GMA 900 gets no respect!

I would just like to say that I like the GMA 900 I think that its amazing that you can get it in a sub $500 notebook and it will play GTA 3, Vicecity, Hotroad Garage to Glory and many more graphical titles well. I listed those games because those are the ones on my acer for the moment. with the GMA 900 I can play both GTAs at the native 1440x900 with no problems Iam really inpressed with this card. I just feel so bad when people knock it as it is a really good card. I remember back in the old days around 1999-01 somewhere around theres all I ever had in my desktop Pcs was trident or sis chipsets for the graphics cards and they all stunk they couldn't even run quake 3 or nothing for that mater you couldn't play any game at 640x480 without it lagging terribly when I got a voodoo 1 card it was like heaven compaired to those. so I ask to everyone give the intel GMA 900/950 some respect as intel could have done much worse with it, yet I think they did a great job for a entry level card.

 

If you arent going to do anything graphics intensive, yes, GMA9x0 is just fine, as is any other integrated graphics solution. It is just fine for most, if not all, basic home uses, which is why most computers have GMA/integrated gfx as standard.
However, if you ahve tried to run anything recent on the GMA on even moderately high settings, you should know that it wont run. I was using a desktop version of teh GMA900 and it would barely run Need For Speed Most Wanted on lowest settings, and only some game modes, nothing with pursuits, which eliminated the point of the game. My PCI Radeon 9250 can run it on moderately high settings, with no lag unless there are a lot of police cars around me. GMA cannot handle much in the way of games. Which is why ppl complain about it.
For an entry level card, yes, its fine, but the nVidia integrated GeForce 6150 and the ATI Radeon X200M and X1150M are all much better.

 

GMA900 is integrated into my mainboard along with the MXM ATi x700 128MB. It uses little energy, it is way cooler and runs fine for the most of the time. I even play some games on it. Not FEAR and Oblivion of course! It uses 128MB ram on my system and I have 2GB - so I don't care. Not bad, but not enough either. I guess other integrated solutions show better performance.

Cheers,

Ivan

 

You are right. Back in the day, Integrated cards were so bad they couldn't even play old games when they were released!!

At least now we have the option of playing SOME games with the GMA900.....or the radeon 945/x200 etc.

Hes right, it could be worse - at least the gma900 can play things like Quake III and Call of Duty perfectly, its better then what integrated cards used to be able to do.

I will never forget - back in 1999, me and my friend both bought PCs at the same time:

What I got - 32mb TNT2, 400mhz
What he got - 4mb SiS integrated, 400mhz

He could not even run the original Half Life on anything but low settings on software mode while I was able to run it maxed out on OpenGL. So yes, integrated cards are much better today to their equivilents back in the day....

We should just count ourselves lucky that we can play anything with them to be honest! you get what you pay for, no point moaning about the gma900 when you've only paid a small amount for a laptop equiped with one...

 

Yes those were the days. TNT2 32MB - the beast! I overclocked the poor thing and it gave me like 15% better results.

And today sometimes I play Condition Zero in lanparty at 1680x1050 at superfast speeds on GMA900. Actually I prefer it to Ati x700 because the laptop is much cooler.

Cheers,

Ivan

 

The GMA 900 is what it is supposed to be, and maybe a li'l more. Of course you can't expect it to play OBLIVION or play FEAR satisfactorily. Of course the GeForrce 6150 and Radeon1150 IGP are better. I have seent eh performance of RadeonXPress200M too, and I totally disagree with everybody who says it's better than GMA900. Now, for the people who complain a lot..Didn't you kinda expect this when you bought a budget/cheap notebook or built a budget PC? So why are you so let down, trust me my Noteook with Celron M 370, 768 MB DDR2 RAM, 40G 4200 RPM!! HD and GMA 900 lets me play DOOM III at medium settings quite satisfactorily, with a few jerks in combat intensive scenes. albeit, it does so at 640*480..go any higher up and the performance will be severely hit. It even plays Half Life II, and better than it plays DOOM III. titles like OBLIVION give sub 30FPS performance on 7900GTX systems with everything turned on. So..you decide..would rather spend $3000 upwards to play all games and still not get the maximum or have a PC/Notebook which can play some of your favourite games lower settings, keep your PC/Notebook cool and longer battery life(for notebooks). Think? And please stop complaining. When have Intel said that the GMA 900/950 are to compete with discrete GPUs? I find the performance of GMA900 better than a GeForceMX4000 on my Desktop though, in DOOM III i.e.

If you really want to game, get an XBox360 or better spend atleast 3500 bucks on a high end system. With SLId or Crossfired GPUS or 7950GX2 and get a 30' HDTV to enjoy all your games

And, the last time....stop complaining...cheers.

 

Yes, the GMA 900 reputation unfortunately precedes it, and in all cases it is not warranted. I remember when I got myself an Acer 3613WLMI, which I only bought to do Uni work on. It had a GMA 900 and from all the moaning people do about it, I didn't even bother to load any games onto it. One day I decided to have a go on Quake 3 and Jedi Knight 2, and to my suprise actually played the games at 1024x768 and about medium detail. I was expecting it not even to load the **** game from what I'd read about them.

I hate it when people say "oh this is a rubbish card, I can't play games on it at all, this laptop was a waste of money bla bla bla...". If I was a more ruthless person I'd suggest people actually read up on the laptop and its capabilities before buying one instead of just moaning about it afterwards.

The GMA 900 was never meant to play latest games, its an integrated solution that is primarily meant for 2d applications. However for the occasional blast on a Q3 powered game, or The Sims its quite sufficient. If you want to play FEAR or Quake 4, then be prepared to splash the cash.

 

You don't need to spend $3500+ to play all the recent games at all.|
EX:

DELL XPS
Intel ® Core™2 Duo Processor E6600 (2.4GHz, 1066 FSB)
Genuine Windows® XP Media Center 2005 Edition with re-installation CD
4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz - 4 DIMMs
500GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™
Dual Drives: 48x Combo + 16x DVD+/-RW w/ dbl layer write capable
19 inch E196FP Analog Flat Panel
1GB NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 Dual-GPU Graphics Card
Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio

$2400

And that was after generous options...cheaper ones exist!

 

TNT2 forever!

 

The problem is not that the GMA 900 is so worse (though it's the worst card on the market), the problem is that the people don't know what GMA 900 is supposed to be, and they usually see advertisement such as

оr the people see the GMA 900 demonstration on the Intel's site which claims that the GMA 900 is powerful enough for whatever you do (even the lastest video games)

or some of the advertisements which promise "a new level of 3D performance"

that's the real problem or so-called "marketing".

Of course, when the average person buy a GMA 900 expecting to play the lastest games and when get home and see the truth the GMA 900 turns into to kinda trash.

Most people still don't know that there's no such animal as a free lunch...

 

Could you please post a link to that particular page on the website of Intel? I couldn't find the claim you are referring to. Thanks in advance.

 

http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/gma900/index.htm

 

Shoot...Intel claims (at least I think they do) that the GMA9x0 can run Doom 3...hah! (They did downgrade it from Green to Yellow recently it appears).

Neverwinter Nights...BARELY...certainly not with any eye-candy or high res. I had a lot of issues with things showing up the way they were supposed to.

I had some issues with FarCry as well...low FPS (and Intel claims it would be fine)...run with really low res and you might be fine.

Halo 2...again, no high res or detail.

I don't really trust the Intel Game Compatibility Guide, but I would say that is the best you'll even get. In reality you'll probably get less.

 

Well, I've seen Doom 3 running on the Gma 900 but it seems rather a slideshow from time to time than a 3D Action...

this is the right Game Compatibility List
http://support.intel.com/support/graphics/intel915gm/sb/CS-020153.htm

and a "nice" Intel's article called "Five Myths of Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900"
http://www.intel.com/cd/ids/developer/asmo-na/eng/popular/201974.htm?page=1

 

Hmmm...looks like Intel has TWO guides for the GMA. One is on the support page (Dreamer posted) and one from the general info page (my post). Intel GPU department at it's best again. I'd say look at em both...take the worst of the two (on per game basis), and that is the absolute best you'll get.

Thanks Dreamer for the link

And those 5 Myths are really funny...

"Myth #1: The Real 3D Games Cannot Run on the Intel 915G Express Chipset"...Can't run X3, Oblivion, half the games on their compatibility guide...Myth Confirmed

"Myth #2: Intel Has a Small Segment of the Graphics Market"...Myth Busted (unfortunately)

"Myth #3: HLSL* Is Not Supported in Intel GMA 900 Graphics"...if it had true HLSL I'm sure this card could run Aero...Shader 2.0 my butt...Myth Confimed (I think)

"Myth #4: Software TnL Makes Intel GMA 900 Graphics Too Slow"...Myth Confirmed...X3, Oblivion, Far Cry (at decent res), NFS: MW, NWN

"Myth #5: Intel Graphics Drivers are Highly Problematic"...Myth Plausible...Given how the rest of the GMA900 is worse than marketed I'd bet their drivers are still poor too.

 

The chipsets are different
- Intel® 82915G/82910GL Express Chipset Family
- Mobile Intel® 915GM/GMS, 910GML Express Chipset Family

 

How often do you see websites moaning about cheap Nissan cars that won't reach Ferrari speeds?

Okay their marketing could be better but the GMA series is actually quite good for an intel integrated offering, a 10x improvement on the Intel Extreme range of a few years ago and aimed, in 99.5% of cases, towards business or casual users who don't play games. Plus even on their own website Intel clearly state the GMA is not suitable for games released after early 2004 - which is 100% true and accurate.

Sorry for all those who moan about the GMA900 not playing games, but given that you probably form about 1% tops of GMA900 users, who are mostly happy because they are rewarded with cheaper prices, I don't think Intel are overly worried, nor will they loose any business over it.

Basically: Stop whining. Either get a proper laptop or shut up.

I just hate people who love to have a good old fashioned moan about the GMA for no particular reason apart from that it can't run games. Why don't we start threads about how Atis X200 and Nvidias 6150 can't run Oblivion at high settings and so they must be useless, right? At least the low end X200 and 6150 etc were designed for casual gaming. The GMA clearly isn't and never was. It was just an added bonus. Be gooddamn grateful it can play anything at all! 5 years ago an integrated laptop would mean Intel Extreme, which in term meant you could barely even play the likes of Quake II.

END THE WHINING PLEASE!!!

 

Yeah but you read the box on any graphics card and it tells you how "The Nvidia 5600 FX will give you blistering performance in shader model 2 games!". Course those who do their homework will be able to laugh and look for something else, whilst the whereas Joe Public will fall hook line and sinker, then spend a few days registering on online fourms asking "why my new card which the salesman said was super awesome won't play FEAR at 1600x1200". And I have little sympathy for people like that, as if you are going to spend money on components, a PC or laptop, do your research first.

Course, I have no love either for the companies either, though my gripe with graphics card manufacturers is the ridiculous amount of cards they put out these days. At the moment Nvidia has about 20cards in their 7 series, which is just stupid. Remember the good old days of GF4, when you had 3 models in the Ti range, and 3 models in the MX range. Simplicity for everyone. Now with increasinly bizarre model numbering systems, who knows where they are! GS,GT,LE,SE,GTX,GTS,GX2...What on earth does that mean to Joe Public !

(PS, everything in this little rant applies to ATI as well, it just so happens that I'm looking at the list of Nvidia cards right now so that's where I'm getting my inspiration, though ATI is just as guilty)

 

I don't think GMA900 or 950 is bad; in fact, they are "perfect" for what they were designed to do, office work on the fly. Since when are laptops gaming consoles? They have always been used for business-related tasks.

 

The 200M is available in many flavors from what I have seen. The two that I have run NFS Most Wanted at medium settings with *some* eye candy on, although the 128MB dedicated version does slightly outperform the 128MB shared one (and both run Vista's Aero).

 

You know, a guy named Willy Higinbotham made a game for an oscilloscope in 1958. Ever since people had nifty electronics, they've strived to do nifty things with them. "business" is an also-ran. It's something that picked up on the power of computers AFTER the geeks realized it. Games drive the development of newer, more powerful computers, and then business cases (like doing fluid-dynamics modeling on the GPU) come afterwards.

In short, you're a twit. Laptops (more properly, notebook computers) are perfect for gaming. They're for getting things done while traveling, whether those things are business or entertainment.

 

I've had the GMA900 for a year now and I'm kind of disappointed. Most games do work but are not actually fun to play on such low resolution/quality. Overall it's worse than my previous radeon 7500.

 

what annoys me is not that the gma900 exists, its that its sooo friggin hard to find a less expensive laptop without it. Pretty much the only reason why I ended up with dell is that they were one of the very few that lets you put a x1400 in a otherwise stripped down budget laptop. I see even laptops that cost 2000+ that arent even superlights with the gma900.

Even worse is that the vid card always seems to be the most obscure spec on a laptop from any major manufactuer.

 

thank you for taking that so seriosuly and trying to prove me wrong. But i merely said that in case you want to all all the best hardware out there and play everything at Max. And as to your 'Dell reseller' type quote...i had mentioned a 30 inch HDTV not a 19inch flat panel, and E6600 is not the best CPU avaliable..theres E6700, E6800 and of course the Extreme Edition too. And the on-board audio won't do justice some game titles, EAX support etc. So that should be a Creative X-Fi or probably Audigy ZS Platinum. And oops, i forgot a good 5.1 speaker system Logitech Z series probably I hope I've made my point.

No combination of hardware can still play Oblivion Ultra Smoohtly with all settings maxed.

By the way, you might wanna go check that Dell system config again on the Dell site. You seem to have made a mistake somewhere. I did a config; same specs as you mentioned and without the 30 inch monitor mind you. It came to $4329.

 

That's pretty much my issue. I don't want a friggin Dual core mega mega ghz machine. I just want something 1.6-2.0, a basic non-intel video card, and a gig of ram. I'm HOPING vista coming out will just kill off the low-end intel as even being offered and they'll roll out some decent low-end option. At least for AMD machines they start out with the 6150, but of course that means you can't get dell.

 

well I started this thread and after using this computer for a few months I can say that the GMA does some games better then my desktop ti4200 and benchmarking both systems in 3dmark O3 are very similar to each other, but I have found the gma to not run some games like IL2 Stumroki (forgot how you spell it) wont run at all when I try to run it the game screen comes up upside down on my screen, no joke and it has done this with other games, but other then that it has performed flawlessly with the light gaming Ive been doing.

 

*Light* gaming is fine on a GMA...but don't expect much.

A lot of those failures are because Intel relies on software to emulate certain features that really should be hardware based.

Example1: GMA is apparently DX7 hardware...uses software to support DX9.
Example2: GMA doesn't have hardware T&L...uses software to do so...this is the #1 cause of things crashing on my old M140.
BTW: The GMA is made by Intel...with Intel drivers...and Intel is a hardware company that makes mostly processors and motherboards for the most part. . I don't even think those require very powerful drivers...

 

Devon plz dont say things like:" GMA does some games better then my desktop ti4200 and benchmarking both systems in 3dmark O3 are very similar to each other" - thats BS! Geforce 4Ti walks over GMA. I had 4ti and it still plays games at 800x600 with no lag, also Radeon x1400 performes same as 4ti and they r both dedicated. So you telling us that some crappy GMA will outperform x1400? you are one of those people who spam forum with things like: I played Doom3 on my TNT Riva 128 with everything turned on at 1600x1200.

 

One thing, the Ti4200 did not have Shader Model 2 hardware support, whereas the GMA does. So the fact the Ti4200 can keep up even when it is relying on the CPU to do some work for is a testament to either;
a) how good the Ti4200 was
or
b) how not very good the GMA is

GF4Ti has quite a bit of grunt behind it. If you set them both on Dx8 games the Ti4200 will whizz all over the GMA 900.

 

dude thats kinda rude no iam not a spammer and I know the ti4200 is better, I was just saying my 03 scores were very similar probably because the desktop has a slower 1.7 athlon xp and only 256mb ram. I also said the gma has difficulty playing some of my games, but in certain games like GTA vice city the GMA seems to run a little smother then the 4200 this is in no way bs and what I have observed with both systems so you need to chill out.

 

well than. Amd Athlon 1700Xp is certainly slower then Celeron M + DDR2 ram Yea but you didnt say so. As Sionyboy said: 4ti isnt optimized for SM2 unlike GMA (as well as dx9) thats why u get close results in 3dmark03.

 

its cool man thanks for understanding, I really want to upgrade soon, I can't stand having slow computers any longer, I plan to get a original XPS, 9200, 9300, M170 if I can afford it, as for the geforce 4 its a MSI i got it for 35 bucks buy it now on ebay with free shipping! I had to buy something as my Geforce 2 Ultra finally failed after 2yrs use. I liked that card alot.

 

As a general note: most dedicated will beat integrated in real life. Drivers CAN be complied to give a boost to benchmark scores...it has been done before. The only exception to the performance rule is when the dedicated is REALLY old and the integrated is relatively new. Either way, both cards are okay for light gaming but nothing more.

Okay...first of all the GMA 900 only had shader model 1.x support. The 950 has 2.0. But they both lack hardware T&L...which will hurt BOTH cards in games that use it. Some even crash. The Ti4200 might have been *the* card back in the day...just like the GMA is the most popular integrated card (for cost reasons mind you) today.

You all need to chill out. Flame wars aside, the GMA does have it purposes in life...keep that in mind. Threads like this can, and sometimes do, result in a TON of negative posts and reports that reach the moderators.

Just keep it civil...please.

The GMA doesn't get much respect FROM GAMERS...but to others it is perfectly fine. Why don't we water this down from a flame war to a useful thread that lists what the GMA 9x0 is known to be able to do and what it can't do. I know I didn't have that info when I purchased my M140 (630m)...a lot of people might appreciate info like that.

 

The GMA 900 has Pixel Shader 2 support. Though it does lack hardware TnL, so therefore vertex shader operations are done through software which leads to quite poor performance.

The GMA 950 can do Vertex Shader up to version 3, although its pixel pipes are only meant for SM 2 hardware support so that kind of nullifies it

 

I think PS2 is through software. I forget the link, but an online website that tested whether or not your graphics card could run a particular game it listed the 900 as PS/VS 1.x HARDWARE (I think it was 1.4, but its been a while). Software is a different thing I'll admit.

If the 900 was SM2 hardware then Aero would run on it. Aero requires a minimum of hardware SM2.0.

Anyway, hardware T&L will be introduced into intel integrated starting with the X3000 next year...it might actually be a promising GPU so we'll see.

Anyway: games that do work on a 900:
1) GTA: VC
2) NWN, with semi-decent settings
3) FarCry, with several patches and LOW LOW settings...but still enjoyable.
4) Halo at LOW settings but still enjoyable.

Games that don't:
1) Doom 3...unless there is a SlideShow mode!
2) X3...it requires hardware T&L so it'll crash.
3) Oblivion...crashes for some reason...most likely lack of hardware features or incompatibility with software emulation. Supposedly there is a mod that will help with this, and it claims to allow low setting playable Oblivion games...but I could not get that to work so take it with a grain of salt.

 

GMA 900 specs

T/L support: Software based (no Hardware T&L Support)
Clock speed: 333 MHz
Pixel Pipelines: 4
Pixel Fillrate: 1333 MPixel/s
Vertex Shaders: 1 (v2.0) (software)
Pixel Shaders: 4 (v2.0) (hardware)
OpenGL: Yes. v.1.4
DirectX (hardware): Yes. v.9.0
RAMDAC clock : 400 MHz

GMA950 Specs

T/L support: Software based (no Hardware T&L Support)
Clock speed: 400 MHz
Pixel Pipelines: 4
Vertex Shaders: 1 (v3.0)* (software)
Pixel Shaders: 4 (v2.0) (hardware)
Pixel Fillrate: 1600 MPixel/s
OpenGL: Yes. v.1.4 with enhanced lighting
DirectX (hardware): Yes. v.9.0


The reason that GMA 900 is not running Aero is becuase Intel are not releasing WVDDM drivers to support it under Vista. Initially Intel claimed they would be releasing drivers to support it, but now they say only the GMA 950 and up will get WVDDM drivers for Vista. It's all caused quite a bit of grievance over at Intel's official forums.
From a technical standpoint there is no reason why GMA 900 cannot run Glass Aero, it can only be put down to Intel's engineers feeling lazy, or Intel trying to encourage people to upgrade their laptops for Vista.

 

Me thinks I'm getting confused on the types of shaders...anyway, I thought there was more to it than the WDDM drivers holding 900 back. Regardless though, I'm not too worried about Aero as it stands today.

What is the hardware level for the vertex shaders on the 950 I wonder? I'm going to guess 2.0.

 

Try going to this webpage to get hardware/software info on the GMA. Just pick a game, any game, but pull up the recommended tab to get more info.

Here's a posting of what my X1600 will do...and the webpage lists all the shader version info as well. Can someone post what the GMA900 or 950 does?

 

For Vista, I think Intel also felt that because VS and T&L are emulated by CPU and systems with the GMA 900 are all single core, Aero would chew up too many cycles of CPU time. The GMA 900 is slow enough, but the rest of the system it's built around are also holding it up so they didn't want to invest time trying to create and optimize drivers that still wouldn't lead anywhere.

In the case of Celeron Ms, I believe GMA 900 platforms used 400MHz FSB Dothan based ones while GMA 950 platform uses 533MHz Yonah based (with the improved SSE pipeline) Celeron Ms so that would explain single core low-ends.

As far as I know, the GMA 950 doesn't include any VS. It's all done by the CPU (ie 1 pipeline) and it's SM3.0 software. As mentioned before the hardware PS are all SM2.0.

 

All the vertex shading and TnL is done in software, however through software they can achieve

VS 2 on the GMA 900
VS 3 on the GMA 950

As Commander Data say, pixel shading is achieved through hardware up to PS2 level.

This is a very good site if you need to look up GPU specs and capbabilities. The author is a writer at Beyond3D and he used to work for Futuremark (3d mark developer) It's a trusted source.