Re: The idea that QC Nehalem with a lousy integrated GPU would sell is foolish given that a Nehalem without an IGPU would be cheaper, use less power and paired with a low end discrete GPU, likely a Radeon 4450, would do netter at most application and 3D games.
Doesn't take you long to get derailed does it? Who said anything about integrated graphics on Intel quad-cores? Bloomfield, the high-end desktop Nehalem quad-core CPU, don't have integrated graphics. It doesn't appear that even the mainstream Lynnfield quad-cores will launch with integrated graphics either. But if you want to keep ranting about something that doesn't exist as if it does, don't let me stop you.
It also won't be low power enough being a quad core. Fusion being a K10.5 dual core plus a R700 or R800 class GPU would beat Nehalem IGP in games and many other tasks where GPGPUs are faster. Fusion would also use less power than Nehalem IGP.
In case you haven't noticed AMD dual-core notebook processors and Intel desktop quad-core processors serve different markets.
Given that, Nehalem IGP would have to sell for less than Puma, its successor or Fusion. Its less capable than the others for things that people would pay more for. And that includes such things as video encoding and rendering. The GPU portion is much more capable because it does well at those large SIMD type problems that it was designed for. And uses less power at it than a GP CPU.
As for Fusion not including a R800 class GPU, its quite possible, not nil. And the R770 has 800 stream processors in 10 blocks. That means one block holds about 80 stream processors and uses <10W at 625MHz on 55nm bulk logic. On 45nm SOI look for that to be even less. And that is less than one core of Nehalem uses. Going to R800 class may increase power slightly, but would do DirectX 11 as that is on the R800 feature list. Performance would likely increase as well. And it would still use less than Nehalem even without the lousy IGP.
Given what I have seen of the DirectX 11 feature list, the Radeon 4xxx class GPUs appear to be able to do it with at most a driver update. If that is true, then Fusion will be DirectX 11 capable right away. Puma's successor will use the RS8xx chipsets which feature the R700 class GPU (4200). And those are due in Q4 IIRC.
Anyone know what DirctX 11 requires that is not present on the current Radeon 4xxx GPUs?
Good luck with that DirectX 11. The last thing AMD should be doing with Fusion is wasting transistors and engineering resources on a feature that would barely be used. It will be 2011 before a decent number of DX11 games arrive, and by that time Fusion would be too slow to play them.
And RS8xx is scheduled for Q2 2009, not Q4 2008.
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