Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950 vs Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) X3100

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950

The Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 (also known as Intel GMA 950) is an integrated (onboard) graphic chip on the Mobile Intel 945Gx chipset for Intel processors. It is a faster clocked version of the GMA 900 and does not support hardware T&L (Transform & Lightning) calculations (which is required for some games). Compared to the GMA 900 it now supports Shader Model 3.0 (instead of 2.0) and can decode 2 HD Streams simultaneously.

It supports DirectX 9.0 with Shader Model 3.0 (Vertex Shader are calculated in Software - by the CPU) and OpenGL 1.4. Furthermore, the chip is able to accelerate the decoding of MPEG2 videos and supports Motion Compensation (2 HD Streams simultaneously). Modern HD videos in MPEG 4 or VC-1 can not be decoded with the graphics card. 

The GMA 950 is integrated in the following chipsets with different rendering clock rates (that affect the 3D performance):

• 945GU: 133 MHz (Lakeport for Intel A100 and A110)
• 945GSE: 166 MHz (for Atom)
• 945GMS: 166 MHz / 250 MHz (1.05V)
• 940GML 166 MHz / 200 MHz (1.05V) - Celeron M (ULV)
• 943GML: 200 MHz
• 945GM: 250 MHz (Calistoga)
• 945G, 945GC, 945GZ: 400 MHz (Lakeport)

Using the GMABooster tool, slower variants can be clocked to 400 MHz to increase the 3D performance (use at your own risk, not supported by Intel!).

The GMA 950 can not be described as a graphics card that is sufficient for gamers. Still Intel published a list  of games that will run (not needingly beautiful) on the notebook (list is for the GMA 900). Some old 3D games and especially 2D games should run without problems. The advantage of integrated graphics cards, is that they have a low power consumtion and therefore save battery life. Furthermore, the laptop may stay cooler and more silent than laptops with dedicated graphics cards. For office programs and surfing the performance is more than sufficient.

The newest drivers support Windows Vista with Aero Glass effects and according to some of our readers it should run fluently.

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) X3100

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) X3100 is an integrated (onboard) graphic chip on a Mobile Intel 965GM (with 500 MHz core speed) and 960GM (400 MHz) chipset (for Merom = Core 2 architecture). It is the successor of GMA 950. Most interesting is the integration of a fully programmable pipeline. Due to the integration of DirectX9 and DirectX 10 features (with drivers later than 15.9.0.1472), HDR and Hardware Transform & Lighning (T&L) - predecessor only had Software T&L - should be ready for Windows Vista Premium (support Aero Glass fully). Respective the data, the peformance should be clearly better than GMA 950.

The 13.5 Watt current consumption is relatively low, because it includes all chipset functions (therefore, this value is not compareable to dedicated graphics cards).