X-bit labs

Contemporary Platforms with Integrated Graphics (page 12)

Category: Chipsets

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 12/08/2006 | 10:38 AM ]

3D Graphics Performance

Besides measuring the performance in “common” applications, we have paid specific attention to one of the most important features of the chipsets with integrated graphics – 3D performance.

Of course, we couldn’t help resorting to a popular Futuremark 3DMark gaming testing suite.

The results you see are quite predictable. Intel chipsets should be theoretically faster than Nvidia solutions.

And as for 3DMark06, the situation is slightly different here. The thing is that this test rates the shader performance and compatibility of the graphics cores with Shader Model 3.0 very high. That is why Intel GMA 950 graphics core didn’t score that well in 3DMark06. You can clearly see why from the detailed charts below:

Now that we have discussed the synthetic benchmarks, let’s take a closer look at the integrated chipsets performance in games.

As we see, depending on the type of the game, the results may be completely different. In particular, Intel’s integrated graphics cores do not do that well with the OpenGL driver. As a result, Nvidia solutions with considerably weaker hardware capabilities become leaders in applications using this API.

Moreover, i945G chipset appears faster than iG965 in most games, which is probably explained by the higher fillrate of this core logic set. So, it looks like the programmable Intel GMA X3000 architecture with hardware shaders support cannot yet boast unprecedented performance in real games. And this makes me believe that iG965 turned out a pretty ill-balanced solution with high shader performance but insufficient fillrate. However, programmable architecture of GMA X3000 may allow shifting the focus, so future driver releases may help new integrated chipset from Intel defeat the predecessor.

Moreover, Intel hasn’t yet finished working on improving the GMA X3000 drivers. Full support for all hardware functions of this integrated solution is promised to be implemented in Q1 2007, when Intel software developers release the driver version 14.26 (at this time only version 14.25 is available).