X-bit labs

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 and Intel 915G: New Generation of Integrated Graphics (page 8)

Category: Chipsets

by Tim Tscheblockov

[ 07/12/2004 | 09:12 AM ]

Serious Sam: The Second Encounter

The i915G outperforms the i865G and the chipsets from VIA and SiS, but loses to the integrated graphics as well as standalone graphics cards from ATI and NVIDIA.

We see the same leaders: the RADEON 9100 IGP and the nForce2 IGP, which is far ahead of the others.

Quake 3: Arena

The numbers in Quake 3: Arena are determined mostly by the fill-rate speed and the memory bus bandwidth, and these are the winning aspects of the GMA 900 architecture. As a result, the i915G leaves behind all of its integrated competitors as well as 64-bit versions of the standalone graphics cards in 1024x768.

The “fast” settings are on, and we see that the i915G suffers but a small performance hit on switching from 800x600 to 1024x768. Again, this is an indication that the performance of GMA 900 is limited by its geometry-processing speed.

Anyway, the nForce2 IGP suffers a greater performance hit on switching to 1024x768 and yields its lead to the i915G in the second resolution.