This week I read an interesting article where Jen-Hsun Huang, the CEO and co-founder of Nvidia, laid out some fighting words against Intel.  I didn't care much about the bitterness that seemed to be bubbling up between the two companies but I found the subject which incited the rant pretty interesting.  Basically, Intel is on their way to developing CPUs which have integrated GPUs in them, eliminating the necessity of having a separate video card because moving the GPU onto the CPU should increase performance considerably. 

nvidiageforce9800 That sounds great to me, it means potentially smaller computers for less money, who can argue with that?  Of course Nvidia has a problem with it because the thought of a 2-in-one CPU/GPU undermines their business of creating discrete GPUs.  Honestly when I read the article it made sense to me, after all look at where sound cards went.  It used to be that having a separate sound card in your computer was a necessity to get any semblance of decent audio from your computer, aside from that little "bleep-bloop" speaker you hear when you start your computer.  Now it's pretty much a given that the audio is just integrated with your motherboard and you don't have to worry about a separate sound card.  It's only a matter of time before the same thing happens to video cards.  Sure you can get integrated video today but it's generally looked at as being the budget video solution, needless to say no one expects integrated video to produce much gaming performance.

So then, if this does happen what happens to companies like Nvidia?  When I read the article I thought to myself that Nvidia should just try and be bought out by Intel as soon as possible unless they plan on branching out their products into other components aside from video cards.  Look at ATI, they were purchased by AMD and if AMD can put together their own combo CPU/GPU they might be able to beat out Intel as a result.  Sure there may not be much use for discrete video cards if these combos become a reality but having a well-established company to work with such as ATI would definitely ease along the transition and might make AMD's offerings superior.  If Nvidia and Intel teamed up though, the game would be all but over.

So really I just wanted to comment on this article because I think it's an interesting look into the future.  I doubt we'll be seeing this take hold anytime soon.  You also have to consider that the first few revs of the combo proc probably won't be comparable to having the latest graphics card in your machine, more of a continuation of what Intel is already doing with their integrated video chipsets.  Still, I thought the subject was pretty interesting considering my recent posts about the state of PC gaming and what will happen as we move forward.  In a few years time Intel's offering may be all you really need, but as of today I'd say keep that GeForce 8800 handy.

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