Integrated graphics strike again
I had figured that Intel’s latest-and-greatest integrated graphics solution, the Intel GMA X3100, might actually be able to keep up with a discreet solution like the Mobility Radeon 9600 variant (the Radeon X1300) in our ThinkPad T60 notebooks. For comparison purposes, let me remind you that the 9600 series is pushing 4-5 years old at this point. Four pixel pipelines just doesn’t cut it anymore.
On paper, the X3100 looks great:
There’s still no discreet memory for this thing to use; it hogs some system RAM for itself. I don’t know what kind of latency penalty this causes the X3100 to incur, but I had figured it would be a little slower. In any case, you’d think I’d be able to run Team Fortress 2 on bare minimum settings at 800×600. Sadly, this is not the case. Perhaps they need to improve the hardware T&L engine’s support in their driver?