Intel X3100 users rejoice! It's finally here! New Pre-Beta Drivers

Click here for latest intel X3100 driver
(Latest drivers as of Aug 22, 2010:
XP - 14.37.4.5218 (1/23/2010)
Vista - 15.12.4.1666 (3/5/2009)
Win7 - 15.12.75.4.1930 (10/2/2009)

Previously released drivers available here:
Archive of all Intel drivers released

*Please note that this thread title referred to the 14.31 XP Pre-Beta drivers which were released back in June 2007 and enabled hardware Vertex Shader support processing for the X3100. The latest XP driver includes this feature and many other improvements.

Also check out these blogs by users for tips for improving gamplay with the X3100:
x3100gaming.blogspot.com
intelx3100capable.blogspot.com
intelgaming.blogspot.com

 

Very cool; I'm planning to order a new tablet soon with the X3100 and I'll be waiting for the Vista version.

If anyone has an X3100-equipped laptop and is running XP, we'd love to hear what kind of performance improvements you get with these drivers.

 

Cool. Nice.

 

Chaz going bounty hunting...

 

surely there must be some one here with an x3100 and XP

 

I hope it does improve game performance quite a bit. I would try it myself, but I am afraid of messing something up since these are pre-beta drivers and not the final version.

If anyone can report if it is stable and improves performance in any way, especially in games such as Counter Strike Source, I too will try it myself.

 

Hmm. VS2.x so that brings it up to DirectX 9.0b support. I wonder if they've added vertex shaders, but forgot HW T&L, which would be kind of funny, but I guess support is kind of implied since DX9 is backwards compatible with DX7.

 

Sweet!

This would definitly answer many of my questions on wether I go with the X3100 or the 8400m gs on my dv2500T.


Who ever can test this out, PLEASE TELL US ABOUT IT!!!!



cheers!

 

Does this support a full list of hardware support, or is there still some of it done via software because its a beta?

 

its pre-beta so expect it to be buggy and not exactly complete

 

Anyone got some FRAPS for me?

 

I can't say personally as I'm running Vista, but here is what others got on other forums:

 

Awesome, the hardware-enabling drivers definitely made a difference. At this rate we X3100 owners should be able to play some games just fine, and with much better performance than the GMA950.

Do you have a link to this info?

 

I can't Wait for the Vista one ! , X3100 really impressed me (Runs both Sims 2 and Guild wars on high settings ) , And the Drivers will make it even better ! =D

 

Ahh, the X3100/3000 finally flexing some of its shader power. Good stuff. I'm just a little disappointed it's taking Intel sooooo long to expose the functionality in the hardware. I mean they'd probably kill off another 10% of ATI/nvidia's market share in the graphics market with a fully functional IGP.

 

Well considering the market share standings are 38.7% Intel, 28.5% nVidia, and 21.9% ATI in Q1 2007 with Intel not even supporting HW T&L, I can only imagine what a decent IGP would do. Especially, if the upcoming G35 actually turns out to be the first IGP with DX10 support and can perform comparable to nVidia's soon to be launched 8400, which may not be that hard.

Intel releasing these pre-Beta drivers now is probably timed to rub salt in AMD's wounds, after Intel appears to be walking all over AMD at Computex. With Intel freely allowing anyone to play with 3.33GHz/1333MHz FSB desktop and 3.2GHz/1600MHz FSB server Penryns while AMD's partners seem to be up at arms over Barcelona's progress.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=40221

 

Well, I'd imagine most users are only using their computers for web/email/word processing so there's no need for a hardware T&L engine anyways. I'm thinking some light gamers who would otherwise go for a X200 or Go 6150 integrated solution would not longer have any qualms about going for a X3100-based system. People who are looking for dedicated graphics are still probably going to go for dedicated graphics.

 

The driver says its only for Windows XP and not for Vista.

 

yep scroll down here
http://forums.vr-zone.com/showthread.php?t=129343&page=13

read the OP

 

interesting forum, some one there reported a score of over 1200 on 3dmark05! thats similar to the x600 of 2005.

http://forums.vr-zone.com/showthread.php?t=129343&page=13

 

If that score is true, and performance is around the X600...then integrated graphics finally surpassed the power of my first laptop's dedicated graphics processor. Wow!

 

And it would put the X3100 just behind the Go 7200 in performance, which means it eats my x200m for breakfast. Not too shabby.

 

Oh. I didn't notice that last part. Well, I hope the Vista version comes out soon.

 

Awesome!

That will just make my dv2500T an even better bang for my buck

rofl, and I thought I was going down in gpu power by passing from go6150 to x3100.

this is great news!

Keep the info coming

 

sweet, anyone know when the vista drivers will be released?

 

Hoping this is the right forum...

For a while now, I've been running a D610 that's just about died on me...in looking for a new notebook, I've been tempted to pick up something with a dedicated video solution, but the decreased battery life and increased cost aren't too appealing. I would probably be classified as a light gamer, however, as I only play an occasional game, and am not that interested in the newest FPSs like F.E.A.R., etc. I hadn't heard of the improved X3100 integrated graphics, as I was under the impression I would have to either get a dedicated solution or deal with GMA 950 hell. Does the X3100 sound like it works nicely for me? Would I see considerable gaming increases over my old Pentium M D610? Thanks for the help...

 

You do know that vertex shader does all the transform & lighting operations right?? You can not have one without the other. Vertex Shader is just a more flexible, programmable version of the original hardware T&L on the Geforce256 and such. Hardware T&L enabled cards are called hardware T&L enabled because things like calculating coordinates and allowing movements to occur is done on the GPU rather than the CPU. However, Intel's graphics up to GMA 950 was not as it did not have support for hardware vertex shader. Since the pre-beta drivers enable hardware vertex shader, it means it automatically has hardware T&L.

 

Not necessarily. There have been GPUs, such as the R200 series, that implement an entire independent non-programmable DX7 hardware T&L unit in addition to Vertex Shaders. So they are not always one and the same. It's just that now Vertex Shaders are so fast that they can easily run DX7 defined hardware T&L instructions as VS programs.

While it appears to be true that the GMA X3000 doesn't have an independent hardware T&L unit, I wouldn't automatically assume that the Beta drivers are doing hardware T&L just because they have hardware VS2.x enabled. Intel would have had to write a VS program for each DX7 T&L instruction and have included that in the driver. They may not done that because they may have determined that emulating DX7 T&L instructions on modern CPUs is fast enough already. Which is likely true with dual core CPUs, especially if all the more complicated VS programs are done by the IGP leaving only the simpler DX7 T&L programs for the CPU. Or they may have just not had time to program or validate DX7 T&L VS programs yet since the priority is probably on more modern VS games.

 

hmm looks like intel finally beat my gpu........
how does it perfor on the games??
like fear, doom 3 and stuff. benchmark is not really great...

 

The X3100 will be a big jump over your the GMA 950, especially when Intel exposes all the functionality available in the hardware. For gaming, I still wouldn't really recommend it, since aside from performance, there are also rendering issues with some games, stemming from drivers which were never optimized for games.

For the occasional game, the X3100 will do fine, but be wary that some games may not be compatible. Intel has a list of the issues with certain games.

 

It'll be interesting to see how serious Intel really is with their new IGPs, depending on how well their drivers are written for newer games. They have been hiring a bunch of people for their graphics division so hopefully they are being put to work. Intel's graphics driver updates have been pretty good lately, in the sense that they are frequent (every month or two now), which is faster than nVidia's XP drivers anyways, but we'll still need to see the quality improve. Putting aside image quality, in terms of outright compatibility, I believe many of those issues were simply whether games checked for and required hardware T&L and VS support or whether they ran too slowly under software emulation. Hopefully, with everything in hardware, compatibility issues will be a thing of the past.

 

hey guys, i tried installing this driver on my computer and i have no idea why its not working, seeing as you guys got it working, mebbe you know what im doing wrong...

i bring this problem to you visually, so theres no confusion... heres my problem:

so i have this system....


and i go get the appropriate driver here....


and when i try to install it, it tells me this....



and so now im like, wth? im fairly sure im doing things rite...

...but im sure you guys can point out what im doing wrong, so im not too worried.

btw, im new here, and this place pleases me kthx.

 

read the OP

USMCMarine, are you sure your downloading the correct drivers for your operating system ?

 

Hey guys can anyone comment on how the x3100 runs the Vista Aero Interface?

 

the gma950 ran aero glass perfectly fine. i think the 3100 is 2-3 times better, so should run aero great.

 

I have a Latitude D630 with x3100 and am getting the same error message as usmc marine above

http://img34.picoodle.com/img/img34/8/6/11/f_errormsgm_236ac2e.jpg

...he also appears to be using a dell,i wonder why the driver isnt validated for the D630...guess il have to wait
another while for c&c 3 to run half decent...

 

I think the driver is only for the desktop GMA 3000 series right now. You have a 965GM with the X3100, which may not use the same driver.

 

Just one question about X3100 ... this is my first intel graphic card so i don't realy now how to work with it... but how do i make the card use the full shared mem ? in my old laptop i hat to go to BIOS to configure that ... but in my new laptop i can't find it anywhere ..

does the intel automaticaly share available mem when needed ?

ty all ..

ps:hope drivers come soon for vista

 

hey guys,

can you test 1080p output and Vista MC?

My Sony SZ has 950 and it's laggy of course at 1080p resolution when hooked up to my 46" LCD.

Thanks

 

if you could send me a 1080p tv, I would be happy to help you out

 

do you promise you'll return it back when you are done )))

btw, I forgot to mention what is laggy it's the Media Center UI that has issues.

 

bump for new XP and Vista drivers (updated in 1st post)

 

Anyone try the new Beta drivers for Vista yet?

 

yes I just tried them, very disappointing:

15.4.3.0.1283
3dmark 2001 - 5562 3D marks

3dmark03
3DMark Score 1652 3DMarks
GT1 - Wings of Fury 53.0 FPS
GT2 - Battle of Proxycon 11.4 FPS
GT3 - Troll's Lair 10.2 FPS
GT4 - Mother Nature 9.4 FPS

3Dmark05
3DMark Score 867 3DMarks
GT1 - Return To Proxycon 4.4 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest 2.5 FPS
GT3 - Canyon Flight 3.8 FPS

3Dmark06
3DMark Score 529 3DMarks
SM2.0 Score 158
HDR/SM3.0 Score 210
CPU Score 1475
Game Score N/A
GT1 - Return To Proxycon 1.278 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest 1.351 FPS
CPU1 - Red Valley 0.475 FPS
CPU2 - Red Valley 0.733 FPS
HDR1 - Canyon Flight 1.702 FPS
HDR2 - Deep Freeze 2.491 FPS


15.6 Beta Drivers
3dmark 2001 - 4208 3D marks 24.3% decrease in performance

3dmark03
3DMark Score 1269 3DMarks - 23.2% decrease in performance
GT1 - Wings of Fury 44.8 FPS
GT2 - Battle of Proxycon 8.0 FPS
GT3 - Troll's Lair 6.8 FPS
GT4 - Mother Nature 8.5 FPS

3Dmark05
3DMark Score 671 3DMarks - 22.6% decrease in performance
GT1 - Return To Proxycon 3.7 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest 1.8 FPS
GT3 - Canyon Flight 2.9 FPS

3Dmark06
3DMark Score 425 3DMarks - 19.7% decrease in performance
SM2.0 Score 128
HDR/SM3.0 Score 165
CPU Score 1552
Game Score N/A
GT1 - Return To Proxycon 1.125 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest 1.014 FPS
CPU1 - Red Valley 0.491 FPS
CPU2 - Red Valley 0.785 FPS
HDR1 - Canyon Flight 1.371 FPS
HDR2 - Deep Freeze 1.938 FPS

 

Whoa, a drop in the scores? That's a no no! Thanks for testing it out for everyone.

 

But what about real games performance?

 

yeah its possible that 3dmark would go down but in game performance would increase OR stay the same with better visuals.

 

yep no prob happy to help

I don't really have any games installed, what game would u want me to test?

it's been reported by other users that the beta drivers actually cause visual corruptions in Call of Duty 2, and other users have reported decreases in real game performance as well, at least for the beta vista drivers. The XP beta drivers however, have gotten positive comments, hopefully they improve vistas to be as good as XPs.

 

If you have it try Doom III , HL2 and CSS. I wonder how well and if the X3100 plays this.

 

That's what really matters. Synthetic benchmarks like 3DMark don't really mean anything in real life.

You can get game demos here:
http://www.nzone.com/page/home.html