Hardware Intel HD Graphics 3000 Performance Review

How fast is the Sandy Bridge graphics system in some of the most popular games?

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2011/01/27/intel-hd-graphics-3000-performance-review/1

 

Z68 is pretty much a well known upcoming product, or an educated guess?

none of the leaked slides mention it

what i'd be interested to see is nVidia Optimus technology on Z68, imagine overclocked to 4.6GHz CPU, but the system only draw 50w during idle.

 

Can it play Crysis?

 

I completely understand not using your normal suite of test games for a GMA test, however:

I am currently in an upgrade dilemna, strapped for cash, desperately needing more frames - but a new mobo/CPU too.

It would be fantastically helpful to my "which first" choice, if you also included benchmarks against lower end cards and on, say, BC2.

 

Did you test to see if movie playback was correctly played at 23.976fps instead of 24.000fps? If it doesn't then it causes a frame pause every 40seconds which looks like a stutter

 

Given the OpenCL support.. could a game theoretically use this just for Havok Physics whilst a dedicated GPU handled all the rendering and the CPU handled the rest?

That'd be interesting to see.

 

LOL at minecraft being used in a benchmarking

 

There's a non-linear return to marginal FPS; at low FPS, every extra FPS is noticeable, but it's worth less and less the higher up you go. An FPS per GBP calculation that doesn't take this into account is problematic.

Mind you, figuring out the marginal return curve isn't that easy.

 

I think Hexus use a system in their calculations where marginal FPS below 30 is awarded double points, and marginal FPS about 60 is awarded half points.

 

On page 8, under the image, you refer to Z68. Yet in the following paragraph you call it Z67...

Typo?

 

Nice review, although I am somewhat baffled as to how and why you tested as you did. I hate to be one of those picky people who incessantly moans over the smallest thing, but:

Left 4 Dead 2
- Tested at 1280x800.
- Cost of performance measured at 1280x800.

Starcraft II
- Tested at 1280x720.
- Cost of performance measured at 1680x1050.

Minecraft
- Tested at 1920x1080.
- Cost of performance measured at 1920x1080.

Three games, (six tests) compared on four different resolutions?

Why? What on earth was the benefit of doing it like that? Couldn't you just have picked one resolution and stuck with it for easy, consistent comparison across all tests? I just can't for the life of me understand the logic of it.

Anyway, it certainly looks powerful for integrated graphics. Looking forward to seeing these Z67/8 boards...

 

Interesting article, although i'm still not convinced by Intel's driver support in the long term. AMD and Nvidia will have competing products out soon, so it will be good to compare the options available in a few months time.

Another option would be to spend the £77 price difference between the Sandy Bridge system and the Phenom II system on something like a dedicated 5750 GPU and get far superior graphics performance.

 

How would Nvidia ION2 benchmarks compare against these chips?

 

Just to flaunt my ignorance, I simply can not get over this obsession with Minecraft. I'm not arguing that it's a game worth frittering away some hours on because the game play itself has merit. But for analyzing graphics performance of hardware? COME ON! It's like going back to my old NES copy of Dragon Warrior and saying to myself "You know what would really be great? If every texture in this game was more blocky!" Who in their right mind thinks that it's actually worth it to review the graphics performance of hardware based upon this game. It's simply ridiculous. Just because it gives you a simulated three dimensional world to run around in doesn't excuse it's complete lack of any decent texturing. Again, I'm NOT SAYING Minecraft is a bad game! I'm simply saying that it's a terrible game GRAPHICALLY.

 

I've never played it, but as far as I know you can build some pretty huge stuff with it. I'd imagine that could push a graphics chip pretty hard.

 

Yeah, agreed. Oh, and while they're at it, dig out a copy of Wolfenstein 3D and test the GFX on that too.

 

A good thing about Minecraft is that it uses OpenGL and as you can see in the benchmarks it shows that Intel still has poor support for it in their drivers compared to Direct3D.

 

I'd like to know when those Z boards are coming out myself. I see the "second quarter of this year" part but I wonder when that might be. I haven't pulled the trigger on sandybridge yet and when I do (soon I hope) I'll be wondering should I wait for those or just go with a P67 and lose the use of the graphics.

I still think it's pretty stupid they did it like that.

 

24Hz support?

 

How about subjective image quality tests. Previous Intel chips have not performed well here?