The capabilities of the latest generation Intel integrated video processor are impressive. In many modern games and games of the past years, Intel HD Graphics 3000 demonstrates performance at the level of entry-level discrete graphics cards. The performance potential of the new product is many times greater than the potential of the previous generation Intel integrated graphics - Intel GMA HD, which in practice means the ability to use higher graphics settings in undemanding games and the ability to run modern games, as a rule, in low quality settings.

During testing, it was noticed that the Intel HD 3000 does not quite successfully cope with some games. In particular, there were problems with the brightness level: in Left 4 Dead 2 and Supreme Commander, the game scene turned out to be too dark, while the scenes in Sims 3 and HAWX 2, on the contrary, after changing the resolution setting, turned out to be too bright. Meanwhile, Mafia II didn't launch at all. Let's hope that with the advent of new driver versions, the problems that have arisen will be resolved.

Considering the excellent performance level of the new Intel architecture-generation Sandy Bridge quad-core processors, one cannot but talk about the positive impact of the central processor on the results of testing the performance of the integrated graphics.

When talking about Intel HD Graphics 3000, keep in mind that the frequency of its operation may vary depending on the specific processor model. While the video core integrated into the Intel Core i7-2720QM processor operates at a frequency from 650 MHz to 1300 MHz, the same range of values ​​for the Intel Core i7-2635QM CPU is 650-1200 MHz, and for the Intel Core i7-2630QM model - 650- 1100 MHz.

ULV (Ultra Low Power Consumption) processors have an even lower frequency response - from 350 MHz to 900 MHz, which indicates a corresponding lower level of performance. The same applies to configurations that are constrained by the cooling system, as this factor can be an obstacle to achieving the maximum performance achieved by using Intel Turbo Boost Technology.

Property	HD Graphics 3000 rating
Kernel name	Sandy bridge
Chip type	Built in
Technological process, microns	0.032
Number of transistors, million	995
Core area, mm²	216
Maximum power consumption, W	35-95
Core frequency, MHz	1350
Number of Raster Operation Blocks (ROPs)	2
Number of texture processors (TMU)	4
Number of universal processors	12
Shader domain frequency, GHz	1.35
Number of textures per squeak per pass	128
Hardware T&L	+
Memory type	DDR3
Memory bus width, bit	64
DDR3 memory frequency, MHz	800
DDR3 memory bandwidth, GB / s	12.8
PCI Express speed, maximum	16x v.2.0
SLI / Crossfire support	Not
Anisotropic filtering level	16x
Full screen anti-aliasing	There is
Samples sampled MSAA	4x
DirectX support (version)	10.1
Vertex shaders	4.1
Geometric shaders	1.0
Pixel shaders	4.1
General Purpose Computing Technologies	Quick Sync (Hardware accelerated video encoding and transcoding)
3D display technology	Not
1st RAMDAC frequency, MHz	350
TMDS transmitter frequency, MHz	External
DisplayPort support	There is
DualLink DVI support	Not
Multi-monitor output technology	There is
HDTV support	1080p / 1080i, HDMI 1.4 supported
HDCP support	1080p with MPEG-2 hardware decoding, VC-1, AVC
Built-in audio processor	Not

Intel HD Graphics 3000 is an integrated graphics core built into central processing units. Basically, this graphics chip is embedded in the older models Intel Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 of the Sandy Bridge generation (second generation intel core i).

Specifications

The characteristics of HD Graphics 3000 are slightly higher than those of its younger brother (HD Graphics 2000), although not by much. But in general, the chip still does not stand out in anything special.

The maximum operating frequency of the video adapter reaches 1350MHz (the actual value depends on the processor that the graphics chip will work with). HD Graphics 3000 is equipped with a good number of universal processors (12).

Memory

The amount of memory depends on the RAM allocated for the graphics core, because integrated video cards do not have their own video memory. How much RAM will be allocated for the needs of the graphics adapter depends on the BIOS settings, but you will not be able to allocate too much amount, no matter how much you want it.

The speed of the video card depends on the frequency and timings of the RAM modules used on the computer. This is the weak point of all integrated solutions, Intel HD Graphics 3000 is no exception. The bus width is 64 bits, which is incredibly small.

As for the supported API, everything is rather sad, you can use DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 3.3 (only OpenGL 3.1 is supported on Windows). At the moment, these APIs are hopelessly outdated. In terms of editing capabilities and working with graphics, everything is also bad, there is no support for Cuda or OpenCL, all that remains is to be content with the presence of Quick Sync, and this decoder is not supported by all programs. Although the integrated graphics capabilities are not enough for full-fledged video editing.

What tasks will such a video card cope with?

Working with office applications, using a computer to access the Internet, watching HD / FullHD videos, films or cartoons, basic work with graphics or editing applications, running old games - about the whole list of what Intel HD Graphics 3000 can do.

You can not even count on more, such chips of discrete video cards as overclocking are completely absent here. Turbo Boost technology can partially replace overclocking, although you should not pin high hopes on it, it will not give an impressive increase in performance.

Gaming capabilities of the video adapter

If we are talking exclusively about the latest in the gaming industry, then you can completely forget about it. Very few games will run on Intel HD Graphics 3000 due to lack of support for modern APIs and poor performance.

The situation is much better with older games, most of them will start and work without problems. But there are some exceptions that work fine on weaker and older discrete solutions, but refuse to run properly on Intel HD Graphics.

What's with the drivers?

Insufficient quality driver is the reason why a small part of old games refuse to work on this video card. If for the latest versions of HD Graphics Intel has tried to correct the situation, then this video card has already been forgotten.

While installing the driver is very simple, all you have to do is go to the intel website and download the required software. Updating the drivers will also not cause problems, everything is intuitive. To install a new version of the driver, you can use the Intel settings or manually download the updated installation package from the official website.

For Linux, there is no driver from the manufacturer; instead, a free solution that comes with the Mesa3D libraries is used. Updates are automatic, but if you want to manually update you will need to install the latest Mesa3D and Linux kernel.

Comparison with discrete counterparts

If we compare with video cards, then the budget models of the 4th or 5th generation of Nvidia, as well as the budget models of the Radeon HD of the 5th or 6th generation, are approximately equal in performance. Intel HD Graphics 3000 is on par with these video adapters, faster and more powerful solutions will not leave even the slightest chance for the integrated chip, but the cost of such video cards will be quite noticeable.

Conclusion

Intel HD Graphics 3000 is a great choice if you need an office workhorse and don't want to buy a separate graphics card. If you don't want to play new games or other demanding projects, a computer with an integrated graphics chip will delight you for a long time.

Hardcore gamers and other fans of new games shouldn't even look towards HD Graphics 3000, the video card will not be able to meet your needs.

The release of the Radeon HD 3850 and 3870 graphics processors in November 2007 has an impact on the balance of power across the entire line of AMD graphics cards. Radeon HD 3870, with performance not worse (and in some cases even better) compared to the Radeon HD 2900XT, became the most productive card, while the Radeon HD 3850 actually demonstrated what a gaming video card should actually be, taking into account the price ratio and performance (the previous cards “below” the 2900XT (from the Radeon HD 2600 family) were frankly not up to the requirements of modern games). But two cards, by modern standards, cannot make up a model range in any way, so the development of a line of video cards based on chips manufactured using the 55 nm process technology was not long in coming, and in both directions, both for cheaper cards and the new flagship.

On the occasion of such an undoubtedly remarkable event, a press conference was held in the Moscow restaurant "Dacha on Pokrovka", to which not only local journalists were invited, but also colleagues from all over Eastern Europe. The keynote speaker was the familiar Giuseppe Amato, AMD's CTO EMEAI Sales and Marketing. Let's go straight to the point.

Strengths that AMD plans to leverage as a competitive advantage for its GPUs in 2008 include:

• DirectX 10.1 support, which first appeared in the Radeon HD 3850/3870, will be extended to all outgoing video cards (while NVIDIA has no plans to move beyond DirectX 10 yet);
• The ability to combine video cards in CrossFire, including modes with more than three cards, will also belong to almost all cards, however, the cheapest ones will traditionally have this feature implemented in software, without using hardware bridges;
• Support for DisplayPort digital interface and further development of a dedicated UVD unit for hardware decoding of video compressed in H.264 and VC1 formats used on Blu-ray and HD-DVD;
• The most advanced process technology (55 nm) among GPUs used for production and PowerPlay technology, which dynamically controls the switching on and off of functional blocks in the chip, which allows to reduce energy consumption in modes of partial use of the power of the graphics accelerator;
• Additional benefits if AMD graphics are installed on a platform also built on AMD components (chipset and processor). We have already talked about what the platform for enthusiasts, released last fall, and mobile, which is scheduled for release this year, is. The Cartwheel platform for office and home media center PCs will be based on chipset-based motherboards with integrated AMD 780G graphics, with support for DirectX 10, which will appear very soon, and should go on sale no later than March. An "additional advantage" in this case should be the Hybrid CrossFire technology, which makes it possible to combine the resources of the video card and the graphics core in the chipset when installing a video card.

This is how the Radeon HD 3000 line will look from now on. As for the leader, the dual-processor Radeon HD 3870 X2, since samples are already available in our laboratory, and a detailed practical material will be released in the near future, we will not focus on it. In the end, the success of such a card is directly related to performance, compared to its equal value competitors in demanding 3D games. In the meantime, we will consider what advantages the upgrade of inexpensive video cards from the segment less than $ 100-150 (by the way, the most popular) should bring, where everything is not so simple. If only because no one buys such cards to play at maximum quality settings and high resolutions, and often the owners of such cards are not interested in those games (usually dynamic "shooters") that are commonly used to measure the performance of cards. preferring more relaxed genres and other entertainment, in particular, watching movies.

In the functional characteristics of the Radeon HD 3650, there are no truncations relative to the HD 3850/3870, there is also support for CrossFire and a UVD decoder, among the supported interfaces there are both Dual Link DVI and HDMI, and the most modern DisplayPort, which has double the bandwidth and does not requiring royalties, unlike HDMI, which should speed up its adoption.

The number of possible options in which cards based on the Radeon HD 3650 can be produced is surprising, manufacturers will be able to install both GDDR3 and DDR2, and in both cases (which is not quite correctly noted on the slide) a different amount of memory can be installed (256 or 512 MB GDDR3 or 256, 512 or 1024 MB DDR2). Of course, the relevance of cards with a gigabyte of DDR2 memory is not great, and the rest of the options will surely find their consumers.

Of course, provided that the retail prices correspond to the recommended ones, since in this case it is correct to compare with the Radeon HD 2600 Pro from the previous line, which the 3650 confidently wins. In comparison with the GeForce 8600 GT, the advantage is also promised everywhere, even in the game Crysis and others, associated with a high load on shader units.

Although the description of cards from the Radeon HD 3400 family contains references to high (for their price) 3D performance, since the price itself should be less than $ 50, according to the official positioning, these cards are no longer designed for fans of modern 3D games. Rather, first of all, they are designed for consumers of HD-video content.

AMD compares the cost of such a card to a pair of HD-DVD discs, and these costs look like a really commensurate investment. Despite the fact that such cards are "able" enough, they can be used to assemble media centers and home theaters in a compact body. Due to the extremely low heat dissipation, most manufacturers will equip such cards with passive cooling. And compared to early implementations of integrated HDMI support, there is now such a useful addition as support for the transmission of 5.1-channel sound in Dolby Digital and DTS formats through this interface.

The Radeon HD 3470 also has compatibility with the upcoming 1440p HD video format.

The reference cards assume active cooling using cheap small-sized coolers, however, as already noted, such cards are unlikely to make up the majority (maybe only the cheapest ones), the prevalence of passive heatsinks is more likely. At the same time, it is interesting to note that the reference version HD 3450 has a low-profile format and is equipped with an HDMI-out; an adapter will be used to connect a monitor via DVI. These cards will be the first to support Hybrid CrossFire technology, which is worth saying a few words about.

The main purpose is to provide users with the opportunity to play modern games despite such a low cost for the platform as a whole (after all, motherboards based on chipsets with integrated video, especially in the mATX format, are also traditionally distinguished by attractive prices). Of course, in a purely practical sense, there is no question of any outstanding results in tests with maximum graphics settings and artificially twisted anisotropic filtering and full-screen anti-aliasing settings. The second advantage of having two graphics cores in a computer is the ability to automatically switch to using a more economical graphics core integrated into the chipset, when the graphics card's functions for accelerating 3D or video content are not in demand. Finally, multimonitoring, although it does not directly relate to the Hybrid CrossFire technology (but, on the contrary, is implemented when it is disabled), will allow, as is the case with motherboards on the AMD 690G chipset, to connect up to four monitors to an inexpensive computer. That, as prices for LCD monitors decrease, it is gaining more and more practical value, since it can be useful in a variety of situations, to increase comfort and productivity, although it is still perceived in the old fashioned way by many as something exotic and not widely available.

How effective will it be to combine the capabilities of the integrated video and graphics core on a video card? For the upcoming AMD 780G chipset, which will have reciprocal support for Hybrid CrossFire, and the Radeon HD 3470 cards, such relative values ​​are given, namely, the performance should more than double if we take the speed of the graphics core in the chipset as a unit. That in absolute terms in a number of popular games should correspond to the difference between "non-playable" and "playable" mode. It sounds tempting, since the lag between the needs of games and the capabilities of graphics cores (even the most successful ones) in chipsets, as well as in the cheapest video cards, which has existed so far, is well known, and it would be nice to do something to improve the situation. We, of course, as soon as the opportunity arises, will test and find out how well this idea has been implemented.

Introduction

The era of modern integrated graphics solutions from ATI began several years ago, when the company announced the super popular Radeon Xpress 200 system logic set for AMD processors. Of course, a few years before this, the Canadian company pleasantly surprised the public with the announcement of the Radeon 9100 IGP with an integrated Radeon 9200, but at that time the set of system logic was intended exclusively for Intel Pentium 4 processors and their derivatives.

The Radeon Xpress 200 was a slightly different solution, because it not only carried PCI-E support on motherboards, but for the first time was intended for AMD processors, and not Intel, as it was before. Debuting in 2004, the Xpress 200 has found its way into an incredible number of motherboards, used extensively in both desktops and laptops. Having received the most powerful built-in graphics core of the Radeon X300 class (which, by the way, was nothing more than the "most popular video card" Radeon 9600, but for PCI-E), the user could well save on a card for a future upgrade, at first he was content with the "build-in" ...

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Even though the video core was slightly cut in comparison with its discrete counterpart in clock frequencies, and the video memory was taken from the operational one, the users had enough of it. One way to increase the performance of the embedded Radeon Xpress 200 solution was to unsolder the 16- or 32-MB GDDR video memory chips on the motherboard. At their cost, such improvements were penny, but they raised the overall performance very noticeably, because in each game such "tuning" responded with extra FPS.

The Radeon Xpress 200 chipset lived for a long time, and until 2007, with some changes, it was actively used in various laptops and on motherboards as the main video subsystem. True, the manufacturer managed to change the name of the integrated video core, first to the Radeon X1100, and then to the Radeon X1200 \ X1250, but the performance of this solution remained approximately at the same level as at the end of 2004.

It was becoming clear that the integrated ATi / AMD graphics required radical changes, especially since by that time DirectX 10 and shaders number 4.0 were already actively used in most mid-price and cheap solutions.

Integrated Radeon HD

The endless evolution of the Radeon X200 finally ended in revolution when, in 2008, AMD introduced a line of completely new AMD 780G chipsets with an integrated Radeon HD 3200 video core. This time the prototype for it was a cross between the Radeon HD 3450 and the Radeon HD2400. The chip received 40 scalar processors, 4 texture units and 4 ROP "s - such a powerful hardware filling was enough to get the performance level of the Radeon X1600 and play most modern games, even digesting games on the Unreal Engine 3 with ease.