Intel GMA HD Graphics: Is It Any Good?

Intel is very clearly concentrating on its video playback performance, not its gaming. Most of its graphics slides in the presentation here were geared that way, with only a dip into The Sims and World of Warcraft. Admittedly very popular games, but what we here at bit-tech want to play? Not really. This is also why Intel doesn't push its graphics harder than 12 shaders and add more support than DirectX 10 - that's all the shader horsepower it feels it needs for casual gaming and video postprocessing. Remember, that Intel aims for the broadest markets and on the technical side, there's a transistor budget and CPU TDP to think of.


Intel's newest integrated graphics chip has an advanced feature-set especially if you're interested in high quality video playback. Its power consumption should be lower when playing back Blu-ray content, given the extra performance its latest products offer, however it's a only couple of watts away from its rivals, which when you factor in that big HDTV and surround sound amp is arguably not significant.