Manufacturers confused about Sandy Bridge Intel HD 3000?

According to wikipedia and anandtech, all mobile sandy bridge processors feature the Intel HD 3000 graphics GPU. Yet a rash of new sandy bridge laptops have just come out displaying specs with dedicated GPUs slower than Intel HD 3000.

Benchmarks:
Intel?s Sandy Bridge i7-2820QM: Upheaval in the Mobile Landscape - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News
Intel HD Graphics 3000 - Notebookcheck.net Tech

For instance, the Sony SB pairs Sandy Bridge i5-2140m ( Sandy Bridge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ) with AMD 6470m ( AMD Radeon HD 6470M - Notebookcheck.net Tech ) which you'll notice actually benchmarks a little slower than HD 3000.

What the hell is going on here?

 

Synthetic benchmarks don't matter; actual gaming performance does. The HD Graphics 3000 is a bit below the 5470, so the 6470M should beat it by 20+ percent in most games on medium settings.

 

True, except for that driver part. Intel's graphics drivers are just horrid. They don't render properly, even compared to older, weaker IGPs from AMD and NVidia.

 

Since when did Intel start updating graphics drivers?

 

driver updating doesn't inherently close the gap between hardware devices if both companies are releasing driver updates (duh)

and, intel drivers have always had compatibility issues with a variety of games, and they continue to do so with the latest series.

moreover, ati is much more likely to release performance enhancing driver updates than intel, so if anything, the gap will spread the other way.

 

See both of the above points. Intel has never had good drivers. They treat their IGP as an afterthought. I don't even think they have anyone there who knows how to make a decent graphics driver.

 

I for one think that is the case, but the simple fact is that ALL intel drivers suck . the only BSOD I've ever had in Win7 was from an Intel wireless driver. Pretty much every piece of software I've dealt with from intel has been a PITA.

I don't think anyone is saying IGP is awesome, just that these weak- dedicated GFX suck. Putting in a dedicated chip that gets similar framerates to integrated is inexcusable (even though the drivers in one may have errors in the display, bad lighting, etc)

 

To be honest though, SB just barely got released into the market and it's not surprising the IGP on the cpu is just as powerful as low-end discrete gpu's.
We knew this was coming either way.

If anything, you should blame manufacturers of low-end gpu's by not making them inherently much more faster.

On another note... they still are slightly better.
Primarily because as other people mentioned, Intel's drivers simply aren't as good for their gpu's.
They weren't made for games in mind anyway, but more of a Windows UI and other things.
So yes, while their competitiveness hardware-wise is on par with low-end gpu's, in games, they will be lagging behind.
Unless Intel decides to focus a lot more in this area (which is possible they will because a lot of people DO game on IGP's, and hardware-wise, their products are moving into the category of being able to run latest games somewhat adequately), they will end up suffering.

AMD will come out with something equally competitive from both the CPU/gpu side of things, and people will likely begin to flock towards the other company if Intel doesn't get things done (and I do think they expressed a desire to become a competitive player in this market).

 

I kinda hoped these new integrated graphics would cause the demise of weak dedicated graphic cards, or at least a massive drop in prices. Do you guys think this might still happen? (with SB or, more likely with IB?)

I would really like to get a lot of graphic power for a reasonable amount of money, and I don't want to wait untill the next generation of consoles will pull the graphics bar up again (eventhough laptops only recently caught up with the current consoles, with 1 gpu systems that is).

 

If Intel is horrendous with their graphic drivers, doesn't that leave more room for improvement?

What I mean is, theoretically if a Nvidia/AMD GPU scores X with thoroughly optimised drivers and Intel scores slightly <X with very bad drivers, wouldn't it suggest when Intel would get more marginal performance increases at the start?

I'm thinking this, because between Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge (think SB x2) they have the potential to remove need for low and then lower-midrange GPUs

 

That's assuming that they'll suddenly get better. However, their drivers have ALWAYS sucked, and it doesn't look like they've improved this time around. You're assuming that, after years of not even trying, they'll suddenly start to release drivers on the level of AMD and NVidia. It's not going to happen, or else we'd see it already.

Also, the IB IGP is probably only going to be a 20-30% increase over HDG3000, based on current info.

 

It was later confirmed that it only has 16 EUs.

http://www.fudzilla.com/graphics/item/21658-16-graphics-eus-in-ivy-bridge

 

Maybe there's a limitation?

Though, we don't have official word from Intel, so who knows?

 

Either way, it's pretty exciting seeing intel push the baseline spec so far. it could be a serious boon to PC gaming; if everyone has chips that can handle games, more games could be theoretically sold. the future could be very interesting for 3d apps

 

HP's new business line is all situated with Radeon6470. What the hell is going on?? I am genuinely baffled.

 

Intel driver sucked, right when they first release their graphic card in 1998, now more than a decade later they still sucks, that intel gfx driver for you.

They have plenty of time to improve, but most of the time the graphics division is like their afterthought.. AMD alone hired hundred of people on doing their graphic driver, I bet Intel's GFX division is run by monkey managers and severe understuffed people since they are not the one that make money, the CPU divison does.

 

A lot of applications like photoshop cs5 can accelerate with the use of a graphics processor, but they use opengl and that works a lot better on a dedicated chip like the amd one. Also the 6470 can encode video's better, if you look at quality and things like pulldown and stuff. a dedicated intel chip can't do that.