Is there any info about Arrandale's IGP performance? Will it be better than Nvidia's 9300 or 9400?

Since it's still 45nm hopefully it will be more than an incremental increase. While the power saving potential of Arrandale is nice, it will make me sad if its GPU doesn't even surpass Nvidia's old tech.

 

Not easy to say how much faster until benchmarks are out. Suffice to say it will probably draw level with nvidia's and ati's current tech. Not hugely likely to be leaps and bounds better.

 

Considering how up till now the Intel iGPU's suffered from issues like not all features working as advertised, and compatibility issues, I'd say it would be decent if they can match performance without issues.

That is not to say that's good, but there are other advantages with Intel chipsets like lower power(especially with Arrandale).

Even I am not confident with Arrandale's GPU beating Nvidia's next gen IGP as 9400's successor is supposed to be signifantly better.

 

There was a link in a different forum to the new IGP on the desktop varient. It's definately a significant improvement over the last X4500HD, but then even ION netbooks of all things should have better performance than that...

Techpowerup found these benchmarks with the desktop IGP but that can be clocked 700-900mhz compared to around 500mhz on the laptop IGP, so expect worse results than this. Overall a good improvement in 3dMark06, but games are shown to be unplayable on a Desktop version of this, so don't expect things beyond the Source engine games imo.




Main point is - it's still Intel Graphics - it still sucks worse than a 2-3 generation old Nvidia IGP which has been forced out of the competition (big deal for a lot of Mac Users, especially with Snow Leopard taking advantage of GP). I've read that not all Arrandales will have IGP's though, and am hoping for more news on it.

 

The review uses Win 7 drivers for Vista. I think people should just take the relative difference, e.g, 2-3x difference.

http://global.hkepc.com/1510/page/5#view

Tell me how the same X4500 gets significantly better fps with a worse config.

Besides, its 4 months away from launch.

All the 7 initial models have IGP...

 

"sucks" is a relative term that fails to take into account anything thatn your opinion.

 

My point was that Intel are flouting this as a giant graphics leap - if you check the crysis benchmark they've lept around 160% increase in performance- which sounds great... or 5fps to be absolute and still an unplayable 8.9fps, whereas a year-old competitor has got playable speeds and will be blocked from entry to this market. Anyone that studies economics or just appreciates consumers getting the most out of competition won't be that pleased that they've gone from at least the option of having a 9400m IGP to being forced to use something that's half the performer. This is a big deal since laptops have little modularity when it comes to graphics options. How do you think desktop users would feel if they were forced to have an Intel Graphics Card as their only option while ATI and Nvidia were showing off great IGPs and low power GPUs all of the time?

 

It is a giant leap - for Intel. They ack all the time that their IGP performance is no match for discrete and you know what, they Just Don't Care. Before you go all fps-fetish crazy go and add up the unit sales of the top 10 graphics-demanding game titles and divide that number into the total number of laptops sold each year. Gamers, particulary gamers who 'require' 40+ fps on Crysis at max resolution, are in the minority.

Raw fps performance isn't the point of an IGP. Simplicity of design, manufacturing, and power efficiency are the main points. Those points are major contributors to reliability and price which is what a high percentage of buyers care about.

For designs that use IGPs, all of the players are going to have to prove that they are the best. That is why it's called a 'design win' by everyone in the industry.

Outside of the enthusiast market, Jane and Richard Laptop User do not care who makes their graphics chip. As long as the whole machine works for 2-3 or more years, plays the occasional racey internet video, and shows the neices pictures with decent color fidelity, etc they Just Don't Care.

Intels Giant Leap is that they intend to tightly couple the GPU and CPU together so that the GPU can borrow 'spare' cycles from the CPU for rendering help when necessary. Considering that most machines are disk i/o bound, not CPU-bound, there will be plenty of cycles to spare.

 

Unless you guys can explain how a lower setup X4500 review from the same site scored equal on Crysis at medium settings, I'm thinking that Clarkdale will be on par with 9400 at least: http://global.hkepc.com/1510/page/5#view

G45 IGP review:

Core 2 Quad Q6600/DDR2-800
Crysis DX10 1024x768 Medium: 3.74

Clardale's G45 IGP

Core 2 Duo E8400/DDR3-1333
Crysis DX10 1024x768 Low: 3.431

If it really is 3x faster it'll at least match 9400.

 

I've read that the Arrandale processor will support switching graphics between integrated and discrete GPUs. Do you think this function will be part of laptops (most upper scale ones at least) as soon as Arrandale becomes available or will there be a period of delay?

 

There are many laptops that have switchable graphics, like the Lenovo T400.