Xe-HPG is the Performance Gaming Graphics Architecture to Look Out for from Intel

[Jism]

I was around when Intel was going to dominate video cards with the i740, because it was the first to use AGP and it had high end 'military tech' ....I am sure Intel has the potential to produce a high performance video card, the issue will be driver development and support. They have a terrible track record with optimising drivers for games (look at any review of Intel iGPU's, they are consistently inconsistent in game performance, but always good with benchmarks). They also have a track history of abandoning anything they don't immediately dominate.

Wrong. Intel started to assemble, IGP's in it's motherboard back in the 486/586 days which woud'nt require an external PCI or AGP card in the first place. Saving cost and a easy way for intel to gain market.

 

[badtaylorx]

repeat after me....

duopoly....

duuuuuuuuu-opoly.

duo=2 mono=1

 

[bug]

Yes, its called oligopoly, almost the same.

Adding some launch prices:
780 - 500$
980 - 550$
1080 - 600$
2080 - 800$

Why do you think this happens, because the market works well?

Also it depends how you look, maybe from US perspective there are 2 competitors, 3 soon, from EU perspective everything is US based. So, is there an US monopoly?

It's called a duopoly. Far from where you'd want to be, but technically not a monopoly (the difference in huge in legal terms, though, but that's a discussion for another time).

If you throw away the anomaly (Turing), the priced has remained about the same after you factor in inflation.

 

[Tom Yum]

Wrong. Intel started to assemble, IGP's in it's motherboard back in the 486/586 days which woud'nt require an external PCI or AGP card in the first place. Saving cost and a easy way for intel to gain market.

I never said the i740 was the first time that Intel had an onboard video card or was its first GPU (not that we used that term back then). I'm referring to the Intel i740 which was a dGPU made in collab with Real3D (division of Lockheed Martin at the time) that was supposed to dominate the Voodoo 2 and the upcoming nVidia TNT, in part because it was the first to use AGP rather than PCI. Instead it flopped so badly it was pulled from the market a year later.

 

[chstamos]

I never said the i740 was the first time that Intel had an onboard video card. I'm referring to the Intel i740 which was a dGPU made in collab with Real3D (division of Lockheed Martin at the time) that was supposed to dominate the Voodoo 2 and the upcoming nVidia TNT, in part because it was the first to use AGP rather than PCI. Instead it flopped so badly it was pulled from the market a year later.

You put it well in your previous post, this was intel immediately abandoning a market it did not dominate at once.

The i740 was hyped to hell and back, and that was to its detriment. That's where all the remembrances about it being a failure come from.

But it was an affordable card that performed very decently. It cost 100 bucks and performed about half as well as the 350-450 Voodoo 2 and the 350 dollar RivaTnT. That's no slouch. intel rushed to abandon it and left it with scarce driver support, but the hardware was not bad at all.

I often read how intel "might produce a flop like the i740" and chuckle. Flop? Intel with the Xe won't in its wildest dream deliver today's equivalent to the i740's image quality and performance at such a fragment of the price of today's high end gaming GPUs. That would be a coup, not a flop.

 

[Tom Yum]

You put it well in your previous post, this was intel immediately abandoning a market it did not dominate at once.

The i740 was hyped to hell and back, and that was to its detriment. That's where all the remembrances about it being a failure come from.

But it was an affordable card that performed very decently. It cost 100 bucks and performed about half as well as the 350-450 Voodoo 2 and the 350 dollar RivaTnT. That's no slouch. intel rushed to abandon it and left it with scarce driver support, but the hardware was not bad at all.

I often read how intel "might produce a flop like the i740" and chuckle. Flop? Intel with the Xe won't in its wildest dream deliver today's equivalent to the i740's image quality and performance at such a fragment of the price of today's high end gaming GPUs. That would be a coup, not a flop.

You are definitely not wrong, it was priced well for what it gave, however I am not sure if that was intended or a response to how uncompetitive it was to those higher performance cards. Intel at the time was not known for 'value', so I don't think its low price was originally intended, and the fact they basically flushed the product after a year would indicate (speculation of course) that Intel had planned to sell it with much higher margin (or cost) than they eventually achieved. Without being able to find info on die size or transistor count we'll likely never know whether Intel truly aimed to be selling it at $350 and just couldn't when it became clear how uncompetitive it was, or whether it was always meant to be midrange and was just a case of hype driving unrealistic expectations that weren't met.

Anyway, my main point was as you said, Intel has a track record of abandoning markets it doesn't dominate immediately, so it will be interesting to see if Intel stick it out this time or give up like they did with i740/iAPX432/Tinma/mobile/5G.

 

[watzupken]

I am looking forward for Intel to bring more competition to the graphic card market. Currently while it seems like it is a duopoly between AMD and Nvidia, the reality is that Nvidia is still dominating the graphic space.

 

[geon2k2]

It's called a duopoly. Far from where you'd want to be, but technically not a monopoly (the difference in huge in legal terms, though, but that's a discussion for another time).

If you throw away the anomaly (Turing), the priced has remained about the same after you factor in inflation.

if they are 3, oligopoly, and there are 3 already, intel has the highest market share for graphics. Not performance graphics but still.

 

[bug]

if they are 3, oligopoly, and there are 3 already, intel has the highest market share for graphics. Not performance graphics but still.

True, but the original assertion was about desktop graphics.

 

[Super XP]

AMD & Nvidia GPU monopoly? Umm no its not, it's called competition, and if Intel has what it takes they can jump in too. If Nvidia did launch its GPP ripoff program, then the term monopoly would have been fitting for them only.