| NJ5 said: There is one rather stupid thing and one rather scary/disturbing thing about these new CPUs (correct me if I'm wrong): - stupid thing: the highest-end, overclockable Sandy Bridge CPUs have substantially better integrated graphics hardware, occupying a large portion of the chip as the picture in the OP shows. But the people who want to buy these highest-end chips are the ones who will rarely use the integrated graphics, obviously they will buy a good standalone graphics card instead. This looks like a waste of transistors and die area in these models. - scary/disturbing thing: these CPUs can be remotely switched off by Intel: http://www.techspot.com/news/41643-intels-sandy-bridge-processors-have-a-remote-kill-switch.html The second one by itself is enough to make me very wary of buying one. |
While I agree these integrated chips are problematic at the moment, if ATI/nVidia can work out solutions similar to the hybrid crossfirex to take advantage of these GPUs (or developers take advantage of these chips) it might not be such a waste
