Thread: Intel Could Drop in a G45 Graphic Core

What's Next? Parallelism, in bucketfuls; Nehalem is supposed to be scalable so expect to see even eight core versions in 2009. Optionally Intel could drop in a G45 graphic core in place of a single core and give you a fast seven core processor with inbuilt graphic solution. Of course cheaper quad cores will emerge as well, as dual
cores slowly become obsolete. Besides the X58 we should see new LGA 1366 platforms from NVIDIA. The fourth quarter will see the emergence of Westmere; a 32 nm version of the Nehalem ,architecture. Later, in 2010 we'll see a new architecture in The form of Sandy Bridge. Then there is Larrabee lurking somewhere within Intel's deepest labs; but Intel is close mouthed about their new GPU killer.

AMD isn't hatching eggs either. After their Phenom X4s bombed badly they're all set to pull up their trousers with Deneb. Deneb is 45 nm, and supposed to be 20 per cent faster than Intel's Kentsfield; interesting eh? A pity they didn't launch it earlier. Besides Kentsfield, Deneb now also has to contend with shiny newcomer which is by far, the fastest desktop CPU we've ever tested For a change, this time we've decided to test motherboards that come with integrated graphics solution this month. We've chosen the few most commonly available, and the latest of chipsets to be carried in this test. With prices of computer com¬ponents, including motherboards, falling steadily, there's very little that separates the older chipsets to the ones just released. The chipsets in this moth¬erboard test will be the newly released ones from AMD, Intel and NVIDIA. A comparison test on the other lot, without graphic solutions, will be coming out really soon.




Now that we have our thoughts focused on motherboards with integrated graphics, we've obvi¬ously have to split the motherboards into two groups - motherboards for Intel processors using the LGA 775 format and the ones for AMD proces¬sors using the AM2 socket. Looking at just numbers, we received more boards for AMD processors than for Intel processors. Manufa<;:turers of boards for Intel processors for that matter seem to make more boards for users who want to install a graphic card on their system.

Who is this motherboard test for? It could actu¬ally be for everyone! Most people would love to have a decent graphic card on their system but due to budget constraints or confusion, they compromise and go for something cheap and low-end. Months down the line, people don't want to sell off or dis¬pose off their older card and buy something new. Onboard graphics solutions these days are actually quite powerful and you'll get an idea of what we mean when we start talking about the performance of some of the boards. To give you an idea, you should be able play games that came out before 2006 or so rather well. Even if you have plans to buy a good graphic card but can't afford it, you can settle for a motherboard from the ones we've tested.

A few months down line, you can plug in a PCIe graphics card. With some of the motherboards we've received like the ones with the all new NVIDIA GeForce 9300 chipsets for Intel and the GeForce 8000 and the 7xx series for AMD, you can actually turn off the exter¬nal graphic card and save power as well. You can also utilise the performance of your new graphic card along with whatever power your onboard graphics card does.