Gaming on Integrated Graphics: No Longer Crazy
Gaming on integrated graphics? You've got to be kidding, right? I mean, standalone cards are pushed to the limit by games. You would expect that a system "saddled" with integrated graphics would be too handicapped. According to an Intel blog, with the latest release of their G965 integrated graphics chipset drivers, that's not necessarily the case.
Traditionally, integrated graphics have been the weaklings of the graphics world – sure there are a lot of them sold, but traditionally they have been practically useless for 3D gaming. Until now that is - G965 has grown some muscle…
Until very recently, Intel’s G965 software drivers did not support hardware vertex shading, but rather let the CPU do the work instead (we have very powerful CPU’s so this translates into fabulous 3DMark scores, and great performance on some games). But quite a few of the latest and most popular games require hardware vertex shaders and so this approach had an Achilles Heel.
But the release of the latest Windows XP drivers changes things quite considerably by introducing support for hardware vertex shading. So if you want better performance for free just click here.
Until very recently, Intel’s G965 software drivers did not support hardware vertex shading, but rather let the CPU do the work instead (we have very powerful CPU’s so this translates into fabulous 3DMark scores, and great performance on some games). But quite a few of the latest and most popular games require hardware vertex shaders and so this approach had an Achilles Heel.
But the release of the latest Windows XP drivers changes things quite considerably by introducing support for hardware vertex shading. So if you want better performance for free just click here.
What do we think? Our biases are ingrained deeply, but watching the video, we were impressed.
Windows Vista drivers, according to the blog post, will be out soon.
