µATX Part 1: ATI Radeon Xpress 1250 Performance Review

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• Sargo - Tuesday, August 28, 2007 - link

  Nice review but there's no X3100 on Intel G33. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA#GMA_3100">GMA 3100 is based on much older arhitechture. Thus even the new drivers won't help that much.

• ltcommanderdata - Tuesday, August 28, 2007 - link

  Exactly. The G33 was never intended to replace the G965 chipset, it replaces the 945G chipset and the GMA 950. The G33's IGP is not the GMA X3100 but the GMA 3100 (no "X") and the IGP is virtually identical to the GMA 950 but with higher clock speeds and better video support. The GMA 950, GMA 3000, and GMA 3100 all only have SM2.0 pixel shaders with no vertex shaders and no hardware T&L engine. The G965 and the GMA X3000 remains the top Intel IGP until the launch of the G35 and GMA X3500. I can't believe Anandtech made such an obvious mistake, but I have to admit Intel isn't helping matters with there ever expanding portfolio of IGPs.
  
  Here's Intel's nice PR chart explaining the different IGPs:
  
  http://download.intel.com/products/graphics/intel_...">http://download.intel.com/products/graphics/intel_...
  
  Could you please run a review with the G965 chipset and the GMA X3100 using XP and the latest 14.31 drivers? They are now out of beta and Intel claims full DX9.0c SM3.0 hardware acceleration. I would love to see the GMA X3000 compared with the common GMA 950 (also supported in the 14.31 drivers although it has no VS to activate), the Xpress X1250, the GeForce 6150 or 7050, and some low-end GPUs like the X1300 or HD 2400. A comparison between the 14.31 and previous 14.29 drivers that had no hardware support would also show how much things have increased.

• JarredWalton - Tuesday, August 28, 2007 - link

  I did look at gaming performance under Vista with a 965GM chipset in the http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=306...">PC Club ENP660 review. However, that was also tested under Vista. I would assume that with drivers working in all respects, GMA X3100 performance would probably come close to that of the Radeon Xpress 1250, but when will the drivers truly reach that point? In the end, IGP is still only sufficient for playing with all the details turned down at 1280x800 or lower resolutions, at least in recent titles. Often it can't even do that, and 800x600 might be required. Want to play games at all? Just spend the $120 on something like an 8600 GT.

• IntelUser2000 - Wednesday, August 29, 2007 - link

  quote:
  

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  I did look at gaming performance under Vista with a 965GM chipset in the PC Club ENP660 review. However, that was also tested under Vista. I would assume that with drivers working in all respects, GMA X3100 performance would probably come close to that of the Radeon Xpress 1250, but when will the drivers truly reach that point? In the end, IGP is still only sufficient for playing with all the details turned down at 1280x800 or lower resolutions, at least in recent titles. Often it can't even do that, and 800x600 might be required. Want to play games at all? Just spend the $120 on something like an 8600 GT.

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  It has the drivers at XP.

• JarredWalton - Wednesday, August 29, 2007 - link

  Unless the XP drivers are somehow 100% faster (or more) than the last Vista drivers I tried, it still doesn't matter. Minimum details in Battlefield 2 at 800x600 got around 20 FPS. It was sort of playable, but nothing to write home about. Half-Life 2 engine stuff is still totally messed up on the chipset; it runs DX9 mode, but it gets <10 FPS regardless of resolution.

• IntelUser2000 - Wednesday, August 29, 2007 - link

  I get 35-45 fps on the demo Single Player for the first 5 mins at 800x600 min. Didn't check more as its limited.
  
  E6600
  DG965WH
  14.31 production driver
  2x1GB DDR2-800
  WD360GD Raptor 36GB
  WinXP SP2

• IntelUser2000 - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link

  Jarred, PLEASE PROVIDE THE DETAILS OF THE BENCHMARK/SETTINGS/PATCHES used for BF2 so I can provide equal testing as you have done on the Pt.1 article.
  
  Like:
  -What version of BF2 used
  -What demos are supposed to be used
  -How do I load up the demos
  -etc

• R101 - Tuesday, August 28, 2007 - link

  Just for the fun of it, for us to see what can X3100 do with these new betas. I've been looking for that test since those drivers came out, and still nothing.
  
  

• erwos - Tuesday, August 28, 2007 - link

  I'm looking forward to seeing the benchmarks on the G35 motherboards (which I'm sure won't be in this series). The X3500 really does seem to have a promising feature set, at least on paper.

• Lonyo - Tuesday, August 28, 2007 - link

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  This is not to say any of the AMD and NVIDIA IGP solutions are that much better; they are in many ways, but without earnest competition from Intel these solutions do just enough to stay ahead of Intel. However, at least these solutions provide a much higher degree of compatibility and performance with most games, video playback, and applications. While running the latest games such as Bioshock or Supreme Commander will require a resolution of 800x600 with medium-low quality settings, at least a user has the chance to play the game until they can afford a better performing video solution.

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  the R4x0 series fits the bill with its lack of SM3.0 support and use of 24-bit floating point precision. The basic design for the X1250 is taken from the X700, with some modifications. While we would love to see Shader Model 3.0 support (which current Intel hardware claims to be capable of in XP with the latest drivers), developers writing DX9 apps will still be designing for the SM2.0 target which the X1250 meets.

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  Bioshock requires SM3.0.