CES 2011: Valve's Newell Loves Sandy Bridge; Makes for Console-Like Experience on PC

[Shawn Zipay]

Ah, Sandy Bridge and Portal 2 a match made in Valve heaven. Wait, what? Yes, Valve's Gabe Newell is a huge fan of the upcoming CPU technology from Intel, dubbed "Sandy Bridge." The integration of CPU and graphics processing on one chip has the big cheese at Valve quite excited.

In fact, Newell has revealed to Gamasutra that Portal 2 was designed with that particular chip in mind for the PC version.

The Valve boss called the integrated CPU and graphics technology -- the latter of which is reportedly better than 40-50 percent of the discrete graphic cards on the market -- "a game changer".

"This allows for a console-like experience on the PC," he said, according to an International Business Times report.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini said at the company's CES press conference that the focus of Sandy Bridge was "all about the visual experience."

Take a deep breath and let that soak in for a moment. Sandy Bridge is a rather significant step forward in terms of chip technology and has thus far proven its worth in a number of benchmark tests that are starting to make the rounds.

How do you feel about Portal 2 being "designed" with that chip in mind? Do you particularly long for a more console like experience on your PC? Feel free to sound off.

[GZero]

Re: CES 2011: Valve's Newell Loves Sandy Bridge; Makes for Console-Like Experience on

Mixed messages, what they are saying is that they haven't moved to a more feature heavy graphics engine and therefore works with the latest Intel graphics.

Good for pc gaming as finally "average" pc owners might get a chance at actually playing some of the good titles.

If you check out the benches, the HD 2000/3000 aren't that bad considering Intel's past performances, and you have to remember these will be in base sandy bridge builds, so these will be the minimum graphics power that people might be buying in future.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridge-review-intel-core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/11

As you can see, MW2 and WoW both with playable framerates, and not only that but also saving people buying the cheapest gpus because they get almost as good performance at the low settings. Most likely this would encourage gaming more and maybe force a price war on the low/budget end as Nvidia and AMD wrestle to get consumers to buy their 450/460's and 5770/6850's.


Wishful thinking for 2011.

[IC dead people]

Re: CES 2011: Valve's Newell Loves Sandy Bridge; Makes for Console-Like Experience on

I'm certainly not looking for a more console like experience on my PC! But if the performance is better for the same cost I might give it a try! Guess we won't know till a while after the release...