Mobile Platform Wars: AMD vs. Intel
by Jarred Walton on October 5, 2007 9:10 AM EST
X1250 vs. GMA X3100
For the Graphics comparison, we decided to focus on the best case scenario for AMD and compare performance using the TL-66 to the Intel GMA X3100. We will include charts later that show that the difference between using a TL-60 and a TL-66 isn't particularly great when talking about gaming performance, but we just wanted to make this point clear.
The Radeon X1250 is based off of the Radeon X700 hardware, with a few changes. First, half the pipelines have been removed (which actually makes the hardware more like an X300/X600), so it comes with four pixel pipelines. All of the vertex shader pipelines have also been removed, letting the CPU handle that part of the graphics equation. Note also that the origins of this IGP mean that it lacks support for Shader Model 3.0, but unlike the X300/X600 it does include SM2.0b support. The X1250 also includes some additional functionality related to video processing, although we won't be testing that area of performance in this article.
For the Intel camp, the GM965 Northbridge includes the GMA X3100 graphics processor. Figuring out exactly what is and isn't supported by this chip can be a little complex, in part because the drivers have been so bad (at least in terms of gaming support), particularly under Windows Vista. We can say for sure that the GMA X3100 supports at least a subset of SM3.0, because it is able to complete that section of Futuremark's 3DMark06, and it appears to be capable of running certain SM3.0 games. In terms of features, that theoretically moves the X3100 ahead of the X1250, and it should also be better than the GMA 3000/3100 that's found in the Q33/Q35/G33 chipsets.
In the past, the assumption has always been that NVIDIA and ATI/AMD integrated graphics solutions were superior to the stuff from Intel (as well as smaller chipset companies like VIA). We want to determine a couple of things in this article: first, does that still hold true (at least in the mobile market)? Second, even if AMD Radeon Mobility X1250 (in this case) is faster than GMA X3100, does it even matter? In other words, is the performance provided enough to actually run certain applications (games) that fail to run on competing hardware?
To help answer this second question, we will also be including gaming performance results from a Gateway laptop (E-475M) that includes a Radeon Mobility HD 2300 discrete graphics chip. We're not yet ready to complete our review of the Gateway laptop, but we should have that ready within the next couple of weeks. The discrete graphics chip adds about $80 to the price of the laptop, which isn't too bad provided the performance increase is substantial. The Gateway E-475M was also equipped with a T7300 and 2GB of memory, so it ends up acting as the discrete GPU version of the dv6500t (which is also an option from HP).
Rather than starting with tons of graphs, we thought it would be easiest to just use a table to summarize the performance differences. All games tested were run at either low (or in some cases very low) and medium detail settings indicated by LQ/VLQ and MQ in the following table. Generally speaking, low-quality means that we turned everything off, although in some games that provide a VLQ/Minimum detail setting we may still run at low-quality if performance is acceptable. Medium quality sets everything to a middle value where possible. Here are the results.
Starting with the IGP comparison, we find that AMD does indeed continue to place ahead of Intel in overall performance. Somewhat interesting to note, however, is that Intel does manage to run a couple of games faster. Supreme Commander is extremely CPU intensive, which may help to explain that particular result, but most of the remaining games should be pretty much GPU bottlenecked. Battlefield 2 was at one point completely unable to run on the GMA X3100, as were many of the other games. Over the past several months, Intel has continued to improve the drivers and we're now at the point where nearly all of the games ran without issue. Battlefield 2 at medium quality still had some graphical artifacts, so that result should be disqualified, but performance at medium quality is too slow regardless.
Given the improvements we've seen with updated drivers, we would actually go so far as to say that Intel could probably be equal to or slightly faster than the X1250 with the GMA X3100 if they could only optimize their drivers further. That may be surprising to hear, but in reality the Intel GPU has as many pipelines as the Radeon X1250, and current results in Battlefield 2, 3DMark, and a few other titles indicate that there's still untapped potential. Performance under Windows XP tends to be even better, as those drivers are more fully developed. (We will include results from a laptop running Windows XP using the GMA X3100 in a forthcoming article.) As it stands, however, AMD still has about a 20% performance advantage in the IGP sector. That really isn't much, especially considering the relatively low frame rates we're already talking about.
The 20% performance lead looks even less impressive in light of the performance of the Radeon Mobility HD 2300. Frankly, the HD 2300 still isn't particularly fast, and most games need to be run at medium or low detail levels in order to achieve acceptable frame rates at resolutions up to 1280x800. However, while the performance of the HD 2300 might pale in comparison to faster desktop offerings, it generally turns in performance figures that are two or three times faster than either of the IGPs we're looking at today. It also offers complete SM3.0 support along with DirectX 10 capability, though not surprisingly the DX10 support is more of a feature checklist item than anything truly useful right now - of the few DX10 enabled games currently available, most cause pretty severe performance drops even on top-end hardware like the GeForce 8800 and Radeon HD 2900.
Our conclusion as usual is that for $80 more, anyone that actually intends to play any 3D games on a laptop should at least invest in an entry level discrete GPU. Even better would be a midrange HD 2600 or GeForce 8600M/8700M, though those tend to be found in laptops that cost closer to $1500 (barring sales and other special offers - as usual, shop around). You can look at the detailed performance charts to see exactly how slow the IGP solutions run, but there are several titles that are completely unplayable even at minimum detail settings. There are also games like Bioshock and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter that require SM3.0 and are incapable of running properly on either of these two IGPs. (We did try the SM2.0 hack to get Bioshock to run, but the results weren't pretty to say the least.)
For the Graphics comparison, we decided to focus on the best case scenario for AMD and compare performance using the TL-66 to the Intel GMA X3100. We will include charts later that show that the difference between using a TL-60 and a TL-66 isn't particularly great when talking about gaming performance, but we just wanted to make this point clear.
The Radeon X1250 is based off of the Radeon X700 hardware, with a few changes. First, half the pipelines have been removed (which actually makes the hardware more like an X300/X600), so it comes with four pixel pipelines. All of the vertex shader pipelines have also been removed, letting the CPU handle that part of the graphics equation. Note also that the origins of this IGP mean that it lacks support for Shader Model 3.0, but unlike the X300/X600 it does include SM2.0b support. The X1250 also includes some additional functionality related to video processing, although we won't be testing that area of performance in this article.
For the Intel camp, the GM965 Northbridge includes the GMA X3100 graphics processor. Figuring out exactly what is and isn't supported by this chip can be a little complex, in part because the drivers have been so bad (at least in terms of gaming support), particularly under Windows Vista. We can say for sure that the GMA X3100 supports at least a subset of SM3.0, because it is able to complete that section of Futuremark's 3DMark06, and it appears to be capable of running certain SM3.0 games. In terms of features, that theoretically moves the X3100 ahead of the X1250, and it should also be better than the GMA 3000/3100 that's found in the Q33/Q35/G33 chipsets.
In the past, the assumption has always been that NVIDIA and ATI/AMD integrated graphics solutions were superior to the stuff from Intel (as well as smaller chipset companies like VIA). We want to determine a couple of things in this article: first, does that still hold true (at least in the mobile market)? Second, even if AMD Radeon Mobility X1250 (in this case) is faster than GMA X3100, does it even matter? In other words, is the performance provided enough to actually run certain applications (games) that fail to run on competing hardware?
To help answer this second question, we will also be including gaming performance results from a Gateway laptop (E-475M) that includes a Radeon Mobility HD 2300 discrete graphics chip. We're not yet ready to complete our review of the Gateway laptop, but we should have that ready within the next couple of weeks. The discrete graphics chip adds about $80 to the price of the laptop, which isn't too bad provided the performance increase is substantial. The Gateway E-475M was also equipped with a T7300 and 2GB of memory, so it ends up acting as the discrete GPU version of the dv6500t (which is also an option from HP).
Rather than starting with tons of graphs, we thought it would be easiest to just use a table to summarize the performance differences. All games tested were run at either low (or in some cases very low) and medium detail settings indicated by LQ/VLQ and MQ in the following table. Generally speaking, low-quality means that we turned everything off, although in some games that provide a VLQ/Minimum detail setting we may still run at low-quality if performance is acceptable. Medium quality sets everything to a middle value where possible. Here are the results.
| GPU Performance Comparison | |||
| Game | X1250 vs. GMA X3100 |
HD2300 vs. GMA X3100 |
HD2300 vs. X1250 |
| Battlefield 2 LQ | -10.25% | 200.33% | 238.19% |
| Battlefield 2 MQ | 3.01% | 161.00% | 155.28% |
| Bioshock | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Company of Heroes LQ | 15.01% | 146.80% | 113.97% |
| Far Cry LQ | 55.97% | 245.60% | 124.73% |
| Far Cry MQ | 62.78% | 270.93% | 128.66% |
| FEAR LQ | 29.70% | 108.74% | 60.88% |
| HL2: Episode One LQ | 52.33% | 234.92% | 119.75% |
| HL2: Episode One MQ | 31.16% | 115.90% | 64.72% |
| HL2: Lost Coast LQ | 50.58% | 219.22% | 111.81% |
| HL2: Lost Coast MQ | 26.96% | 160.30% | 104.86% |
| Quake 4 VLQ | 9.74% | 269.64% | 235.14% |
| Quake 4 MQ | -25.38% | 188.24% | 286.27% |
| Oblivion LQ | N/A | N/A | 136.37% |
| STALKER LQ | 8.41% | 180.88% | 158.89% |
| Supreme Commander LQ | -11.64% | 46.73% | 66.04% |
| . | |||
| Average Performance Change (LQ) | 22.21% | 183.65% | 136.60% |
| Average Performance Change (MQ) | 19.71% | 179.27% | 147.96% |
| Average Performance Change (Total) | 21.31% | 182.09% | 140.37% |
Starting with the IGP comparison, we find that AMD does indeed continue to place ahead of Intel in overall performance. Somewhat interesting to note, however, is that Intel does manage to run a couple of games faster. Supreme Commander is extremely CPU intensive, which may help to explain that particular result, but most of the remaining games should be pretty much GPU bottlenecked. Battlefield 2 was at one point completely unable to run on the GMA X3100, as were many of the other games. Over the past several months, Intel has continued to improve the drivers and we're now at the point where nearly all of the games ran without issue. Battlefield 2 at medium quality still had some graphical artifacts, so that result should be disqualified, but performance at medium quality is too slow regardless.
Given the improvements we've seen with updated drivers, we would actually go so far as to say that Intel could probably be equal to or slightly faster than the X1250 with the GMA X3100 if they could only optimize their drivers further. That may be surprising to hear, but in reality the Intel GPU has as many pipelines as the Radeon X1250, and current results in Battlefield 2, 3DMark, and a few other titles indicate that there's still untapped potential. Performance under Windows XP tends to be even better, as those drivers are more fully developed. (We will include results from a laptop running Windows XP using the GMA X3100 in a forthcoming article.) As it stands, however, AMD still has about a 20% performance advantage in the IGP sector. That really isn't much, especially considering the relatively low frame rates we're already talking about.
The 20% performance lead looks even less impressive in light of the performance of the Radeon Mobility HD 2300. Frankly, the HD 2300 still isn't particularly fast, and most games need to be run at medium or low detail levels in order to achieve acceptable frame rates at resolutions up to 1280x800. However, while the performance of the HD 2300 might pale in comparison to faster desktop offerings, it generally turns in performance figures that are two or three times faster than either of the IGPs we're looking at today. It also offers complete SM3.0 support along with DirectX 10 capability, though not surprisingly the DX10 support is more of a feature checklist item than anything truly useful right now - of the few DX10 enabled games currently available, most cause pretty severe performance drops even on top-end hardware like the GeForce 8800 and Radeon HD 2900.
Our conclusion as usual is that for $80 more, anyone that actually intends to play any 3D games on a laptop should at least invest in an entry level discrete GPU. Even better would be a midrange HD 2600 or GeForce 8600M/8700M, though those tend to be found in laptops that cost closer to $1500 (barring sales and other special offers - as usual, shop around). You can look at the detailed performance charts to see exactly how slow the IGP solutions run, but there are several titles that are completely unplayable even at minimum detail settings. There are also games like Bioshock and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter that require SM3.0 and are incapable of running properly on either of these two IGPs. (We did try the SM2.0 hack to get Bioshock to run, but the results weren't pretty to say the least.)
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zsdersw - Monday, October 8, 2007 - link
I'm not going to call you anything, nor am I interested in doing so. I just find it curious that the only thing you think is important just happens to be the one bright spot for AMD in the article. That's all. Read into it what you want.yyrkoon - Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - link
It would be important, because unlike all the Core2 vs AMD Fanfare, it has not been covered 5 million times already.
zsdersw - Thursday, October 11, 2007 - link
The number of times something is covered or reported has no relevance to how important it is or is not. Just because you don't want to hear the same thing "5 million times" doesn't make something else you want to hear more important.JumpingJack - Thursday, October 11, 2007 - link
You are losing this argument.JumpingJack - Sunday, October 7, 2007 - link
That tends to be the ticket, and, oh yeah, don't forget -- performance doesn't really matter, it is how it feels and the user experience.... :) It cracks me up.JarredWalton - Sunday, October 7, 2007 - link
I'm not sure what the complaint is - that I actually talked about all aspects of the platform (well, not *all*, but most), or that I wrote an article that shows that AMD's CPUs on notebooks are still slow, but their IGP tends to be better. Quite a few people have complained to Gary/Anand that we haven't looked at Intel IGP performance with X3100 (G965), so this article addresses that to a large extent. The result is a LOT better now than it was three months back, incidentally - when I first looked at an X3100 laptop, it couldn't run the vast majority of games (at least under Vista).For what it's worth, X3100 on XP may diminish AMD's "bright spot" even further. But of course, any discrete mobile GPU is still an order of magnitude faster. Results so far with X3100 XP drivers have it besting AMD's X1250 in most games. It even manages to run Bioshock (which requires SM3.0) - sure, it's only moderately playable at 800x600 minimum detail settings, but it runs. Now if Intel can just get the Vista drivers up to that level.... We're also waiting for some IGP updates, as X1250 isn't really all that new anymore.
yyrkoon - Sunday, October 7, 2007 - link
That was not a complaint Jarred, that was a suggestion, and one that was not meant as a personal attack on you. I know I am not the only one getting bored of reading the same old things time, and time again.Now, as far as the how-to suggestion, you guys are of coure going to do whatever you think you need to do. However, I find it kind of strange, that anandtech would give all kinds of details as to how you did things, without actually saying anything that leaves your readers feeling like they have learned something. I can honestly say that I haave never learned a thing here, other than when something new came out, and how it performed, etc. For instance, if I only read your site for various things, such as overclocking, I would not have the first idea of how to go about doing so myself. To me that is sort of like saying; 'look what we can do that you cannot'. Now, my main point with this example would be that not everyone out there feels comfortable reading through forum posts on various web sites for insight on how to do these certain things, and would rather look to you, the anandtech technical writters for guidance on these matters. Is that really too much for your readers, and in this case me, to ask of you ? Give us DETAILS !
There are plenty of things I like about your web articles, but as far as actually learning anything technical . . . this has not happend for me here in quite some time, if ever.
And once again please fix your comment section timeout error . . . gets really annoying.
JarredWalton - Sunday, October 7, 2007 - link
I should also point out, if you weren't aware, that most of us focus on specific areas. Right now, I'm primarily looking at laptops and displays, with an occasional buyer's guide or system review. SAS might interest some of you, but that's not even remotely interesting to me and hence it's not in my area of expertise. SATA port multipliers also don't concern me, as I rarely use more than two HDDs in a system. Personally, I think a look at how the mobile platforms from AMD and Intel compare to each other is going to be far more interesting to a larger audience than a look at something like SAN, SAS, or what have you - not that someone from AT might not cover the other areas, but I can pretty much guarantee it won't be me.Overclocking is something we've also covered in the past, and pretty much every motherboard article provides a reasonable amount of information on the subject. given that OC'ing is pretty BIOS/platform specific, it belongs there more than in a separate article. I think there will be some additional information on the topic in some upcoming reviews, but I don't know that anyone is planning on a separate "How To" article. (We haven't done many of those.)
--Jarred
yyrkoon - Sunday, October 7, 2007 - link
Also, I think it would be good, if while covering different products, that it would be good if anandtech would list the pro's and con's of each aspect of a subject. If anyone is like myself, 'we' do not bothing reading most of he article, because it is either boring, obvious, or is just otherwise not nessisary to read. This last aspect has nothing really to do with anandtechs ability to write an exiciting article(except perhaps that I personally find some to be long, and drawn out), and has more to do with the different aspects of the subjects mentioned.ltcommanderdata - Saturday, October 6, 2007 - link
Well, I guess as you point out the Vista drivers for the GMA X3100 are still immature. I'm not even sure the 15.6/15.6.1 Vista drivers even enable hardware DX9.0c support like the XP drivers does since the Vista release notes have never mentioned it being added. Anyways, I'm definitely looking forward to those XP results with the GMA X3100. I hope you will use the 14.31.1 drivers since it fixed the hardware/software acceleration toggle problem with the 14.31 drivers.