Integrated Graphics: Xpress 200 vs. GMA 950
by Derek Wilson on May 26, 2005 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
These numbers serve to show that spending 50 to 75 USD on an add-in card can actually make the difference between a good gaming experience and a mediocre one. We chose not to highlight the fact that disabling advanced features, shaders, and effects do serve to boost performance to playable levels on today’s integrated platforms because the gap between lowest and highest quality on modern games continues to widen. The major advantage of current generation budget cards is not that they can deliver incredible performance, but that they can deliver something playable without sacrificing image quality to do so.For those who truly do not need or care about 3D, integrated graphics are fine. People who are nostalgic about Quake III and earlier 3D games will also be satisfied. If just running something with 3D is important, these solutions will get the job done. But integrated performance has still not reached a level where we can recommend it to anyone who wants to play the current generation titles.
We see the difficulty from a business standpoint of integrating products that compete with discrete budget parts, but we still feel that offering the option of slightly higher quality 3D onboard would be a welcome move. Intel has no motivation to do anything, but the minimum required by Microsoft for Longhorn as their loyalty lies with business customers. However, it seems that ATI and NVIDIA have an opportunity to compete with Intel by simply offering better 3D support along side their outstanding 2D functionality.
Out of the integrated cards that we tested, the ATI part came out on top in the performance tests. We can also expect ATI to put more effort into supporting (at least on some level) the latest games than Intel. On the other hand, Intel ships more graphics components than any other manufacturer in the world. We can expect their home and business graphics support to be of the same quality of which they provide for all their other components.
It is still a great thing that Intel and ATI have moved beyond the Extreme Graphics era where 3D applications would run very poorly (if at all). Compatibility is the first step, and performance of this generation of integrated components is indeed a step up from what we’ve seen in the past. Let us hope that the progression continues.
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fishman - Monday, August 1, 2005 - link
You can get these with either shared memory or dedicated memory - which configuration was used in the tests?IntelUser2000 - Thursday, June 2, 2005 - link
Sis and Via's integrated graphics solution is even more below Intel. They are more than one generation behind Intel's graphics. Even though Sis 660 or something had 2 pixel pipelines and hardware T&L, Intel's Extreme Graphics 2 beat it hands down, and IEG2 only has single pixel pipeline.IntelUser2000 - Thursday, June 2, 2005 - link
Apparently dual core doesn't help much if you look at other Intel GMA950 benchmarks. The only one helped is HL2 score, which went up by 30%, and 3dmark2005, which is multi-threaded so it doesn't count.ET - Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - link
I'd find it interesting to see results with Intel's low end dual core CPU. Since the CPU is used for vertex processing, dual core might have a good effect on this.crucibelle - Saturday, May 28, 2005 - link
#11,I agree with you completely!
I particularly wish that the reviewer would have ran a benchmark for Sims 2. Perhaps they can do this in the near future? I certainly hope so.
tbrooks40 - Friday, May 27, 2005 - link
nice write up...i don't necessarily agree with akozak - memory is cheap enough now-a-days that seeing a basic system with 1gb of memory won't be all that surprising. i doubt that it's the norm but it's conceivable with memory prices continuing to drop.
i have a question, one i'm sure akozak would roll his eyes to, would a dual core chip increase the performance of integrated graphics?
i know an entry level system wouldn't likely have a dual core chip - i'm more curious than anything after reading the dual core performance article.
ET - Thursday, May 26, 2005 - link
#19, I don't think it's useless. They're benchmarking the graphics, so seeing how fast it can perform given optimal conditions is helpful. With a slower CPU and less RAM you get other bottlenecks, so the graphics scores will have less of a difference, but this won't really give you a better feeling for the integrated graphics.BTW, I'd consider 1GB pretty much necessary for a system running integrated graphics, if they take RAM away from the system. 512MB may be too little in such a case.
That said, an article about game performance on entry level machines (Semprons with integrated graphics or whatever) might be of some interest.
flloyd - Thursday, May 26, 2005 - link
Thanks #18 but I know about refresh rates. Unfortunately the 915G that I have is much more "stable" and clear at 75Hz than 85Hz so I have to deal with that for now.abakshi - Thursday, May 26, 2005 - link
Well yes, comparisons to older standalone cards like an R8500/GF4 would interesting, but you'd have to test these integrated chipsets on the same platform to get any meaningful results, which isn't possible here (at least yet) -- PCIe instead of AGP...iwodo - Thursday, May 26, 2005 - link
Can anybody check if they have updated the benchmark? I am sure it wasn't this bad last time i check. As my news reader inform me something in this article has changed.