GDC 2007: Intel's G965 Integrated Graphics Performance Sneak Peek

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by Dustin Sklavos

== Intel's Santa Rosa platform is coming soon and many notebooks will be using the Intel G965 graphics as part of an integrated graphics solution. Intel has been working on writing drivers to utitlize the new hardware and give better integrated graphics performance. Based on a demo Intel gave us today at the Game Developers Conference 2007, games such as Half Life 2 on integrated graphics using the G965 should be quite playable ==

 

Forgive me for waxing a bit poetic: Santa Rosa, California is where I was born and I grew up in the surrounding area. Santa Rosa is also the codename for Intel's next mobile platform.

Everyone knows about all the other exciting parts of the platform: draft-n wireless technology and flash memory, but we all kind of avert our eyes when we discuss Intel's G965 graphics part.

And why shouldn't we? On its release it was a dog, performing in many cases slower than Intel's own GMA 950 despite the hardware being vastly superior. It's spoken of in hushed tones.

Well, start talking. I'm in San Francisco at the Game Developers Conference 2007 and had an opportunity today to speak privately with Intel's PR Managers regarding the G965 and view demonstrations. When the specifications were released last year, they talked about Shader Model 3.0 support and most importantly Hardware Texture &amp; Lighting (finally!), but the performance didn't bear those specifications out.

The G965 is essentially a completely new architecture, and when the driver team set out to develop it, they were interested mainly in Vista functionality and in improved video processing. This focus has resulted in very impressive video processing and decoding that rivals and exceeds some discrete graphics solutions. While I generally take these public relations bits with a grain of salt, I couldn't really deny the fact that regardless of who you compare it to or how you slice it, G965's video rendering looked GOOD. Stairstepping wasn't an issue, and it played the test DVD (HQV for those wondering) silky smooth.

What's more exciting, however, is that Intel's driver team - now satisfied with Vista compliance and video rendering using Intel's proprietary ClearVideo technology - has shifted their focus back to gaming. Specifically, revealing the hardware capabilities that were announced last year.

The G965 has up to this point been running software vertex rendering and texture and lighting. I was able to experience an early engineering beta driver that exposed these features in hardware, and the performance was impressive (especially considering it's an integrated part with the word &quot;Intel&quot; attached to it).

I had the opportunity to play Half-Life 2: Episode One using Intel's early G965 driver, and at 1024x768 with most settings on high, no HDR or AA, the game was surprisingly smooth and very playable. Given the nature of the driver, this bodes extremely well for the future.

Intel will be posting a beta driver within the next few months, releasing a finalized driver later this year. This, coupled with their publicized pursuit of new talent for their graphics division and their release of a laptop gaming toolkit for developers (as will be reported later), shows an increased interest in gaming that can only benefit us as notebook users.

 

WOW...thanks a lot Pulp. Looks like Intel is going to increase its Market Share in the mobile graphics market again.

It does seem very useful having an integrated GPU as powerful as that, and still giving very good battery life.

Does it consume more power than a GMA 950 Pulp? Did you get a chance to find out.

 

This is not good ..not good at all. I just bought a notebook with intel's gma 950 in it.

 

It makes you wonder how Nvidia's new Go 8000 series will fare in comparsion, and with their lackluster DRIVERS.

 

It definitely looks like Intel is shifting focus to gaming more. With the AMD / ATI merger they have to. There's a lot of rumors of some pretty hot integrated graphics solutions AMD will have in the next 2 years or so.

 

That's extremely impressive for an integrated GPU; even my Radeon X700 256MB has some trouble at that resolution and setting.
I may actually consider getting a GMA X3000 in my next notebook; I'll have to see more benchmarks first though.

 

Interesting thing you say there Chaz. I always thought you would go for a dedicated ATI/NVIDIA solution.

Pulp, thank you for this great post. I played HL2, but not Episode 1. I understand from Chaz that it is very impressive and that an X700 struggles at that game. So I guess that Intel is going to be the top of integrated videocards again.

Great to see that Santa Rosa is a powerful platform. The only thing I would like to see is how to switch your dedicated videocard of to increase your battery life while having no troubles with Vista Aero Glass.

-Notebook Solutions

 

At last it seems Intel is becoming a serious competitor in the IGP business, performance wise.

 

I just started playing HL2 E1 on my E1505. I think it has the same settings you mention and plays pretty well - but occasionally seems to hesitate.

So are we saying an integrated 965 "might" play games like HL2 nearly as well as a dedicated ATI x1400?

Yes I would like to see the scores too. Could be interesting.

 

It actually seems so...

 

Is it better than a geforce 7400?

 

I highly doubt it will be better than a 7400/X1400.

 

Nice work there, Pulp! I'll admit to being a little skeptical when I first started hearing the hype on Intel's new IGP solution, but this time it may actually bear fruit. At this stage, I'll consider myself "cautiously optimistic".

By "stairstepping", I presume you mean aliasing?

 

So Intel's X3000 is finally showing it's potential. I'm curious whether you played on a desktop version or the laptop version? I asked this because the desktop version is clocked vey aggressively at 667MHz and usually coupled with DDR2 800 memory, while the laptop version will be clocked at 400MHz and will continue to use standard DDR2 667 SODIMMs. (Santa Rosa doesn't appear to support DDR2 800 SODIMMs because of power concerns and Intel will skip directly to DDR3 on their next mobile platform). It's really too bad that Intel is taking so long in getting their gaming drivers done since based on their original driver roadmap, driver 14.26 would have had initial hardware support for all features activated and was supposed to be released in December, but so far Intel just has a 14.25.50 refresh which only supports hardware PS.

In terms of power consumption, the GM965 in Santa Rosa has a maximum power consumption twice that of the 945GM Napa platform. There are supposed to be more advanced power saving measures so that "average" power usuage and battery life will be similar. Santa Rosa Meroms will also support FSB throttling to 4x100MHz allowing the CPU to downclock to 600MHz versus the 1GHz of current 667MHz FSB Meroms.

 

Seems like the X3000 is equal to an X1400/7400Go. Remember that the drivers that Pulp played on are pretty new, so better drives may come. Great job of Intel here.

 

I can feel my next notebook getting smaller.

 

It will come out with 667MHz memory yes, but it will support 800MHz DDR II.

 

I was using the desktop version, as they didn't have the mobile available. Still, 2/3 of the performance of the desktop version in the mobile one would be pretty frigging impressive, and I was honestly amazed to see it running as well as it was. It was glitchy - remember, these aren't even beta drivers, they're an engineering sample - but it was VERY playable and I was blown away.

If the mobile version is nipping the heels of the one I played, I'll be really pleased.

 

That's very impressive.
However, I'm a bit skeptical on how good is the performance. I doubt it can equal up to an X1400.
Well we'll wait to see if benchmarks can offer us a more indept view of where the Intel G965 stands.
I'm quite curious to see how well the G956 can play FEAR or other newer games.

 

Great job Pulp! Did they mention anything about the release date of Santa Rosa? How long do we have to wait for Santa Rosa?

 

I don't think the performance of the mobile X3000 will be able to beat the Mobility X1400. It'll probably be inline with the Mobility X1300 once decent drivers are out and that is sufficient for the low end. From what I've heard of the architecture it is a 2 pipeline, 8 unified shader design. From that perspective, it actually has less texture power than the GMA 950 despite the clock speed advantage, but a lot pixel processing power, more inline with ATI's 3:1 TMU S design policy. The 8 unified shaders appear to be scalar based, but more complicated then nVidia's scalar stream processors. So something in between ATI's complicated vector unified shaders and nVidia's simple highly clocked scalar unified shaders. In fact, for better or worse, Intel seems to have taken the "unified shader" to a new level since their shaders not only do standard pixel, vertex, and presumably vertex work, but Intel has also made them to related graphics functions that usually have dedicated fixed function units in ATI and nVidia architectures and Intel's unified shaders are used for video processing too while ATI and nVidia have dedicated units for that. This unified unified shader concept fits into Intel's strategy since they have a limited transistor budget on an IGP, but it may limit multitasking performance and perhaps performance in games that use a wide variety of functions at once (instead of just say heavy pixel work) since there may be too much shader competition.

 

I think Santa Rosa is due in April, along with nvidia 8 series gpus.

 

I heard early May for Santa Rosa and Nvidia 8k GPUs either way were looking at early Q2

 

I'm playing Counter-Strike: Source at 1280x800 with heavy performance tweaks on a mobility x300. I'd be happy if the x3000 could rival an x1300 in power :-D.

 

So these are the first integrated DX10 mobile GPUs?

 

On another note, what exactly does video processing entail?

 

Making your own movies, re-encoding and reformatting data (i.e., .wmv to .avi) would all fit under that.

Santa Rosa is coming out in May. Nvidia is releasing the Geforce Go 8600, 8400, and 8300 sometime around the SR release.

I sense my next laptop getting substantially smaller. It'd be disgusting to see an 11" or 12" laptop like the Asus U1 or W5F sporting the X3000, getting 7400/X1400 power in a fully DX10 11" platform.

 

I would definitely love to see the GMA965 (X3000) be able to compare even to low end dedicated cards. I've been interested in getting a tablet PC for a while, but obviously their graphics are usually sub-par, and I would like to have something with the power to handle even some of the more basic graphics intensive tasks I do.

 

It will compare to low end dedicated cards. From some pictures I've seen, Call of Duty 2 was running at 60fps at what looked like fairly respectable settings on the X3000 - very impressive, and seemingly will easily blow X1150 and 6150 out of the water. Although, we'll have to see what Ati/amd and Nvidia come up with.

 

Very exciting! One wonders if 965 based laptops will stay at competitive prices on release.

 

Like how does the mobile chip compares with desktop? 3/4? 4/5?
So that way we can have an idea on what performance to expect based on pulp's description.

 

Would like to know as well.

 

It would appear to be so. While it is obvious that nVidia and ATI will have DX10 integrated graphics out, they havent announced their gpus yet so that would make Intel the first to have an integrated DX10 mobile GPU.

 

I had heard there will be 2 versions of this chip, one of which will be "gimped" for business models and won't have hardware T&L. Is this true? If so, then will the GMA965 really be much of an improvement over the 950?

 

Better integrated solutions? About time. Only good for the consumer and the majority of high street shoppers who get tricked by flashy marketing. OK, it probably won't be above an X1400, but its still for the better

Still makes me shudder when I walk past shops and next to a laptop with GMA 950 and the sign boasts of its "gaming power" with a pre-rendered screen shot

 

Hi folks,

I'm a bit of a n00b... could you please advise me on whether these x3100 issues have been sorted out? Did the performance end up being good or bad?

The unit I'm looking at is as follows:

HP dv6665ca (Canadian version)

Features:
2GHz Intel Centrino Core 2 Duo T7250
2GB DDR2 SDRAM
240GB Hard Drive
DVD Super-Multi Lightscribe Drive
15.4" WXGA TFT LCD
Intel GMA X3100 video graphics
Wireless 802.11a/b/g/n
Integrated Webcam
Integrated Biometric Fingerprint Reader
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium, Bilingual
Weight: 6.14 lb

The other unit I'm looking at is:

HP dv9625ca

Features:
2.0GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL-60 (512 KB + 512 KB L2 cache)
2GB DDR2 SDRAM, expandable to 4GB
240GB 5400rpm Dual Hard Drive (2x 120GB SATA)
LightScribe Super Multi 8X DVD±R/RW with Double Layer Support
17.0" WXGA+ High-Definition BrightView Widescreen (1440 x 900)
NVIDIA GeForce Go 7150M (UMA) with up to 559MB video RAM
HP Pavilion WebCam with integrated Microphone
802.11a/b/g WLAN
Bluetooth
Integrated 10/100BASE-T Ethernet LAN (RJ-45 connector)
High speed 56k modem
Ports: 5-in-1 integrated Digital Media Reader for Secure Digital, MultiMedia, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, or xD Picture cards; 4 USB 2.0; 2 Headphone out; 1 microphone-in; 1 VGA (15-pin); 1 TV-Out (S-video); 1 RJ-11 (modem); 1 RJ -45 (LAN); 1 notebook expansion port; 1 IEEE 1394 Firewire (4-pin); 1 Consumer IR
Includes: Mobile Stereo Earbud Headphones (1 pair) and HP Mobile Remote Control
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium, Bilingual
Software Included: Symantec Norton Internet Security 2007 (including 60 days complimentary live update); HP PhotoSmart Premier; HP Quick Play; Muvee AutoProducer DVD Edition with Burning; Roxio Digital Media Plus; Microsoft Works; Microsoft Office 2007 Student and Teacher Edition (60-Day Trial Version)
Dimensions: 15.16"L x 11.22"W x 1.65"H
Weight: 7.7 lb

I don't really care about the weight, screen size, or battery life. The 17" would be nice but the GPU is more important. This will be a desktop replacement that will be plugged in constantly. I'm also a little skeptical of the Turion in the 9500 series. I don't need a top of the line machine. Just the ability to play / stream video, play 2-3 year old games, etc. Will this do it? I bought a Sony VAIO a couple of years ago and it couldn't even play Civ III, so I'm being a bit overcautious.

Thanks in advance.