My knowledge-base of FS hardware remains 5 plus years back. I sort of lost interest when I realized it would be years into the future before FSX would be really ready to perform because of hardware limitations. Now that hardware has (or is) catching up, do the GPUs that Intel are installing on their CPUs help FSX in anyway? Is this something we should be looking at? Could some of you smart, hardware-savvy flight simmers explain to me why they are putting GPUs on a CPU (That's what I thought videocards were for) and if now (or in the future) this will help FSX in terms of performance. I'd really appreciate an explanation from an experienced FSX user.Thanks in advance!RH

The Intel onboard graphics are not anywhere near what is required to run FSX to it's potential.

My knowledge-base of FS hardware remains 5 plus years back. I sort of lost interest when I realized it would be years into the future before FSX would be really ready to perform because of hardware limitations. Now that hardware has (or is) catching up, do the GPUs that Intel are installing on their CPUs help FSX in anyway? Is this something we should be looking at? Could some of you smart, hardware-savvy flight simmers explain to me why they are putting GPUs on a CPU (That's what I thought videocards were for) and if now (or in the future) this will help FSX in terms of performance. I'd really appreciate an explanation from an experienced FSX user.Thanks in advance!RH

The on-board graphics are pretty useless for an FSX specific rig.The Sandy Bridge processors were a sort of demo of Intel's newer powerful on-chip video processing (geared towards workstations and even more so, laptops). Honestly, the on-board processor is pretty darn powerful! I use it to encode my blu-rays for use on my iPad with the "Quick Sync" engine (thanks to Virtu). It's fast!I also tried FSX out on the on-board GPU, and honestly was impressed with what it could handle. With low AA settings and heavy autogen, FSX ran pretty well.If any of this seems a foreign language, that's okay. It's a pretty obscure topic here on the hardware forums because most of us have forgotten about our Intel Graphics.

My knowledge-base of FS hardware remains 5 plus years back. I sort of lost interest when I realized it would be years into the future before FSX would be really ready to perform because of hardware limitations. Now that hardware has (or is) catching up, do the GPUs that Intel are installing on their CPUs help FSX in anyway? Is this something we should be looking at? Could some of you smart, hardware-savvy flight simmers explain to me why they are putting GPUs on a CPU (That's what I thought videocards were for) and if now (or in the future) this will help FSX in terms of performance. I'd really appreciate an explanation from an experienced FSX user.Thanks in advance!RH

I think you're talking about AMD's Llano and upcoming Trinity, to a lesser extent Intel HD Graphics. Currently AMD's CPU+GPU (known as APU's) lineup is based on the Athlon II architecture but shrunk to 32nm. The top end Llano's are the A6 and A8 series. They are quadcores with on board Radeon 6550D graphics. With a discrete graphics card such as a 6670 they can do "Hybrid-Fire" which utilises both the APU and discrete GPU. Overall I would expect FSX performance to be hindered by an APU. FSX does not utilise SLI/Crossfire/Hybridfire and so it would likely use the discrete GPU which is not particularly powerful on it's own. In addition the Llano APU's are based on the older and slower Athlon II architecture and do not have an L3 cache. APU's make an excellent choice for budget machines that have no need for a discrete GPU or for low-end gaming systems where an APU + $100 discrete GPU will work quite well for a game that can utilise Hybrid-fire.

Thanks guys! That settles it! I am not going to worry about the onboard GPU. Long live the traditional videocard!RH

Honestly, the on-board processor is pretty darn powerful! I use it to encode my blu-rays for use on my iPad with the "Quick Sync" engine (thanks to Virtu). It's fast!I also tried FSX out on the on-board GPU, and honestly was impressed with what it could handle. With low AA settings and heavy autogen, FSX ran pretty well.

Sound like this report bodes well for Ivy Bridge as I understand they are amping up the GPU component significantly. And if this is true, one wonders if that sort of integration overcomes some timing challenges that might be more present w/ external GPUs. I wonder if this design leads to better smoothness, if not raw frame rate. Better smoothness per frame as it were!