Thinking in binary has been adopted as a new extension of our previous lifestyles - at least sort of. That is why we are called the digital generation and consequently, a few things are changing. The metric that all of us have grown up with (and still do) is built upon the decimal system, and almost anyone will be able to answer how much is 10 x 10 .. In geek language, the dreaded 8 x 8 or even 16 X 16 equations have become so integrated into the daily routines of memory and hard disk allocations that 256 or even 4096 are by now just parts of the daily dosage of numbers, else we just use the ubiquitous placeholders like 4k or whatever dimension we are entertaining at a given moment.

Differentiation is one of the most important keys to success. In a sea of conformal offerings it doesn't matter whether any deviation finds the unanimous approval by everybody, which would be a paradox anyway, as long as it sets itself apart from the rest of the field. This strategy has worked well for ASUS in the past in any sector of their product offerings and by now the brand name is strong enogh to make about anything fly, just based on the fact that it is an ASUS product. Take the latest line-up of AMD graphics cards and there is a prime example. Every AMD partner is craving for attention by putting a sticker on their cards that still nevertheless follows the reference design. Of course there are contractual obligations and at the same time, the reference design is extremely well thought-out. But then, change is good, isn't it?

How much performance can US$100 buy? Not long ago, the answer would have been that unless you found something in the bargain bin or the reject section or maybe in the estate of somebody who moved on to greener pastures, even satisfying just the most marginal demands were slim pickings at best. Things are changing rapidly, though, and all of a sudden, just looking at the $100.- offerings can burn a literal hole in the pocket. With CPU, memory and storage prices plummeting, the one category still a bit behind on the price erosion curve was an affordable graphics card solution that would do justice to the latest games. After all, if the eye candy is programmed into the games and photorealism, not to mention anatomically correct displays of body motions take over in the animations, it would be a shame to reduce game play to stick figure-like characters.

OpenGL and More Gaming

At one time, OpenGL (Open Graphics Library ) used to be the predominant API for 2D and 3D applications. OpenGL is a standard cross platform API for computer graphics originally developed by Silicon Graphics in 1992, featuring over 250 function calls. While OpenGL has been pushed somewhat into the back by DirectX powering most games in the Microsoft Windows environment, it remains a powerful factor in CAD and scientific computing. OpenGL is currently managed by a non-profit technology consortium known as the Khronos Group. OpenGL allows each vendor to add functions through extensions of the standard that are designated by specific identifiers (for example “NV” for nVidia).

Our first two articles on Intel's Clarkdale CPU were covering the architectural idiosyncrasies of Intel's latest CPU, featuring not only the integrated memory controller but also integrated graphics on the same processor package. We further looked into Intel's strategy of taking unused CPU cycles to augment the iGFX performance, and quite successfully so to gain an edge over the closest competitor, that is AMD's 785G/GX chipset featuring the integrated RADEON 4200 graphics core.

By the end of the day or the first two weeks of usage, though, we still believe that a substantial number of users will decide to bite the sour grapes and upgade to one or the other discrete solution. Regardless of its bravour, the iGFX is still too limited for anything but home theater use when it comes to entertainment. This of course begs the question what can be expected from a Clarkdale sans iGFX, that is, just a plain old dual core Nehalem CPU with TurboBoost Technology and Hypertreading. Out of the box 3.6 GHz are nothing to be ashamed of but how will two physical cores stack up against AMD's quad core competition starting at only about 1/2 of the '661 price tag?