3D Image Quality

Shaders put aside, I would say that Intel’s new graphics processor is not much better than Extreme Graphics 2: there’s still no full-screen antialiasing, and the maximum level of anisotropic filtering has increased only from 2x to 4x. In this aspect, Graphics Media Accelerator 900 loses unconditionally even to the cheapest modern processors from ATI and NVIDIA.

As for the support of pixel shaders, I’m not yet certain. In some games, GMA 900 works blamelessly, yielding a picture quite undistinguishable from one we get on modern standalone graphics cards, but sometimes the new GPU from Intel is incorrect.

Let’s have a brief test: we take a modern game (Far Cry), run it on the i915G (left) and RADEON 9600 (right) and compare:

Intel 915G	ATI RADEON 9600

The mini-radar has disappeared in the bottom left corner of the screen in the i915G’s screenshot, but otherwise the screens look much alike. However, there is a difference: the i915G only produces a reflection on the water surface, while the RADEON 9600 makes the water both reflect and refract!

Now, medium image-quality settings:

Intel 915G	ATI RADEON 9600

The shaders have disappeared on the water surface produced by Intel GMA 900. But you can just slightly change your position for them to reappear:

Intel 915G	ATI RADEON 9600

And the “speedy” settings:

Intel 915G	ATI RADEON 9600

Once again, water is rendered right most of the time, but sometimes the GPU falters. All returns to the norm after the player changes his position.

Intel 915G	ATI RADEON 9600

Shader surfaces are displayed incorrectly in Halo: Intel GMA 900 is to the left, and the RADEON 9600 is to the right.

Intel GMA 900	ATI RADEON 9600

So, there are problems with pixel shaders, which will be hopefully corrected in the future versions of the driver. Besides that, some games like IL-2 Sturmovik just don’t see hardware pixel shader support in the i915G – this should be corrected, too.