Published in Graphics

Intel takes credit for three-way 4K gaming

by on17 September 2014



Calls it 12K, fails to mention 4-way SLI from Nvidia

All of a sudden Intel is talking about desktop gaming like there is no tomorrow and it is pushing it. The company recently launched the Haswell-E based, Core i7 5000 series and there is no doubt that the more down to earth Core i7-4790 Haswell refresh is doing really well in the gaming market.

At IDF the company showed off something that Intel SVP and General Manager of PC Client Group Kirk B. Skaugen calls 12K gaming. The name is not that accurate, as Kirk showcased three-way 4K gaming, but in any case you end up with 11520x2160 which is still quite an amazing resolution.

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You run the game over three 4K monitors. Kirk showed a Tomb Raider demo running at a decent frame rate, and went on to explain that this is made possible because by the flagship Core i7 5960 processor. He fails to mention the critical components used in the rig come from Nvidia, in the form of four high-end graphics cards.

We went to see the demo after Kirk’s presentation and guess what it has no less than four Geforce GTX 780 TI cards in four-way SLI. Our problem with the presentation is that some members of the audience thought that you can achieve it with an Intel processor and that you don’t need anything else. Of course, techies know better and of course that there were powerful desktop discrete graphics cards behind demo.

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No matter how many Iris Pro GPUs you use, it would not be not remotely close to performance that you need for three-way 4K gaming. Let us also remind you that Intel’s fastest graphics card sits on a 47W TDP Haswell H series processor. We are not aware of any dual socket Haswell H series motherboard when you can use more than one processor and Iris pro cards. Intel tried to make its super cool graphics card and codenamed it Larrabee, and guess what, that never actually became a GPU product. However its successor, codenamed Knight’s Landing did well in the server market.

We are sure whether this 12K demo was joint venture of Intel and Nvidia, as a normal GPU driver doesn’t run four cards out of the box.

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