The Zone

 

There are a lot of technology wars looming up ahead. One of them recently died, the HD war, but there's also the SSD (Solid-State Drives) war coming soon, and now, something else.

 

It's the GPU versus CPU war, where the graphics processing unit (in graphic card and on-board graphics) fights with the central processing unit (the main system board processor). As AMD has already gobbled up ATI, and Intel and NVIDIA are apart, there's a dynamic trio of rivals all against each other to capture the gaming market.

 

One element crucial to gaming is physics, which reflects real-world effects beyond just graphics. This requires more computing power than graphics processing, and hence, it gives a chance for processor titans Intel and AMD, a stake in the industry.

 

As a result, Intel bought Havok, the physics engine, while NVIDIA bought Ageia, and since AMD has ATI, they're working on the Fusion processor. While Intel plans to showcase Havok's power in this year's new Nehalem processor, NVIDIA also showed the ability of GeForce8 to do physics. However, game leaders like id Software and Crytek are saying these technologies are too early for games.

 

Will the CPU kill the GPU or will the GPU kill the CPU? Or will the hardware makers roll out these physics processors that game makers won't be using? Read on!

 

Sources:

 

Tom's Hardware - NVIDIA GPU vs Intel CPU-GPU