Do You Really Need a Dedicated Graphics Card to Play Your Favorite Games? When you innocently say the words “integrated graphics” to those who play PC games, don’t expect a positive response. Or for them to not laugh in your face. Graphics processor units (GPUs) that are combined with central processing units (CPUs), often called iGPUs, have a bad reputation, especially when compared with standalone GPU beasts, like Nvidia’s latest, $700 Geforce GTX 1080. iGPUs are usually found in portable computers and generally aren’t powerful enough to handle the latest games. But Intel is making moves to redefine the expectations surrounding iGPUs and its most up to date offering aims to back up its claims. This May, Intel has demonstrated how far their iGPUs have come by releasing the newest and fastest generation of their Next Unit of Computing, or NUC. Dubbed Skull Canyon, the box is only eight inches wide, four inches deep, and a little under an inch tall, and is home to a full size i7 quad core processor. Not limited by the delicate power requirements of a laptop battery, the processor can go full bore to rival speeds found in traditional desktop PCs when needed. The magic in the NUC is built into the processor: the Intel Iris Pro 580. It is the most equipped integrated graphics chip from Intel yet. It’s the sequel to the Iris Pro Graphics 6200. It boasts way more computing units and has dedicated memory that can be used just for graphics processing—minimizing the need to use slower, shared memory with the CPU. Intel claims that iGPUs of this caliber can replace the need for low end video cards for many mainstream gamers. See http://ift.tt/29ZXtjT
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