I guess I don't really understand why this is impressive - the GPU is still not good enough to handle modern gaming and apparently has some issues with media encoding as well (although I will admit that that section confused me somewhat), and it sounds like the CPU is just a modest upgrade in efficiency.
I'm not saying it's bad, it looks like solid progress form Intel as we all continue to expect, but I don't get why this is considered 'tick+' when it seems less exciting to me than Nehalem.
Obviously it's not meant to be a high end gaming chip. Sandy Bridge was pretty excellent in The Sims 3 and Guild Wars, amongst others that I've tried. If Ivy Bridge is as better as the graphs show, there's a whole new category of games open to it.
If you have a discrete video card already, this won't replace that and isn't meant to. If you are looking to buy a laptop and want to play The Sims while you're on the airplane, that's what this is meant for.
Nehalem was a "tock", as was Sandy Bridge. Both rolled out lots of new features (integrated DRAM controller, QPI, hyperthreading, AVX, uop cache, etc...). So of course they were more "exciting" to a software person.
Ivy Bridge is a "tick" (OK, "tick+") which means that it's fundamentally a die shrink of Sandy Bridge. It's rolling out lots of new stuff too, but it all has to do with how the 22nm Tri-Gate transistors are produced, the logic implemented is mostly the same. Compare this to Clarkdale/Arrandale, not Nehalem.
>I guess I don't really understand why this is impressive - the GPU is still not good enough to handle modern gaming
Because the huge of majority of the population does not care about "modern gaming", but they do care about less costs and improved batter life with an integrated GPU and would like to see it offer better performance for apps where it's needed?
Your right that the majority of the population doesn't care about playing battlefield 3, as an example. But, a very large precentage of the populous is insanely interested in casual gaming, see farmville.
The value that gets skipped by mainstream "tech sites" is that, yea its kinda crap at playing battlefield 3, but what it does do is create a baseline of capabilities that you can expect out of an average device. In other words, it opens the doors for mainstream adoption of technologies that weren't there before, ultimately leading to a new baseline performance for those putting out casual games.
I guess what I'm saying is that the next farmville could now have decent 3D graphics where as that was out of the question prior to the mainstreaming of decent GPUs. Intel plays a key role in that process.
>I guess what I'm saying is that the next farmville could now have decent 3D graphics where as that was out of the question prior to the mainstreaming of decent GPUs. Intel plays a key role in that process.
Well, you have some point, but I think that Intel's GPU capabilities are far better than the needs of a casual 3D game. I would expect to first see some casual 3D games that utilizes at least that power, before I would think that more power is needed.
Also, a biggest problem is that MS doesn't support WebGL in IE, so no 3D casual games, except if you model them with a 3D engine build on Canvas (which would mean it would use only the 2D acceleration features of the GPU that the canvas uses).
I'm not saying it's bad, it looks like solid progress form Intel as we all continue to expect, but I don't get why this is considered 'tick+' when it seems less exciting to me than Nehalem.