How bad are Intel graphics drivers?

[Fjodor2001]

Hi,

I keep hearing that the graphics drivers from Intel are not as good as the ones Nvidia and AMD have for their GFX chips.

But what exactly does is mean that the Intel graphics drivers are "bad"? Do they perform worse than they could, do they contain bugs causing graphics artifacts or crashes, are not all features supported in DirectX or OpenGL, or something else?

Since I'm considering upgrading to a Sandy Bridge CPU, I would appreciate if someone please could explain this. I need to decide if I'm going to use the IGP or buy a discrete GFX card.

Thanks!

 

[RavenSEAL]

Not good to play games...that's all it means.

 

[sandorski]

Intel's biggest problem is not their Drivers, but their Hardware. They are just far behind AMD/Nvidia in Gaming Features/Performance. I hear their Drivers are not good as well, but without the Hardware behind them, even excellent Drivers won't make them Game capable.

 

[Maximilian]

In my experiece theyre pretty good considering the weak hardware. The control panel is actually much better than the unintuitive POS ATI use, cant speak for nvidias as i havent seen it in recent years.

Its as good as it looks, fast too:
http://techreport.com/r.x/clarkdale/gma-control-panel.jpg

As for games etc the hardware will become a limitation long before the drivers do in my experience, these things only have 10-12 shader processors so they are pretty limited. Good for what they were designed for.

Also the shortcut to turn the screen upside down (alt+down arrow) has allowed me to have much fun at work watching people try and turn their screen the right way up again

 

[Fjodor2001]

I might add that in my case I won't be playing much games on it. I'll mainly use it for surfing the web (might include 3D rendered contents such as Google Earth), viewing movies, using Photoshop, ripping & encoding movies, using standard "office type" applications, and so on.

Also, I'll be using Windows 7 64-bit, if that matters.

So for the use case above, do you think the Intel GFX drivers for the IGP will work ok?

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Yep, should work fine.

 

[Cogman]

Intel has never had bad drivers (In fact, they are generally a lot more stable than nVidia/AMD's drivers.) Their problem is their GPUs just suck for gaming. If you just need a light solution for surfing the web then they aren't bad.

 

[WelshBloke]

The ones on my laptop are great, they work fine when I plug it into my TV via hdmi, probably easier than NV or AMD.

It is more that the video hardware is very weak, as others have said.

If Intel ever get their a*se in gear on the hardware side of things it'll be painful for the two others.

 

[Fjodor2001]

Thanks everyone! It seems like the general impression is that the Intel drivers actually are not bad at all. So the initial statement/assumption in my first message was incorrect.

The Sandy Bridge IGP performance will of course not match the mid & high end Nvidia and AMD discrete GFX cards however, but that's a different issue.

 

[stargazr]

I have a desktop with an i3-530 and have been using the integrated graphics on it for half a year with no problems. And I update the drivers often, no trouble.

 

[postmortemIA]

In my experiece theyre pretty good considering the weak hardware. The control panel is actually much better than the unintuitive POS ATI use, cant speak for nvidias as i havent seen it in recent years.

Its as good as it looks, fast too:
http://techreport.com/r.x/clarkdale/gma-control-panel.jpg

As for games etc the hardware will become a limitation long before the drivers do in my experience, these things only have 10-12 shader processors so they are pretty limited. Good for what they were designed for.

Also the shortcut to turn the screen upside down (alt+down arrow) has allowed me to have much fun at work watching people try and turn their screen the right way up again

intels control panel requires .NET, just like ATi's so they couldn't be that faster
Intel hasn't mastered 2D yet, let's not even mention 3D. I can spot intel driven output right away, even on DVI, fonts look fuzzy and thinner than on other displays.

 

[Fjodor2001]

Intel hasn't mastered 2D yet, let's not even mention 3D. I can spot intel driven output right away, even on DVI, fonts look fuzzy and thinner than on other displays.

Is there anyone else than can confirm or disconfirm this?

 

[shangshang]

^ postmortemIA is right.
fonts are fuzzy. Intel graphics = pos

 

[Fjodor2001]

^ postmortemIA is right.
fonts are fuzzy. Intel graphics = pos

Ok, so is this a hardware or driver issue? I would assume the former, but perhaps the driver could render fonts fuzzy as well?

Also, is this an issue with all Intel GFX chips and all intel GFX drivers? Even with e.g. the IGP in newer Intel Clarkdale CPUs and Windows 7 64-bit drivers?

Finally, is it just fonts that are rendered this bad with Intel GFX?

 

[grimpr]

You could try some OpenGL tests with LightsMark 2.0 and check back with frames per second AND image/rendering quality.

http://dee.cz/lightsmark/

LostCircuits has more info and numbers, http://www.lostcircuits.com/mambo//...task=view&id=76&Itemid=1&limit=1&limitstart=2

 

[bryanW1995]

yeah, their drivers aren't necessarily so much bad, it's more that they just can't process graphics b/c the hardware is too weak. maybe in 2020 larrabbee will buzz in to the rescue.

 

[Minerva]

< breaks out pentium pro 200 system with 4MB Matrox Milliennium II and Matrox M3D pci card. Wow!

 

[Bearach]

Mainly only used their older graphics, and they've been barely capable of displaying 2D... I've had graphics cards WAY older that was smoother and was less problematic.

I hear that they have got better but the hardware is still very weak, though Sandy Bridge is supposed to address that... and I hope it does but I still will be skeptical till I see for myself.

People say about "good enough" but personally using the Intel graphics I have has NEVER been good enough, or to an acceptable level even in 2D.

This includes Extreme 3D (Laptop), Extreme 2, GMA 3100 which was abysmal to me, but we do all have different degrees of what we will accept.

Maybe they have the reputation of being so poor and bad drivers cause their drivers really were bad in the beginning and their hardware... has been terrible in the past.

 

[Minerva]

In all seriousness a lot of them fail to scroll smoothly at the LCD native res with 32bbp. I *hate* that! Makes the computer feel slow overall and it could have six cores and 24GB ram!

 

[brandonb]

Their drivers suck. Using a docking station (with DVI) the driver would constantly (3-4 times a day) crash with a BSOD. I updated their drivers, now it constantly has trouble with my dual monitor setup, blue screens are gone. Everytime it goes into power saver mode with the monitors, it loses track of the configuration, and it won't even let you reset them back, it tries to, but fails, and resets the configuration as you are trying to change it. You have to reboot the computer and then reconfigure it.

If you use a single display, and use VGA with no docking station, it works just dandy. But anything else, trouble.

 

[Fjodor2001]

@brandonb, Minerva, Bearach, bryanW1995:

Just curious: What Intel GFX chip and what OS did you use when getting the experiences you described?

 

[shangshang]

In all seriousness a lot of them fail to scroll smoothly at the LCD native res with 32bbp. I *hate* that! Makes the computer feel slow overall and it could have six cores and 24GB ram!

This!

As far as I'm concerned, Intel graphics is and should be in only one class of device: server!
Nobody cares about graphics performance on a server. But graphics is needed for for console display!

 

[brandonb]

Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset on WinXP.

Using driver = 6.14.10.5284 (latest available on the Dell site)

Trying to install the driver directly from Intel gives you a big warning message "Use the Dell one." So that is the latest driver I can use, you can't even install the intel drivers directly.

 

[Bearach]

Extreme 3D was laptop and that was extremely painful to use. It is actually a 82845G Graphics Controller. Issues I had with this one was display going hectic and only shutting it off would fix, no driver would fix this. Windows XP.

Extreme 2 which was a desktop, and was a 82865GV Graphics Controller. This was generally a tiny bit smoother. But had other issues, like the driver would fail randomly (all versions) and it would send Windows XP back to 16 colour. Still very slow at 2D.

GMA3100 which was a desktop, G31 chipset, still terrible performance and had little textures out of place at times. This one I guess the driver was better as only issues was performance mainly. Windows aero worked, I guess, but to me it was too slow in transitions to be considered pleasurable. Windows 7.

 

[Makaveli]

About as bad as a punch in the nuts!