Medium quality sets everything to a middle value where possible. 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. 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. Rather than starting with tons of graphs, we thought it would be easiest to just use a table to summarize the performance differences. 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).
![gma 950 vs gma x4500 gma 950 vs gma x4500](https://images.hyperinzerce.cz/inzeraty/35084897697149121127/thumbnail/15366474-pocitac-intel-gma-3100-core-2-duo-e4600-2-4ghz-007.jpg)
The discrete graphics chip adds about $80 to the price of the laptop, which isn't too bad provided the performance increase is substantial. 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. 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 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? 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). 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. 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.
GMA 950 VS GMA X4500 DRIVERS
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. The X1250 also includes some additional functionality related to video processing, although we won't be testing that area of performance in this article.įor the Intel camp, the GM965 Northbridge includes the GMA X3100 graphics processor. 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. All of the vertex shader pipelines have also been removed, letting the CPU handle that part of the graphics equation.
![gma 950 vs gma x4500 gma 950 vs gma x4500](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/g9Phh_3fLhs/maxresdefault.jpg)
First, half the pipelines have been removed (which actually makes the hardware more like an X300/X600), so it comes with four pixel pipelines. The Radeon X1250 is based off of the Radeon X700 hardware, with a few changes. 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.
![gma 950 vs gma x4500 gma 950 vs gma x4500](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/1AOygjsKbh4/maxresdefault.jpg)
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.