The Elephant in the 1.9 room: Integrated Graphics Cards are Dropping like Flies.

If you have logged on to the Jira lately and done a search of issues (yeah right) you might find that one of the more sizable ones is the fact that 1.9 Snapshots are causing unholy amounts of lag to Intel HD Graphics cards and to a lesser extent some earlier Nvidia Cards. While the Nvidia issue usually breaks down to outdated drivers, the list of Intel HD cards affected seems to be growing. For those that are unaware, Intel HD is Manufacturer Lingo for Integrated Graphics. And for those that may be completely under a rock, an integrated graphics card is one where the "card" is printed directly onto a portion of the main CPU chipset. This is a quick shortcut that allows for cost savings in production and space savings in design, which is important when trying to produce low end, inexpensive computers for say, the business market, or for students, who only need basic web connectivity and word processing capability. THE ISSUE with them is that they tend to be bad if not downright horrible at RENDERING graphics on the fly. The EPIDEMIC is that they are INSANELY COMMON.

See, a video is "pre-rendered" as is a typical 3D environment. nothing moves (relatively speaking) and so it can handle those just fine. But when you add action, like say 400 bullets, rocket explosions, sparks, Moving geometry, and in general gobs of particle effects, well, an integrated graphics card just can't handle the load. It's not Dedicated to the task, nor does it have anywhere to dump the heat that such calculations produce. It's only option is to divert some of the calculations on to the main CPU of the computer, which is ironic because those are the very calculations that the CPU needs a Graphics processor to do for it so it can focus on the underlying algorithms of the game being played. (remember: With an integrated graphics card they are basically the same chip anyway, so this can happen. On larger computers where the card is a separate component, this flat out does not occur.) This generated more heat and performance goes down and then we get lag.

To be fair, software drivers can remedy the problem somewhat by allowing some shortcuts that break the number crunching into manageable "bites", but no matter how big you make the funnel, you are still dealing with a dump truck load of data, being fed though what equates to a smoothie blender.

Minecraft is unique in that it uses bite sized chunks (hence the name ICYDK,) to make this job easier. and for a long time we've been able to tweak the system so that the data and numbers being crunched are manageable. But the issue being put off is as I said in the title: The Elephant in the room. Or the oncoming storm. The Critical Mass. Minecraft now, has too much going on in one frame of data for the type of computer that could run it perfectly fine just 3 years ago to handle. As for the Mojang team, well, bless them, they're trying. I'm sure Jens could teach a course in high rate data compression by now, but the fact is that at this point we all may have to face the fact that Minecraft just can't run on a low end, or older computer anymore. For those of you out there reading this now, wondering why this is an issue, one of the main draws to Minecraft, back in Alpha and Beta mostly, was that it was a deeply engrossing game that was easy to install, and was incredibly "fuel efficient" from a system resource perspective. This meant that old "clunkers" could even run it and that made the game have an almost "found in that box of old stuff from when you were a kid" vibe. "Nostalgia for the modern age" if you will.

Ask anyone who has been around the game since alpha or beta, and they will tell you, "Minecraft is not the same game." Sure it has the same mechanic and textures (mostly), but as it evolved, it went from a pile of "infinite legos" to a...well what happens when you build with legos? More than the sum of it's parts. I suppose that it's only natural that this progression occur, but it may come at the cost of processor support, and that may, in turn prove unavoidable.

Thoughtful discussion please.