Dear CJ:
The ones for MIDs use a different chipset built by SIS with the PowerVR (a design from the early this decade). It wasn't even able to do much against GeForce 3's or Radeons of the time, much less do much against current IGPs from ATI or nVidia. The Geode GXs or LXs have somewhat higher video decode performance than the PowerVR, IIRC.
Its funny though with wireless access speeds going north of 50Mb/s, where HDTV (.ts) streams run up to 19.2Mb/s, to use a GPU thats incapable of displaying broadcast TV (streaming) on the screen doesn't make any sense. It might have been fine for the analog era thats to end early next year, but it should do more for the current digital broadcast era of today. Since the decode hardware (MPEG2, Divx, H.264, .ts, AAC and VC-1) is relatively low cost and low in power (790GX/SB750 uses less than 11.4W including the UVD2 and UVD2/video out is likely less than 1W of that), including it in any MID should be a requirement, not an option.
That Intel doesn't have a good option is their fault, not the markets. Sure it can use GP CPU power to make up for failures in the chipset, but its high in power usage. Having speciallized hardware to accelerate these common tasks helps lower real power use while keeping quality of use up.
BTW, the 945GSE/ICH that uses 5.5W runs the GMA950 at 133MHz or 1/3rd of the desktop. It also drops the QDR FSB to 400MHz and runs the DDR2 at 1.5V instead of the standard JEDEC voltage of 1.8V. That likely increases the latency and further drops available bandwidth. Thus using the desktop performance as a gauge to netbook performance is likely to be severely disappointed when the actual results come out.
Pete |
