Jiggy -
1. No, Pentium MMX will not replace graphics accelerators. MMX will accelerate VIDEO decompression. It is easy to confuse VIDEO with GRAPHICS display, since they both send pictures to your/my monitor.
But graphics accelerators display text, FIXED graphics images, etc.in a bitmapped format to speed up Windows display functions. These have been around for 4 or 5 years and continue to improve every 4 or 6 months.
Standard PCs will continue to need all the performance boost they can get from these accelerators since they OFF LOAD the CPU from having to write directly continuously to the display buffers.
3D accelerators are staring to get major attention, and SIII, ATI, and the likes (plus a bunch of newer companies) are offering 3D accelerator chips.
Intel has announced a new interface (AGP) to speed up data transfers for these new 3D accelerator cards. This AGP port will probably start to appear later (very much later) this year and will require NEW 3D accelerator cards - a fast obsolescence cycle is underway for the current 3D boards now on the market.
Intel is working with Lockheed to supply really high end 3D accelerators, but this will definitely be a 1997 product.
VIDEO, on the other hand, implies moving images such as films,TV Transmission, etc. These are compressed for transmission purposes because of the vast size required to store video STREAMS. They must be decompressed to be displayed on a computer's monitor. Several companies market decompression chips (CCUBE) but these add extra cost to a system. Intel believes that FAST PENTIUMS with MMX Insructions will permit the CPU to decompress the VIDEO and display these without extra hardware.We will have to wait for the new chip and software to evaluate thier effectiveness.
2. Price $4000 - Think about it. Intel is trying to EXPAND the market with these additions. They know that EXPANSION is synonomous with making better technology affordable at lower prices. These guys understand the word elasticity, volume production, amortization, etc. They want to crank these out in vast numbers. They will do this by offering increased functions at the same or lower price points.
Paul |
