For far too long, the CAD industry has played second fiddle to the gaming industry in terms of graphics and computers. Though there are many overlapping needs between the two industries, there are significant differences as well. With their announcement of the Xeon processor E3-1200 product family, Intel seems to now put more focus on the CAD industry.
They are attempting to create a workstation category with optimized performance for CAD by combining the CPU and GPU into one chip. Intel states that this new processor (combined with the Intel C206 chipset) will be optimized for professional and practical performance on workstations designed for CAD, digital animation and 3D imaging. The graphics technology employed on this new chip is called Intel HD Graphics P3000. The “P” in “P3000” simultaneously means “performance”, “practical”, and “professional”.
The first product release in this new family of processors should have graphic abilities that are equivalent with entry-level graphic cards currently on the market. There are several advantages to this new product over traditional graphics cards. Though pricing is not available yet, there is a suggestion that customers will save because they are no longer required to buy and maintain separate graphics cards. There will also be power savings that will lower the cost of the workstation by allowing for a smaller power supply (or at least, more efficient use of the power supply).
Monitors will connect to this new type of workstation directly to the motherboard (or presumably offset connections at the back of the workstation that lead directly to the motherboard).
Pricing, availability and other information about this new product will be released by Intel within the next month or so.