Intel 915 Graphics: Graphics Media Accelerator 900
by Derek Wilson on August 2, 2004 10:03 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
FarCry Performance
Here, most of the charm of the game has to take a back seat when trying to run on integrated solutions. 800x600 is the lowest setting selectable in FarCry, and we'd really need to drop down a little more for this game to be playable on Intel platforms. The ATI integrated and discrete solutions run the game fine (or better) at these settings, but theoretically, the Intel chip is more capable than the ATI chip in this game (as it uses DX9 pixel shaders and the 9100IGP is only a DX8 solution). The HUD on the Intel GPU seems to be rendered incorrectly, while water looks "less correct" on the ATI platform.
Graphics Media Accelerator 900
Radeon 9100 IGP
We wouldn't recommend playing this game on either platform, as the graphics are what make the game here. Interestingly though, the X300 is playable with quite a bit more than minimal settings (though much less than highest quality), but that's another article.
This game's performance under the GMA900 scales linearly with processor clock speed. Of course, we don't know where the point of diminishing returns is as we didn't test beyond 3.4GHz. This game (with all its pixel shading features disabled) is fairly geometry intensive, but even with the kind of scaling we see here, it would take an insanely fast CPU to make up the difference between the GMA900 and the 9100IGP.
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skiboysteve - Monday, August 2, 2004 - link
"Gee thats funny i thought Longhorn required DX10 and PS3 minimum."longhorn requires DX9
kmmatney - Monday, August 2, 2004 - link
I can probably dig up the numbers somewhere, but I wonder how this compares to the NForce2 IGP paired with an Athlon XP. Is there an IGP for the Athlon64?mczak - Monday, August 2, 2004 - link
"...the ATI 9100 IGP numbers are based on a system running at a 600MHz lower processor frequency. Interestingly, this almost makes up for Intel's lack of hardware geometry processing."Well, the ATI 9100 IGP also completely lacks hardware geometry processing!
mkruer - Monday, August 2, 2004 - link
Gee thats funny i thought Longhorn required DX10 and PS3 minimum. If tru the artical is a mute point . Intel is try to add value to the chipsete, when infact what is required is simplification of the chipset. Looks lke Blue Crystals to mesprockkets - Monday, August 2, 2004 - link
With such low memory bandwidth available maybe running a DX9 integrated video system is a complete waste of time. So what if it supports PS2.0, playing a game at around 10FPS is a waste of time.mikecel79 - Monday, August 2, 2004 - link
"So is this that Intel quality and 'reliability' that someone was talking about in the comments for the Sempron article? "Quality and reliability are different than performance. There's nothing here to show that the Intel Integrated graphics are not good quality or not reliable. Performance has nothing to do with quality or reliability.
tfranzese - Monday, August 2, 2004 - link
So is this that Intel quality and 'reliability' that someone was talking about in the comments for the Sempron article?cosmotic - Monday, August 2, 2004 - link
I really like the Intel bashing comments at the end of the review. Intel DOES have the responibility of puting better graphics cards in these computers. If they didn't provide integrated graphics, OEMs would be required to use add-in cards, and since the cheapest add-in card performs better than Intels chip, there is NO reason at all for Intel to be providing such utter crap in their chipsets. It may even be more ecinomical to license nVidia's technology to use inside Intel chips. That would make everyone happy (except ATI).