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

Not according to here: http://www.computerbase.de/news/tre...ber/benchmarks_intels_grafik_treibervergleich

And 3dmark sucks for gaming comparisons anyway. 3dmark performance dropped for my benchmarking 14.29, 14.31pb, 14.31b drivers while gaming performance remained unaffected.

Sorry to hear but, Imperial669 from VR-FORUMS got 513 marks on 3dmark06, which is far higher than the 359 you got with your system. I just don't believe that a similar system will be that much different. Maybe you are doing something wrong or there is something else wrong with your system

Here: http://www.computerbase.de/forum/showthread.php?t=309411

Also shows that the 15.6 is the fastest "15.6" driver. You are just making preliminary conclusions imo.

People seem to be ignoring me, because maybe I criticize too much or w/e, but you guys are only looking at one part of the equation.

 

Here's my latest reply from Intel...

Hello Ryan,

Thank you for contacting Intel(R) Technical Support.

1. We have noticed your computer is not running the latest Intel(R) graphic driver. The hardware transform and lighting and Vertex Shader are currently supported under PV 15.6.1.

It can be found at this webpage:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Det...s=164&OSFullName=Windows Vista* 32〈=eng

Make sure to read the "Read Me" document that comes with the drivers prior to installation. The latest version of the Mobile Intel(R) 965 Express Chipset Family reference drivers is PV15.6.1

Sincerely,

Allan J.
Intel(R) Technical Support


No s*it I'm not running 15.6.1...They obviously claim that the 15.6.1 drivers enable T&L and VS3.0...yet to be realized by the real users though I guess. Maybe the vbios update is the issue (see above)?? Any comments would be great...Now I think I'm pissed again.

 

Okay, so the video bios is in the developer's (.zip) version of the driver.
Now how would we install it? do we have to copy it to a flash drive and do it inside the system bios?

 

Its been over a month since 15.6.1 was released. How much longer do you think it will be until an update?

 

I have been looking into this topic for some time now ... and i'm still fighting over some low fps on wow

Can u guys tell me what configurations are the best in the intel utility for the card configuration ( the icon on traybar ) where u configure some aspects of our card...

this IS a shared mem card so .. is it possible that i'm not using all the mem the card can use? this way improving perfomance?

That is the reason i would like for u guys to go look and see what configurations u have and post here, maybe we can max the perfomance.

One thing is sure XP faster then Vista ? have u guys confirmed this? how faster?

To be correct i am not rly sure of what drivers i am currently using where can i check it ?

My laptop is :
HP dv6559ea
Intel® Centrino® Duo processor technology
Intel Processor® Core™2 Duo T7300
2 GHz , 4 MB cache L2
2048 MB Mem
Intel® GMA X3100

 

The settings in the Intel utility is only for OpenGL and WoW uses DirectX so you can't do anything there that would help.
I think some of the older drivers had some problems with allocating memory to the GMA but the newer ones allocates correctly so that 1.5GB memory or above will let your GMA use the maximum 384MB. You can see your maximum GMA memory under info in the Intel GMA utility.
And i would bet my laptop that XP runs games better than Vista at least on a laptop where the system specs are usually not as high as on a desktop pc. XP requires less resources just to be operational opposed to Vista, which means more resources for the games, and the drivers are in most cases better under XP than under Vista. I don't think anyone is having problems with the XP X3100 drivers, whereas the Vista drivers are crap at the moment.

 

Archibal talked about a 15.6.2 driver floating around Intel's internal servers and supposedly they are released approximately a week later, but that was 2 weeks ago. They might have jumped right to 15.7 instead i don't know

 

Archibal? who is that? Did he/she mention if 15.6.2 had properly functioning TnL?

 

JayPizzle : using for instance WindowsXP 64 can i get better perfomance?

 

i highly doubt the 64bit version of XP can perform better than a 32bit

 

Here's brief details of performance on the XP for WoW. If you know what I am talking about, on Shattrath City, I get 10-20 fps. Ironforge would get around 20-40. I'd say the average performance is 25-35 in most zones, with expansion zones more demanding than the classic zones.

I run 1024x768 everything high. I do have a overall faster system though. Core 2 Duo E6600 with DDR2-800 Dual Channel and WoW installed on WD 360GD Raptor drive(10K RPM).

The driver does the job for you, so you can only rely on Intel to make better drivers for it.

You can do Right Click/Properties, and go to graphics properties, the same as you would to change resolution. Then go to advanced graphics or something. You should be able to find the graphics driver version from there. Intel uses two naming methodology for the drivers though, so rather than saying: 15.6, it will say: 7.14.10.1322

Hope this helps.

(Don't expect that graphics drivers will do much for mature games like WoW, you'll likely have to get a better graphics card)

 

Thanks that was a problem of mine ... never sure of the driver version ...

About the game ... its only for reference since some people here talked about it (tho i do play ) and i dont expect my laptop to perform with high fps .. but never bad to get it to perform as best as it can ... and this vista drivers i think can do mutch better.

I am also thinking in changing to XP. The question now is 64 or 32... i think i'll try the 64bit to try squeez some more juice from the system (if that is possible).

just have to w8 and see.

 

I'v just found some info over the net that it's what i whant to know:

some benchmarks with the two diferent xp versions 32vs64

ofc if the application is in 64bit it will perform better.

 

One more question i got ... what about linux drivers?

 

thats if u are usin Linux-based OS. if u r using windows OS, then ignore the drivers for Linux.

 

i know that .. i was asking if there is any linux drivers? and if they work good...

 

This is such a joke. I have the latest x3100 drivers for XP on my Core2Duo laptop with 2gb dual channel memory. 3dmark2001se shows "Pure hardware T&L"....guess what...the scores were about the same using "pure hardware T&L" and "software T&L".....these drivers a such a joke and intel should be ashamed of themselves!

Laptops with the GMA950 score HIGHER in benchmarks than the X3100! WTF is Intel doing????

By the way im getting 4550 in 3dmark2001se with the x3100. My other laptop with the GMA950 get just over 6000. What a freakin joke! Both laptops have the same CPU.

 

Anyone brave enough to test Crysis on X3100?

 

arg, that gma950 comparison really doesn't sound good onion

assuming there's not just an unrelated problem causing massive speed discrepancies on your x3100, and this would bear out in a clean benchmarking test, how can the x3100 drivers be SO poor in comparison on supposedly much better hardware ?

/me still waiting to see what goes on with new drivers....eventually.

 

Currently, the 15.6(1) drivers for Vista give me almost half the frame rate in GalCiv 2 than I was getting with an intel 915gm! Of course, this is largely due to lack of proper Hardeware TnL support.

Any word on when the next updates will be released?

 

Its not my laptop. Everyone with the x3100 are getting these laughable 3dmark scores. Its clear these developers working for intel have no clue what they're doing! Its been like 5 MONTHS since X3100 based hardware has been on sale to the public. Where is Intel????

It almost seems that they're abandoning driver development! It should NOT be taking this long! Something fishy is clearly going on...

 

While I agree that it's certainly time for updated drivers, especially for Vista, that doesn't mean that Intel is purposefully depriving us of them. I don't see anything "fishy," just a company that isn't delivering what the consumers want or expect. There are many possible reasons for this, it just seems unlikely that Intel is doing it intentionally.

Having said that, I really want new Vista drivers :-D I don't like having to reboot into XP to play Far Cry.

 

Wrong, the company is not delivering what THEY advertised! OH YA, many months ago they bragged how the x3100 has 8 pixel pipelines that can change from shaders to T&L units. Oh ya how they bragged how awsome it would be.....now 5 months later its SLOWER than thier previous GMA950! It does not take half a year to develope proper drivers for FINALIZED hardware. almost half a year and drivers/hardware does NOT funciton correctly....something seriously wrong here....

 

After reading this, now I'm angry. I had no idea that the x3100 was this bad.

The X3100 was advertised as a significant improvement for integrated graphics. The worst part is that Intel will likely have released the X4500 before this problem is fixed - and that is supposedly 3x faster than the x3100.

 

don't worry, at this rate the x4500 will be a superb chip, with drivers that don't even support accelerated 2D till 2010

 

Hahaha, This made me giggle.

 

I read elsewhere crysis sp demo runs (don't ask me how well) with all low at 800*600 with some texture corruption..

 

I am trying to run Age of Empires III on SUPER LOW EVERYTHING (even tried 16 bit textures vs 32) and I just can't do it. All goes reasonably well until a few ships converge and start firing - and it drops down to 1 fps at best!

I have a HP dv6266 Dual Core2 (1.5ghz) with 1 gig of ram.

I was not expecting to be able to rock out games with this meant for web surfing laptop, but I at least figured with the x3100 I would be able to play many slightly older games on the lowest settings.

Hell....I saw videos from Intel showing them killing BF2....I figured why wouldn't I be able to play AOE III? WRONG!

Planning on maxing out the ram (4G) and maybe going back to XP to see if I can improve performance.

Currently using the 7.14.10.1322 driver.

 

LOL, Im having the same problem, thats why i only play skirmish and select maps
without water, LOL.

 

3dmark ran slower on ATI/Nvidia's integrated GPUs than Intel's you know. But as you would know, it ran faster on the REAL games. Please don't use 3dmark as a basis for performance comparison. Run GMA950 on actual games and see how slow it becomes.

Yes it does, it gets 10-15 fps but some corruption with character models. It gets texture corruption but only happens when it runs out of memory.

I can run Age of Empires III with 1024x768 everything high and get around 20-25 fps.

 

Two questions:

Are you running vista?

Have you tried to play the game with ships on water?:

 

I have a clean install of Vista. I have aero glass off and all memory eating services and apps killed. I am running vista with minimal indexing or other superfluous services and it looks like windows 98 visually. I still get .046 FPS when two ships fire at each other in AOE III with everything set to low and everything off that can be turned off.

Well something has to give here......what is different about your setup? More Ram? More Processor? Running XP rather then Vista? Different drivers? You accidentally were sitting at a Quad Core Desktop with a GeForce 8800 GTX rather then a santa rosa laptop with the x3100?

I just started to get ready to move to XP. I didn't realize I was going to have to slipstream XP with SATA Drivers being I am floppyless....Ugh...pain.....

 

1. Ok I am running XP and I run on Core 2 Duo E6600 with 2xDDR2-800 Transcend RAM. Yea I am running on a desktop. I just post to show the results as IMO it should reflect X3100's performance provided that the user has a good CPU.

2. Just tried with ships on water. It certainly drops frames a lot but still not a slideshow



EDIT: Ok I get what you guys mean now. I never suspected that shooting would drop the frames that much. I get around 2-3 fps with ship shooting. I think it actually drops as times goes on.

Anyway, sounds like a GPU issue. If I can run everything else with Very High and get over 5 fps, simple ship shooting shouldn't exponentially drop it. It didn't improve even with everything low so I suspect its a bug on the driver. Hope it gets fixed, and sorry for misunderstanding.

 

Dont worry, its cool, the thing is that this drivers have many issues and were
just waiting for a new one that fixes almost everything.

 

Funny thing is Intel actually acknowledges the issue, although their "fix" is no fix....

At least I know that this issue also exists with XP and those set of drivers as well. It will save me from going down that road.

 

Are there any newer drivers or beta drivers that perform better than the 14.31.1 for Windows XP?? These perform horribly! A GMA950 destroys this X3100 so far.. not impressed. I picked up the new Macbook with Santa Rosa/X3100 in hopes my gaming experience would improve a little.. not get worse.

Jay

 

This is kind disappointing, i've been researching the X3100 for a few days in hopes of buying a macbook. I don't understand how the X3100 could possibly perform worse than a GMA 950. Are there any beta drivers available newer than 14.31.1 for windows xp or are the vista drivers newer and/or better?

 

Trust me, I have used GMA950. GMA X3000 is better for what its meant for, performance in newer games. GMA950 may beat X3000/X3100 in older games like Quake 3 Arena and such, but it'll not come close to newer ones like Farcry for example.

3dmark is also a bad benchmark to see how it performs, especially 3dmark01. GMA950 has more fillrate than X3000 and 3dmark01 needs lots of bandwidth and fillrate, which GMA950 excels at. Run apps that require shader intensive code and GMA950 will drop like a rock.

Well, if you don't think it makes sense that integrated one performs less on the older games, but better on the newer ones, there isn't much choice except to go to dedicated. Due to limited transistor budget, they have to sacrifice pixel throughput for better shader performance and such. The goal in newer integrated chipsets is maintaining playability in older games while trying to do that in newer games. GMA950, will perform better in older games, but probably not run newer games at all.

I believe the bug is a seperate issue from what they state on their website. It's a bug in their code. At lowest, it'll still be unplayable when ships are firing, and the settings Intel recommends are higher than lowest, that's pretty obvious. The low performance part is just that the hardware itself doesn't have enough graphics power, nothing a bug.

Diversion: What games are you trying to run anyway??

 

To get better performance and compatibility for newer generation titles like BF2 and such is why Intel completely changed the architecture for the X3000/X3100 rather than updating the GMA950 based cores with more pixel pipelines and clock speed.

Intel went from the basic architecture of the Extreme Graphics/GMA series:
-Zone Rendering(splits screen into tiles in order to save bandwidth and increase performance)
-Fixed pixel pipelines(4 in GMA 900/950)

to

GMA X3000/X3100
-No more Zone Rendering, because they have found out that with newer games, the trend is Zone Rendering really sucks
-Hardware Transform & Lighting and Vertex Shaders. This is what's needed for newer games to perform better
-Unified shaders(video+pixel+vertex+geometry)

The thing is that Zone Rendering is VERY GOOD at saving bandwidth and taking advantage of the raw pixel throughput. This means older games will perform better with the GMA 950 than X3000/X3100. But then they found out you can't use Zone Rendering all the time, especially with newer games. I also read that its also hard to make Tile Rendering/Zone Rendering based GPUs with hardware T&L/VS.

So they abandoned Zone Rendering and went with conventional architecture where they process the whole frame rather than seperating them into zones/tiles. They also found out DX10 needs Unified Shaders, so they went with unified shaders, and also put in hardware T&L/VS for compatibility. Newer games will excel(compared to GMA950) on the X3000 because of the changes. Older games will perform better on the GMA950.

GMA950 will NOT RUN:
-C&C3
-Call of Duty 2
-Supreme Commander
-Battlefield 2/Battlefield 2142
-UT3
-Crysis
-Bioshock
-Stalker
-World in Conflict
-etc

It will simply crash on the GMA950 rather than running at all. They all require hardware T&L and/or hardware Vertex Shaders.

Games/Apps GMA X3000/X3100 will run and/or have better performance
-All the games above that doesn't run on the GMA950
-Half Life 2
-Farcry
-3dmark05/06

Games/Apps that run similar on two GPUs
-Quake 4
-Prey
-Company of Heroes
-UT2004

Games/Apps that run better on GMA950
-3dmark01/03
-Quake 3
-Age of Empires 3
-Guild Wars
-World of Warcraft

A guy that works at Intel from Intel Software Network forums said that their graphics team is under-resourced and under-funded. That makes sense considering G965 only costs $3 more than the P965. I think it would actually make sense to raise the price to say $15 and make a better part.

 

Does anyone know if they are still working on the windows xp drivers, also if they are working on fixing the os x version of the driver - i hear this one has more issues than the windows drivers

 

So basically we're not gonna see much left of a driver improvement on the X3100... And Intel is completely content with the fact the GMA950 outperforms the X3100 in most scenarios due to superior drivers. Wow.

Edit: And Apple thought the X3100 on the new MacBook refresh would make people happy =(

 

I'm running World of Warcraft.. it was definately superior on the GMA950 versus this X3100. This is a disappoint to find out the X3100 can't outperform the GMA950 in older titles since they dropped some hardware that the GMA950 had. I intended on playing WoW for another year and was hoping my WoW experience would improve, not decline when I bought this new MacBook last week.

I should have just kept my GMA950 MacBook, it ran easily 15 fps more a second than this X3100 in WoW.

 

I'm not sure where you are basing your comments that GMA X3100 driver development is going to be abandoned. Again, there have been no statements or action by Intel to indicate that. Just because drivers aren't performing up to expectations doesn't indicate that Intel is going to give up. As I've said before, the GMA X3000, GMA X3100, upcoming GMA X3500, and upcoming GMA X4500 all use the same architecture so all share basically the same driver base. So unless you are telling me Intel is going to abandon all their IGP customers from the last year and abandon their entire GPU lineup for the next year, Intel isn't going to just walk away. And if the GMA X3100 has been abandoned, why in the world would Apple decide to release a new product based on it?

Besides, in terms of Mac OS X drivers, you really can't expect much from the GMA X3100 on OS X given that this is the first iteration. Apple is as much to blame for bad drivers as Intel is anyways, since I'm pretty sure they work closely together. Poor first generation drivers also aren't an Intel IGP problem either. The initial drivers for the 8600M GT in the MacBook Pro were terrible, as were the initial drivers for the HD 2600Pro in the iMac, and the latter are arguably still bad. 10.5.1 is already in the works and usually Apple releases the first point update to their OS in the first month of release and this should include new GMA X3100 drivers, if they don't appear before in a separate release like what the iMac got this week.

 

When work bought me an HP NX7010 3 years ago it was pretty sweet. The first batch of the 2MB L2 Cache Centrinos. I ran XP and Suse on it and thought it was the perfect mobile machine for my needs.

Three years later I buy a machine with 2 x the CPU and 2 x the RAM (albeit at 1/2 the cost) and I can't play the same freaking games and all the apps run slower...

Talk about regression.

Sooo, last night I finally tossed Vista out the door......installed XP using a slipstream driver method found elsewhere on these forums....and low and behold..... THIS MACHINE SMOKES!

It feels fast. It feels snappy! I say, window minimize...and if God is my witness, the sucker minimizes.. INSTANTLY! As a vista user, I didn't know this laptop was capable of such a feat!

...er...so anyways....now I can play Age of Empires with the x3100 XP drivers. It is like night and day compared to the vista drivers. I actually turned just about everything up! (Still have ship fighting lag, but very playable.)

Even on simple 2d bench marks I am seeing 250 MP/s (XP) vs 95 MP/s (VISTA) fill rates. So I am not sure if it is Vista or the Vista driver or both......the good news is I no longer care...

 

It common knowledge that vista drivers suck. XP drivers are better for all GPUs out there be it Nvidia / ATI whatever.

 

In XP, I think WoW performance is about parity with two GPUs. I am not entirely sure though.

There's quite a bit to go with Apple drivers. They might have been better off if they were introduced along with Santa Rosa platform, but they didn't. Anyway, since they have the basic knowledge of the faults/problems they had with the drivers in XP and Vista, they should be able to develop it faster. Still it is a waiting game. Hopefully, Apple/Intel addresses this issue soon.

 

vista :
right click my computer -> properties -> advanced system settings -> hit settings button under 'performance' turn off 'animate windows when maximizing and minimizing'

instant minimize.
what's the prob?

 

Wow...they don't have "advanced sarcasm detection capabilities" in your neck of the woods. What your address? I'll send you some. My treat!

What I was saying is even with Aero off Vista just feels laggy. XP feels fast. Same modern hardware. K?

 

You didn't say anything about aero being off in your previous post.

I also felt that you were drastically exaggerating any performance problems in Vista. Of course it is a subjective experience I suppose, but unless your synapses are able to perceive milliseconds of difference between how long it takes to minimise a window, I think the FUD is unwarranted. I have aero enabled and don't perceive any performance issues in day-to-day computing. I don't game - that sounds like another issue entirely.

 

---

^^ You just need to read back a few posts in this thread.

I promise you,Vista is MUCH SLOWER then XP on identical modern hardware. This is not me being subjective. This is reality.

I assume you are not running a laptop with the x3100 which I think is the topic of discussion here? If so, tell me about your setup so I can emulate those results!