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• ClagMaster - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link

  "Personally, I want more and I suspect that Haswell will deliver much of that. It is worth pointing out that Intel is progressing at a faster rate than the discrete GPU industry at this point. Admittedly the gap is downright huge, but from what I've heard even the significant gains we're seeing here with Ivy will pale in comparison to what Haswell provides."
  
  Personally, I believe on-board graphics will never be on par with a dedicated graphics part. And it is obcessive-compulsive ridiculous to compare the performance of the HD4000 with discrete graphics and complain its not as good.
  
  The HD4000 is meant for providing graphics for business and multi-media computers. And for that purpose it is outstanding.
  
  If you want gaming or engineering workstation performance, get a discrete graphics card. And stop angsting about how bad onboard graphics is to discrete graphics. Reply

• pottermd - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link

  Today's desktop processors are more than fast enough to do professional level 3D rendering at home.
  
  The article contained this statement. It's not really true. I've had a long nap and the render I'm doing is still running. :) Reply

• Dracusis - Friday, April 06, 2012 - link

  "The people who need integrated graphics"
  
  No one *needs* integrated graphics. But not everyone needs discrete graphics. The higher performance an IGP has, the less people overall will *need* DGPs.
  
  Not all games need dedicated graphics cards, just the multi million dollar re-hashed COD's that choke retail stores. There are literally thousands of other games around that only require a small amount of graphics processing power. Flash now has 3D accelerated content and almost every developer using it will target IGP performance levels. Almost all casual game developers target IGPs as well, they're not selling to COD players. Sure, most of those games won't need a hight end CPU as well, but people don't buy computers to play casual games, they buy them for a massive range of tasks, the vast majority of which will be CPU bound so faster would be better.
  
  Also, as an indie game developer I hit performance walls with CPUs more often than I do with GPUs. You can always scale back geometry/triangle counts, trim or cut certain visual effects but cutting back on CPU related overheads generally means you're cutting out gameplay. Reply

• Valitri - Saturday, April 14, 2012 - link

  "there's also the question of which one (CPU or GPU) approaches "good enough" first."
  
  I was worried that my A6 3420 laptop would feel sluggish in windows and general tasks, especially compared to my 2500k desktop system. However, I've been very surprised and think it works just fine in windows.
  
  I was also very impressed that the iGPU lets me play most newer games comfortably. I was able to OC my A6 3420 on my Samsung 3 series to 2.0ghz. It runs Crysis 2 on low at 1366x768 in the 25-30 fps range. Now to me that is not really playable, but I was surprised it could even run it. Other games like SC2, Arkam Asylum, CSS, WOW, have all ran like a champ. Most of them even on medium settings!
  
  So I think if you want a cheap laptop (mine was $399), and you want the ability to play some games while still doing general tasks well, we have already hit that "good enough" stage on the CPU department. It will be interesting to see if Windows 8/Metro does anything to change this. Reply

• p05esto - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link

  You are dead wrong. I need fast CPU for my work but need or care about the gpu. You realize people do more than game, right. Reply

• SquirrelPunch - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link

  Could not disagree more.
  
  In fact the majority of power users do not need a powerful GPU, just lots of RAM and fast CPU.
  
  Graphics designers: All 2D mostly, do not need powerful GPU.
  
  Video Editors: Same as above.
  
  Software developers (not games): same as above
  
  Standard CAD: No intensive 3D models involved.
  
  Most also don't care for multi-monitor setups, or the 2x that HD series will let you use. Reply

• klmccaughey - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link

  Intel needs another Larrabee. It keeps cobbling together these graphics cores, which are always well short of the mark. Either Larrabee 2 or licence from Nvidia, but something has to be done about it in the long (possible mid) term. It makes perfect sense and, to me anyway, has the air of inevitability about it.
  
  Why not take the plunge? Reply

• MarkJohnson - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - link

  I find it odd the AMD A8-3870K was left out of the power consumption section, but is in the others.
  
  I ran a quick test and my kill-a-watt meter read 126Watts max x264 HD v5.0.1 which bests all of them
  
  It also idles at 34.5 watts which blows them all away by a very large margin. The best is double what the AMD A8-3870K idles. Reply