New Intel GMA HD vs ATI Radeon 3470

I was thinking about getting the T400 with Radeon 3470 since is selling cheap now right and I some time play game (mostly soccer game like PES or FIFA) when I have free time. The T410 has some nice features that I like, but with discrete graphic card is kind of out of my budget. So I'm curious how is the new intel graphic hold up against radeon 3470? Thanks!

 

I believe the 3470 would be roughly identical with the 3470 winning barely in most tests. This isnt saying much though as neither are that quick. Just as a reference, the 3dmark06 score on the Radeon 3470 is about 1800 and on the Intel IGP its barely below at 1750 or so.

The new Geforce NVS 3100m in the T410 gets about 3500 as a reference.

 

Which new Intel graphic chip are you referring to, the X4500HD?

 

I believe the OP is talking about the integrated GPU in the new Core i_ CPUs from Intel. I've seen benchmarks that show the 3470 ahead by a small margin. Both will play your games just fine, though.

 

the intel GPU gets better every generation....

 

Yep I was talking about the new intel graphic in the new core i cpu. Thanks for the feedback.

 

Yet they still suck...

I don't play games on my Thinkpad, so that's barely OK for me. But from time to time I can't help but sigh at the CPU usage when playing video, as well as the poor video playback quality (usually more pixelated), when compared to my desktop computer with discrete graphic card.

One thing I like about Apple is their implementation of nvidia graphics chip on their whole macbook line, including the thin-and-light macbook air. (don't get me wrong, I still prefer thinkpad to macbook).

 

I don't think you understand how discrete graphics help. There can be hardware acceleration for video but that can be exclusive of graphics (3d) performance as well.

The last generation intel GPU has hardware acceleration for certain types of video and has pretty darn good performance. CoreAVC (efficient software decoder) is also pretty good on CPU utilization.

You don't need discrete graphics if you don't play games or utilize 3d intensive workstation applications.

The low level performance of the 'integrated' nvidia graphics on the macbooks aren't exactly high end performers either.

The new generation is just even better!

Also remember not all video is easily hardware accelerated. WMV is terrible...flash is eventually going to be hardware accelerated will become more common. Either that or we will have different methods of rendering out flash type media.

 

since the Intel X4500 GPU, it has started to implement full native decoding of blu-ray movie, so that it wouldn't be using any CPU resources when you play most videos. So the question would be which intel GPU are you referring to?