So what's the deal with the "HD" GMA chipsets? Are they really any different from normal GMA chipsets? Apparently Flash 10.1 GPU acceleration supports the GMA4500MHD and other 'HD' Intel integrated GPUs. Surely it doesn't offer the same performance boost as ION or any real card, right? But what can it do? Anybody here have one? I ask this because on my notebook quest, I have found that the ASUS UL20 and UL30 are excellent laptops, besides the fact that they have GMA4500MHD GPUs. If the GMA4500MHD is actually worth something and may help out HD video streaming, then the UL30 may be what I end up getting for college.
Yes it's exactly the same CPU offloading as Nvidia Ion. It'll accelerate HD video too - h.264, wmv, divx etc, and it does it very well - arguably better quality than Nvidia and AMD's integrated graphics solutions actually. 4500MHD is different to GMAHD though - you're looking at CULV which is old style Core 2 CPU + separate northbridge, whereas GMAHD is Clarkdale CPU with graphics built in. The latter is slightly better (search our site for GMAHD )
Oh okay! Thanks! So let's say we're trying to watch the Avatar trailer on Youtube in 1080p. We have two different laptops. Both run a CULV 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo. One has ION. The other has the GMA4500MHD. Hardware acceleration on Flash 10.1 will work on both laptops. But the ION is a lot more powerful than the 4500MHD. Will there be any difference in the final product? Will the ION-based laptop run the video any smoother than the 4500MHD-based laptop? I've just found a version of the UL30 that has a real card. The UL30VT. It has switchable graphics, featuring both the 4500MHD and a G210M. Thing is, it's $40 more... which is actually an excellent deal, considering it is otherwise identical and just adds a pretty solid graphics card (I've read that it's equivalent to a 9600M). All that and an 8-hour battery life. It's 13.3", so it qualifies as an ultraportable. I'm glad my budget went up by $200, because this is worlds more powerful and a much better deal than any of those dual-core netbooks I was looking at. It makes the EEE PC 1201N and 1215N look like complete crap. I'm glad I found this.
Switchable graphics is now the way of the future. I am so sad I didn't wait 6 months for one. 3.5 hour battery life just isn't enough with a 9800M GTS.
Neither will run video smoother, they both have dedicated silicon to decode the video because it's a finite factor. It just needs "enough" GPU power, it's unaffected whether you use 1600 stream processors or just 10. Optimus works great but video acceleration will still be on your 4500MHD, even if you have a discrete card, although the Nvidia drivers will let you set the programs manually - so you can tell VLC or MPC-HC to use the Nvidia G210M if you really want, but your battery life will drop quite considerably because you'll be powering an additional bit of hardware. There are some UL30s with Core i3s that are extremely tasty, but they might be too new for some markets. Asus sends customised products to each market so everyone gets different stuff. Seriously - **** the Eee PCs! I'm glad you dropped them! Atoms are ******** for anything other than basic computing needs.
Have you looked at the Acer 3820tg? Edit: Nevermind, USA. Only the T (integrated Intel only), not TG (integrated + ATi 5470) models are available in US so far.
Most definitely. I'm convinced my old 800MHz Pentium III performed better than the Atom N270. ION > GMA HD ~ AMD Integrated > GMA4500
