Valve: New CPU Brings "Console-Like Experience" To PCs

Don't be surprised if Microsoft goes with one of these new CPU's with a built in GPU in the future for the cost savings. Didn't they just recently move to an all in one CPU / GPU here not long ago in the 360 slim? I am no console expert. I could even see them sacrificing performance over costs.

How powerful is the GPU in the 360 compared to the the new Sandy Bridge GPU?
 
I understand what he means...to a point. Too often I have non-PC enthusiast friends telling me that PC games suck because their off-the-shelf HP purchased last can't play anything.
Still, I don't think Sandy Bridge is going to make that big of a difference any time soon.
 
SixFootDuo said:
Don't be surprised if Microsoft goes with one of these new CPU's with a built in GPU in the future for the cost savings. Didn't they just recently move to an all in one CPU / GPU here not long ago in the 360 slim? I am no console expert. I could even see them sacrificing performance over costs.

How powerful is the GPU in the 360 compared to the the new Sandy Bridge GPU?
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About the same according to what Anand said in his review.
 
SixFootDuo said:
Don't be surprised if Microsoft goes with one of these new CPU's with a built in GPU in the future for the cost savings. Didn't they just recently move to an all in one CPU / GPU here not long ago in the 360 slim? I am no console expert. I could even see them sacrificing performance over costs.

How powerful is the GPU in the 360 compared to the the new Sandy Bridge GPU?
Click to expand...

There are reports that the preliminary design for the next Xbox is going to use an AMD chip. But this came from one of those rumor sites.
 
O'RLY....

So Sandy's graphics can run Portal 2 with the same speed and quality settings as a 360 or PS3 at 720p?
 
how much trouble could i get in for bringing forth the idea to violently kill gabe for that comment with a keyboard and mouse theirs 1000 ways to do just that
 
VIC-20 said:
O'RLY....

So Sandy's graphics can run Portal 2 with the same speed and quality settings as a 360 or PS3 at 720p?
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Far better! Of course sources say AMD's upcoming solution performed so good it convinced Intel to PR-bomb with an SB paperlaunch..
 
So they are gonna try to sell us motion controlers so we can punch holes in our monitors? or is it more they're goint to try to avoid hackers...unsuccessfully...again...
 
I'm betting that his thought process was that the lowest common denominator has been raised to a point that the mainstream can enjoy games like console gamers do.

Example: The best selling pc on walmart.com is carrying a 4200M IGP for video. You're not going to play any game worthwhile on that chip. With the better IGP in SB, programmers can start raising the minimum level requirement to where they don't even have to worry about "will this play on the average system?" any longer.

Yeah, the IGP in SB isn't high end by any stretch, but it will work fine for cheap off the shelf systems like the example. By narrowing the gap between the lowest and highest spec hardware, you make it much easier for the guys that have to make the games. Consoles are the example he used as there is no gap at all.
 
Bootleg Usher said:
There is a difference between having DX11 and being able to use DX11.
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I agree. I mean, it could be early to tell and maybe that is their rabbit in the hat but I imagine it going down for AMD something like this: "Check out our on CPU GPU. It runs the latest DirectX revision.... at a blazing 5 FRAMES PER SECOND at medium quality/resolution. Thank you... thank you!"


:rolleyes:
 
Intel is a long way off from being able to integrate a graphics solution into a CPU that can come anywhere close to the cards out there now. To me,a "console like experience" is playing games with inferior,watered down graphics compared to a PC,and Sandy Bridge can't change that.
Gabe needs to stop stuffing his face,wearing stupid hats,and making a fool out of himself with idiotic statements and get Episode 3 done.:mad:
 
AMD_Gamer said:
There are reports that the preliminary design for the next Xbox is going to use an AMD chip. But this came from one of those rumor sites.
Click to expand...
Probably not because MS moved away from supplier controlled chips in the 360 after getting burned by trouble with nvidia. I do think it's likely that MS will have AMD design the GPU again in a similar arrangement where AMD only designs it up front and MS has it manufactured. It was beneficial to both parties, and especially flexible to MS when it came to reconfiguring the chips over the 3 versions.
 
I'm still trying to figure out why anyone would want a console-like experience on the PC.
 
Axdrenalin said:
WTF??? I don't *want* a console like experience on my PC...Gaming on the PC is far superior to consoles anyway...
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This is why this remark is funny.


A console like experience on a PC would be a SIGNIFICANT DOWNGRADE to having a PC like experience on a PC.
 
lhhbjw said:
So does it mean that they won't be pushing the limits of the current and future GPU's capabilities and dumbing down the graphics.
I hope that he means it just gives them a baseline to start at which would allow more people to get into pc gaming on the cheap.
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The wonderful thing about PC gaming is that you don't have to design for a specific set of hardware. They always push the limits, and then anyone that can't meet those will just have to lower their settings. Sandy Bridge will allow people with store bought PCs to actually play games.
 
I think the objective of his statement was more to make the point that a single PC CPU now has as much GPU power as a console, a device that's whole purpose is effectively to render graphics. I took his words as meaning even a low-end PC without discrete graphics will soon be as powerful as Xbox 360 or PS3 (read: for current consoles... BURN.)

It's like saying you can beat someone up with one hand tied behind your back.
 
wizdum said:
The wonderful thing about PC gaming is that you don't have to design for a specific set of hardware. They always push the limits, and then anyone that can't meet those will just have to lower their settings. Sandy Bridge will allow people with store bought PCs to actually play games.
Click to expand...

The thing is there are system requirements listed on the box.

Ask this question to a person that knows nothing about computers:

"Requires a GTX 240 or Radeon 4350 graphics card or higher"
-or-
"Requires a Sandy Bridge Processor with IGP 3000 or higher"

Either way they are going to give you a blank stare. It's not like in the next year, *every* person is going to have a Sandy Bridge PC. think of how many people still have P4's or Early C2Ds.

It will be 4-5 years before the majority of people have a CPU chip based graphics, and guess what, at that point it won't be Intel IGP 3000, it will be Intel IGP 7000, so you will still have on box requirements that will confuse people.
 
canna said:
The thing is there are system requirements listed on the box.

Ask this question to a person that knows nothing about computers:

"Requires a GTX 240 or Radeon 4350 graphics card or higher"
-or-
"Requires a Sandy Bridge Processor with IGP 3000 or higher"

Either way they are going to give you a blank stare. It's not like in the next year, *every* person is going to have a Sandy Bridge PC. think of how many people still have P4's or Early C2Ds.

It will be 4-5 years before the majority of people have a CPU chip based graphics, and guess what, at that point it won't be Intel IGP 3000, it will be Intel IGP 7000, so you will still have on box requirements that will confuse people.
Click to expand...

Might be a bit less than that. Nvidia, Intel, and AMD are all pushing towards all-in-one solutions. Still its a nice dream to have so lets not knock it completely. Even if this can help simplify requirements listings it will be a good thing. Though I'd rather see something come along to standardize what minimum and recommended requirements actually mean since every studio seems to have a different idea.
 
I think Jeremy_C said it best. Sandy Bridge, in Gabe's eyes, will raise the floor, not lower the ceiling. I don't think (hope not at least) he is saying that games will be dumbed down enough to play on IGP; rather that more customers will require less specific hardware in order to play at a suitable level.
 
If Ep3/HL3's delays have anything to do with trying to bring me a "console-like experience", then Gabe is a fool...
 
If anything I'm hoping it's a statement that will encourage console gamers to give the PC a chance
 
Derangel said:
I'd rather see something come along to standardize what minimum and recommended requirements actually mean since every studio seems to have a different idea.
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Agreed. It becomes confusing. I'd propose a three tiered rating system, something like this:

1.) Minimum Requirements: The game will launch, but performance will be poor and the user experience will not be as intended by the developer.

2.) Recommended Requirements: The game will run smoothly, but will not be able to maximize all settings and may even have to run on minimum on many of them.

3.) Ideal Requirements: The game will run smoothly at 1920x1200 resolutions with all in-game settings set to their maximum settings.
 
canna said:
Ask this question to a person that knows nothing about computers:
Click to expand...
LOL @ codenames use. The hypothetical clueless person won't know what GPU they have either.

Consider these more typical cases:
(common for games that would run on GMA) Minimum system requirements: nvidia FX 5200, ATI Radeon 9000, Intel GMA 950 or higher.

(future) Minimum system requirements: nvidia GT 220, Radeon HD 4350, Intel HD Graphics 3000 or higher.

People lived with descriptions like "Intel GMA 950" and they'll live with "Intel HD Graphics 2000" and "Intel HD Graphics 3000" too. The IGP (or should it be ODGP now?) has a name. It's not complicated unless you try to make it that way. :p
 
Oh goodness, please don't console-lize our beloved gaming PC's............

I can actually visualize that actually happening once the on-die graphics capability become greater and greater. I'm curious to see what Bulldozer will offer on this though, as it will simplify those of us who fold and don't like buying a separate discrete graphics card just to get it hooked to a monitor.
 
canna said:
The thing is there are system requirements listed on the box.

Ask this question to a person that knows nothing about computers:

"Requires a GTX 240 or Radeon 4350 graphics card or higher"
-or-
"Requires a Sandy Bridge Processor with IGP 3000 or higher"

Either way they are going to give you a blank stare. It's not like in the next year, *every* person is going to have a Sandy Bridge PC. think of how many people still have P4's or Early C2Ds.

It will be 4-5 years before the majority of people have a CPU chip based graphics, and guess what, at that point it won't be Intel IGP 3000, it will be Intel IGP 7000, so you will still have on box requirements that will confuse people.
Click to expand...

Still better than walking in to Best Buy and seeing a computer with 4GB of ram, a Phenom 2 X4 cpu, and a built in intel gpu with 128mb of shared memory. My point was that people wont have to look at the minimum requirements, the game will just work. It wont look as good as it would with a regular graphics card, but it would still get them into the platform.
 
I'd rather Gabe tell us that Half Life 2: Episode 3 is going to be shown at E3 or Gamescon.
 
pxc said:
LOL @ codenames use. The hypothetical clueless person won't know what GPU they have either.
Click to expand...

Which was entirely my point. It won't make it any easier for the average person to determine if it will run or not. It also won't significantly raise the bar, because people keep their PCs so long. By the time everyone has IGP 3000 at a minimum, IGP 7000+ will be out.
 
Zarathustra[H];1036665133 said:
Agreed. It becomes confusing. I'd propose a three tiered rating system, something like this:

1.) Minimum Requirements: The game will launch, but performance will be poor and the user experience will not be as intended by the developer.

2.) Recommended Requirements: The game will run smoothly, but will not be able to maximize all settings and may even have to run on minimum on many of them.

3.) Ideal Requirements: The game will run smoothly at 1920x1200 resolutions with all in-game settings set to their maximum settings.
Click to expand...

There really just needs to be one set of requirements. The listed requirements should be what it takes to run the game at a respectable stable frame-rate, even if its on the lowest settings. That should be the standard. Your idea fixes some issues, but adds more complications to it as well. Heck if Microsoft could actually make the Windows Experience index actually worth a damn that could provide a nice simplified way to do things.
 
Damn this sucks the performance of sandy bridge's gpu is horrible. I hope Gabe just ate something that upset his stomach and this just gas escaping.
 
canna said:
By the time everyone has IGP 3000 at a minimum, IGP 7000+ will be out.
Click to expand...
That's a poor assumption of a critical mass for support. Developers never wait for "everyone" to have something before supporting it. Some game developers have gone out of the way to support old low end GMA products, but most ignore it since it's either not possible due to technical limitations (like the engine requires a certain SM version), performance is so bad even scaled down that it's a pointless exercise or the number of likely buyers with the higher performance versions (like GMA X4500MHD out of the GMA family) is too low to care about.

Let me give an example: a future game "Q" is to be released late this year or early next year. It has been in development for 3 years. The game scales fairly well, but the whole GMA series is not fast enough and the developer ignored it. However, the developer or publisher discovers a while before release that the Intel HD Graphics 3000 performs about the same in "Q" as a HD 5450, which is in the minimum requirements. It would have been too late to change anything to add specific support for the HDG 3000, but since it works the publisher decides to include the HD Graphics 3000 in the minimum requirements.

I'm not sure that SB graphics will raise the floor any time soon, but it definitely puts HD Graphics 2000/3000 into territory where it meets minimum requirements for many games.
 
anthrex said:
Damn this sucks the performance of sandy bridge's gpu is horrible. I hope Gabe just ate something that upset his stomach and this just gas escaping.
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For an IGP the performance is great. Well okay the 2000 kinda sucks, but the 3000 will be great for laptops and lower-end desktop machines.
 
So the new CPU will cut my resolution, cut my frame rate, and make my controls sluggish? No thanks.
 
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