What are the Intel GMA 950's capabilities?

I've just ended up with a new laptop with the seemingly ubiquitous on-board graphics from Intel du jour, namely the GMA 950. The other specs aren't really a problem as it's a Dell Inspiron D420, so I've got 2GB of RAM, Intel Core Duo processor etc...

Here's the question, what would be the best game that would be sensibly playable on this rig? I know things like Oblivion are way out of the ball park, but what about slightly older stuff (Sid Meier's Pirates! for example). I can't be the only person with a system like this on this forum, so I'm sure it would be widely useful to hear people's experiences of running games through such a bottleneck.

Thanks in advance,

Digger79.

 

If you search, there's probably a kajillion threads with people talking about what games they are able to play on the GMA950. Stuff like HL2 and WoW is probably typical of more "current" games that it can still handle.

 

General rule...made in 2003 or earlier, and it might work.

 

Max payne, unreal tournament 2003, quake and older games would work fine. Can't say about newer ones.

 

don't buy laptop with intel gma 950 never in your life!

 

Can you give your reasons please, Nukec? did you own one?

 

There's nothing wrong with the GMA950 if you do not play 3D games. If you are a gamer then the GMA950 is the wrong chip to get in a laptop because it is too slow to run most modern 3D games.

 

My last laptop had the Intel GMA950. I played WoW on it. It was a little clunky, but I still had fun.

 

If you like Oblivion try out Morrowind, its currently goes for 20.00 and thats with all the expansion packs. It would run on the GMA on top of that I personally think Morrowind has a better story line to.

 

All GMA's are really bad, if you're a gamer. They're coming out with a new one though that is supposed to be decent I don't know what it's called though.

 

Was it X3000 they called the one coming around with the Santa Rosa?

 

Yeah you can get it in desktops already. It can run Call of Duty 2 and Half Life 2 at fairly high settings. But not right now for the general public, as the drivers to enable this performance isn't released yet (just shown in tests), and so the chip like the GMA does most things through software - so far.

 

yes i own laptop with gma 950 and it toaly suck..
i can barrely play generals, max payne, i cannot even dream about cod2 or css...

 

I am able to run Delta Force BHD very good on my subnotebook. Trackmania Nations is also quite playable...

 

yes but i need my life games like cod2 and css,.. u got it? i can only play those games on my pc, but i need it anywhere i go lol

 

Modern games will still be playable if GMA 950 NEVER existed :lol:

Say, I'd rather people go for the Xpress 1150/1250 or Nvidia 6150 even if they are on a budget. At least for that they get T&L and will be able to run fairly modern games without hiccups.

 

If you buy an ultraportable or subnotebook, your stuck with this so there's no choices for those buyers as I will be. I wish I could upgrade the graphics just a bit by Expresscard, nothing like the Asus XG station but just a little boost.

 

It never hurts to Overlock that GMA 950 ... (Joking)

 

:laugh:

 

I'm afraid the GMA doesn't run Half Life 2 very well at all. Indoor bits work ok but outdoor bits slow the game to a crawl. I was getting under 10fps on the Water Hazard bit with the hut on stilts, even on minimum settings and directX level 7.0. This was with a 1.66ghz core duo and 1GB RAM.

 

Yes, but from what I'm hearing even that sucks.

 

Here's a solution - for gaming, just stick a DS/PSP in your notebook bag .

Seriously though, shouldn't the x3000 at least be able to play the Source (i.e. HL2) games?

 

Too bad most Intel laptops come with it. And you can play most MMORPGs, WoW, Half life 2 and Unreal tournament 2004 on it. Max Payne 2, Prince of Persia, and Quake 3 all worked fine for me, and that was back when I had a GMA 900 laptop.

 

GMA X3000 and X3100 will have pretty decent performance once some partially functioning drivers are released. The current drivers suck, so performance correspondingly sucks too.

 

The current drivers for the X3000/X3100 force everything to be done in software rather than hardware so what you get is performance on par with the GMA950. As noted, until there are appropriate drivers for it you're not going to be able to do much gaming than all. Once they are available though, they'll allow the X3000/X3100 to be able to use its hardware T&L and it should be quite impressive.

Make no mistake though, you're much better off with a dedicated GPU if you want to game.

 

Eh, I was stuck on even crappier integrated intel graphics (I think it was called extreme graphics back then) and I got through HL2 fine. The trick is to just turn off the fps count so you stop thinking about it. It'll lag occasionally and you'll see some stuttering outdoors but it's playable. Counter-Strike source on the other hand, was not and is not as forgiving as HL2 is.

 

i have gma 950..2gb ram and core duo processor..will i be able to run Nfs underground 2???

 

NFS is a very demanding game that even the Geforce Go 7400/Radeon X1400 has trouble with at lower settings. Remember the graphics card is almost always the bottleneck, so having that much RAM and that great of a processor doesn't mean much when the graphics card will give you the most headaches.

Right now the GMA X3100 is pretty close to a Radeon X300 in performance. It even beats out the respectable Radeon X1250 in benchmark tests. Obviously, if someone was going to game at all, I'd really recommend a dedicated card. But, the X3100 isn't that weak, and it definitely will be more powerful with a driver refresh.

 

it means the intel is goin to beat ati graphics but i don;t think it will perform good since intel 950 got better rating in benchmark than mine but sucked on game performance....... so overate thing....

 

Im sure i read on intels website that the GMA 950 will run doom 3. Yea like a doom 3 slide show is any fun....

 

Will GMA950 or X3100 run GTA:SA in 1024x768 resolution decently?

 

Not idea about the X3100 with its current drivers, but the 950 won't run it at all, according to Intel -

This should help you.

 

A large part of the problem is that the GMA series implements a lot of functionality in software only. No hardware. So when a game checks for hardware support, it doesn't find it. If the game works, it is slow because of the software emulation.

 

I play the Movies on a dell desktop with an even worse graphics card on medium settings with an 800/600 res. and it runs almost flawlessly unless you zoom in really close.

 

I second that! I absolutely LOVE Morrowind. It truly is an amazing game! ... Now this probably is not fair to compare (because it is a desktop) but I play Morrowind on an old Intel 82845G Graphics Controller and it runs very well (at least for me).

And I think it is important to remember that not all people are hardcore gamers. I would say there are probably lots of people who want the battery life of an integrated chip, but game "on the side" and are simply curious as to what games they could run. I mean, he has already bought the laptop so there is no point in going on about how dedicated cards are superior to integrated. (Well, other than to advise others. But aren't there other threads for that?).

 

It plays Age Of Empires 3 on OS X great.

 

I found a way to fix this! Open Graphics properties, go into 3d settings, and turn on Force S3TC and FXT1 Texture compression. This may make the game look a bit worse, but it does drastically increase FPS. Also, you should decrease graphics settings in the game as well.
P.S. This will help with other games as well.

 

That's interesting jka, thanks, I must try that out when I can...