips at CES. Fusion is also a combined graphics and CPU chip technology.
However Sandy Bridge is all about how people want better graphics on their portable devices. Intel claims that Sandy Bridge chips can quickly convert video from one format to another. While they are still not as fast as stand-alone graphics chips, they are better than nothing.
Sandy Bridge can handle DirectX 10.1 graphics, but it can't manage the most advanced graphics standard, DirectX 11.
Besides you don't often stick a separate $500 graphics card into a laptop unless you have asbestos trousers.
The first Sandy Bridge parts available from Intel will be the quad-core models. Sandy Bridge chips also feature version 2.0 of Intel Wireless Display to connect to a telly without having to plug it into a cable.
There is also the movie digital restrictions management (DRM) technology which is called Intel Insider. This can unlock premium high-definition content such as movies on a computer.
Systems using the first Sandy Bridge chips will be available on 9 January and products with dual-core models will be in the shops later in the month. µ
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It's a nice try on Intel's part really, it is. However, it's falling a bit short there on the supported standards. DirectX 11 has been around quite a while, there's no reason it shouldn't support it.
Also the lack of Linux support at launch is generally pretty telling of a product, imho (case in point: via). I can handle an installer like nvidia & ati have for their driver. I won't accept having to compile the latest DDX, Linux kernel, libdrm, libva, and Mesa from source. Even then it might not work. It's a great way to break things down the road, or enter dependency hell.
Suddenly having to buy a discrete graphics cards so your computer can handle even the most basic of 3D tasks in Linux isn't a good way to go.
Should be http://www.cesweb.org/ not http://www.cesweb.com
From the reviews Sandy Bridge is basically smoke and mirrors for the naive. Other than a little imporvement in efficiency, and a lot of part numbers, SB is a non-performance update.
It is amazing however to see the fanbois who don't even understand the reviews that point out their is no advantage for most people in updating to SB. Sheep have made InHell rich.