Mobile Video Cards - GMA950, X1100, GF6150

[MercenaryForHire]

I've been looking at several different laptops recently, and while I don't do much gaming anymore, I like the occasional low-end game (WC3, C&C Generals, EVE) so I'd like to be able to play on the go. I value portability as well, so I'm leaning towards integrated video to save battery life.

With that in mind, I'm looking at laptops with the aforementioned three video chipsets.

GMA950
250MHz core - 4 pipelines
We've all heard the jokes, so let's just get them out of the way. Garbage, worthless, etc. However, its behaviour of "offload shading onto the CPU" is made much better with the advent of Core Duo. See "MacBook running games" pt1 and pt2 - albiet that's with a T2400 and 2GBs, but I don't plan on outfitting my rig with anything less than 1GB at the barest minimum.

ATi Radeon Xpress 1100
300MHz core - 2 pipelines
From what I've been able to tell, it's just an X200M with DDR2 support - which in turn is a cut-down X300. It seems to be "decent" at gaming, and being an ATI means it has better game support than the Intel.

nVidia geForce 6150
425MHz core - 2 pipelines
As far as I can tell, this is a desktop 6100 integrated GPU. nVidia means better Linux/BSD support, and theoretically it should be a strong performer - but benchmarks that I've found online show it as horribly lacking, even losing to the GMA950.

The GMA950 system would have a Core Duo 1.66GHz - the ATI and nVidia solutions would sport a Turion X2 1.6GHz.

Anyone who owns a GMA950, X1100, or Go6150 equipped laptop - please, chime in.

I'm shying away from the discrete GPU world for two reasons - price, and portability.

- M4H

 

[eplebnista]

curiosity bump

 

[hans007]

well i have a gma950 based desktop. and uh... that sucks.

i also have had a radeon xpress 200 desktop. thats fast enough to play world of warcraft where the gma 950 is not. i have no experience with the 6150, but the gma950 and xpress 200 on the desktop are the same as the mobie, just clocked higher (i think the gma950 desktop is 333mhz core and the xpress 200 is 350mhz)

 

[jonesthewine]

Recently bought a new laptop for business use...and I have the GMA950 in a xps m1210 with the T2300 and a gig o' 667MHzRAM. Your two reasons for shying away from discrete graphics solutions were my primary reasons...lower cost but more importantly increased portability via less poweer draw leading to longer battery life. I play DVDs on the machine, they run as expected. MS office apps run as expected. I game a bit still, but prefer to do that on a dedicated desktop system with x1900xt goodness.

About the only thing that you might miss with the 950 is digital vibrance or whatever equivalent ATI has...

I loaded Thief on the machine to see how it would run...it was certainly playable, though effects had turned down a bit. Luxor runs fine, a 3D Chess game runs fine, Virtual Pool 3 ran OK but not as well as on an older laptop with a GForce2GO card. iTunes visualizer does fine. Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor has no i ssues with the 950 either. I say that as long as gaming is not a deciding factor, go integrated instead of discrete.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

The ATI version seems to be the best of the three. Intel's 950 still omits T&L, which must be added in software, slowing it down a great deal more. As you saw, the 950 is the slowest. All three of those named do include hardware-based shading.

None of these are "video cards". All are buried within one or the other of the two ASICs that make up the chipset, as an integrated silicon core (IGP). As such, all use main system RAM for video, which is slower than a separate card. Of the three, only the ATI makes much of an attempt to provide a playable game platform (even though both the Xpress chip and Nforce chip both have the T&L that Intel omits from the 950).

None of these are likely to be certified for Vista's "Aero", and I doubt that the Intel chip ever could be. For that, Intel recently started making the "3000" and "X3000" IGPs. There are a number of mid-priced discrete video options for laptops, especially if buyers will ignore the largest brand names' products. I steer folks to ABS when I can (same outfit as Newegg).

htttp://www.abs.com

 

[hans007]

well the sonoma platform based machines will be out next year. i am not sure what your time frame for purchasing would be, but the g965 based chipsets would be better than gma950. the drivers for the desktop version supposedly suck right now though.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Originally posted by: hans007
well the sonoma platform based machines will be out next year. i am not sure what your time frame for purchasing would be, but the g965 based chipsets would be better than gma950. the drivers for the desktop version supposedly suck right now though.

The X3000 is part of that (965G) series, and is in limited release already, although the drivers do have serious problems so far!

 

[LLoose]

For what its worth, I do a little gaming on my gsm 950 laptop. Nothing too extensive, but it plays wow nicely if you have a gig of ram.
Look for games that are a could of years old and remember that it isnt a gaming card. If you want a gaming card, you need to upgrade. This one is great for older games, but I would'nt even bother with newer titles.

 

[hans007]

Originally posted by: Kiwi

Originally posted by: hans007
well the sonoma platform based machines will be out next year. i am not sure what your time frame for purchasing would be, but the g965 based chipsets would be better than gma950. the drivers for the desktop version supposedly suck right now though.

The X3000 is part of that (965G) series, and is in limited release already, although the drivers do have serious problems so far!

yeah i know i just ordered a desktop board, but i don tthikn it will be on laptops until the 800fsb mobile chips are out.

 

[firewolfsm]

The 6150 should be the fastest one by far, I know the 6100 was faster than the desktop ATi card by a bit and this ATi card is underclocked while the 6150 is actually faster than the 6100. You have to choose between the faster Core Duo or the better graphics on the Turion laptop.

 

[JimmyH]

How would the gma950 in a macbook compare to a Radeon 9550 in a ibook g4?

This will be strictly a portable web browsing machine w/ maybe some dvd /divx viewing. I will game on my PC. Really torn between ibook pros: cheaper, better vid, longer battery life and macbook pros: way faster processor, better screen, boot camp. Never owned a mac so any advice would be much appreciated.

 

[Piuc2020]

I owned a MacBook momentarily (traded it for a MacBook Pro) and the GMA950 was decent, I mean the GUI in OSX handled just fine as well as basic stuff like the visualizer in iTunes, I had 512mb in the MB and having the GMA950 leech up to 80mb was very annoying, the drivers also have very poor support in Windows, I can't even reduce Gamma past 1.0 and games are a big no no, not only because of crap performance but because of crap driver support and crap features.

If you are not running 3D, a GMA950 will do fine, if it run OSX's GUI well then it should be enough for basic stuff, oh also I played back a DVD (The Descent) on the macbook and it was just fine, no delay or skipping, good interlacing, etc...

 

[hans007]

well it'd probably be wise to have more than 512mb ram with a gma950.

a gma 950 is slower than a 9550 in 3d games, but i've tried it on my desktop vs. a real card and i dont think you can tell the difference for dvd / divx type stuff.

 

[beggerking]

running WOW..everything low
1024x768 res.

GMA950 - 5 fps?...
6100 - 15 fps?... playable.. but barely..

total system ram - 512mb
3400+

 

[LLoose]

Originally posted by: beggerking
running WOW..everything low
1024x768 res.

GMA950 - 5 fps?...
6100 - 15 fps?... playable.. but barely..

total system ram - 512mb
3400+

Whats with the questionmarks?
If you run it in windowed mode, you get a pretty constant 30fps with the 950. I know.. I play using my laptop.

 

[Sheek]

Could people who play WoW post their FPS on their integrated and discrete video solutions? Also, does anyone know a good place to find articles comparing FPS on recent laptop platforms? (What I've found so far is woefully out-of-date, seriously Radeon 7500's?)

I would really love it if Anand would run a laptop video round up.

 

[LLoose]

Intel 950.
512mb ram = ~30fps. Drops to 20-25ish if theres a lot of stuff going on.
1gb ram = solid 48, dips sometimes below 30.. only occasionally.

This is all low settings in windowed mode 800x600