Intel vs AMD - integrated graphics shoot-out
Who's best for games - and Windows Vista?
Head-to-Head Make no mistake about it, the AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processor struggles to compete with Intel's Core 2 Duo, and the upcoming four-core Core 2 Quad will move the goalposts even further away. Which gives AMD a major problem until it starts to roll out Athlon 64 X4 mid-2007. Meanwhile, it can’t rely on sales of mobile processors as that sector is owned by Centrino and it must surely be worried about Opteron’s position as Intel spreads its Core technology into servers.
This grim situation has forced AMD to beat the drum about a sector where it feels it has the edge over Intel, based on market researcher Mercury Research's latest 2006 figures. The key points that it makes are:
Desktop integrated graphics are 60 per ceent of the desktop market and discrete graphics are 40 per cent.
Mobile integrated graphics are 76 per cent of the desktop market and discrete graphics are 24 per cent
That sounds about right to us
AMD has an open platform so you can choose either ATI or Nvidia graphics
Again, fair enough. If you want to buy a cheap Core 2 Duo-based PC you can bet it’ll have integrated graphics from Intel, although it would be no surprise if Nvidia came up with some new silicon during the course of 2007. With an AMD Socket AM2 processor you get the choice of ATI or Nvidia graphics.
Windows Vista and 3D Graphics – platform quality is more important
In other words, Windows 95, 98, Me, 2000 and XP didn’t put any emphasis on the power of your PC's integrated graphics engine. The games and applications you run may well require specific features and abilities but Windows itself was a pussy cat. Windows Vista changes all that as the new operating system itself demands a fair amount of graphics power if you want to run the swanky Aero Glass interface that you'll find in Windows Vista Premium and Ultimate Editions.
In Summary... AMD solutions... achieve... a visible difference for consumers in performance versus the competition [and] outstanding Windows Vista performance tomorrow on mainstream PCs available today.
Now this is interesting. AMD has produced a number of graphs that show that Intel’s new G965 chipset and its GMA X3000 graphics core is - to put it bluntly - rubbish. It’s reasonable to be condescending about the Q965 chipset with GMA 3000 core as it isn’t much more than a refreshed GMA 950 with the addition of hardware transform and lighting (T&L), but the GMA X3000 is meant to be a completely different proposition.
Windows Vista Premium requires graphics that support DirectX 9 with Shader Model 2.0 hardware along with a Microsoft Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) driver. Intel has developed GMA X3000 with that specific task in mind, so when AMD claims that there would be a "visible difference" between integrated Nvidia and ATI GPUs and the new Intel core, it's something worth investigating more closely. We decided to find out whether the argument held water.
COMMENTS
Intel have advantages
It's nice that windows vista gets lots of nice press, but I'm more concerned with the fact that AMd have yet to offer anything in the way of secure drivers to me as a linux user. intel on the other hand are co-operative and have developers in there doing their thing.
The support difference means I could never buy the amd/nvidia anyway. it'd be too risky.
My scores
When I was using my 6150 I got a score of 3.0 then I installed a 7600GS and now have a 4.5. I didnt think Vista was usable with the 6150 it was too slow to drag windows around. The 7600GS is a pretty good option for Vista since you can get the XFX one which has no fan, just a heat sink, and gets you a high enough score.
Could not find performance comparison for 6100
But from Tom's Hardware charts comparing a 6200 to a 7300 GS, the later has more than 17 times the 3dmark06 performance. This should tell you a little about why it matters what the chip is. One price point I found was a 7100 GS for about $52. Open platform means really the person buying the computer could ask for a gaming computer, even a low end one, and get a card in this vicinity, with hugely more graphic performance than a 6100.
Follow Up
Notice the price difference of 50 which I guess is about $97. Now......for $97 you can buy a rather nice graphics card........................for example for about $76 you could get a nice 7300GT (better than the previously mentioned GS), with more than 30 times the 3dMark06 performance of a 6200. So the AMD system would still be less than the Intel System, but have 30 times the performance of the tested system.....Hmmmmmm.......guess that's a little closer to Apples to Apples, price wise......make sense yet??
Missed the point
You have all missed the point of the article, anyone with any average to high level of knowledge with computers wouldn’t buy either system in the first place unless its for office use only.
The point of the article is that the everyday user doesn’t know what they are buying, the two systems are "typical" systems at the low end of the market, which is exactly the kind of systems people would consider buying.
It is irrelevant that the hardware is old, and can not be directly compared because of tech differences, simply because that is what is on offer today off the shelf’s for a similar price.
From a suppliers point of view these systems can be purchased very cheap and sold for considerable profit, this is where the money is made as margins on high end systems are comparatively low, thus this is exactly what kind of reviews the "new" user needs to read.
