Let's finish our tour by the "graphics" of Intel. As you probably know, even if Intel is the market leader in graphics solutions, the company offers only IGP, integrated graphics card alias. There are many models and so it's time to do a quick summary of what exists. Note that Intel retains the same name for its IGP but tends to vary the frequency depending on the chipset, a GMA 950 on a i945GZ example, is less than a GMA 950 on a i945GC ...

DirectX 9 chips

In conventional chip, we find the GMA Family 900 and Family 3000, without the X. 9xx Two versions exist, the 900 and 950. The first supports DirectX 9, but a few features missing to prevent use while the Aero version 950 is perfectly compatible with the interface of Vista and Windows 7. The chips support the 2.à Pixel Shaders and Vertex Shaders are calculated on the CPU (version 2.0, 900 3.0, 950). The GMA 3000 and 3100 (incorporated into chipsets) are, in practice, as overclocked GMA 950 and GMA 3150 integrated in the Atom does nothing more. No chips does not support accelerated decoding of HD formats, even if the MPEG-2 is supported on some versions.

Fleas DirectX 10

The IGP family X3xxx and those of family 4500 support DirectX 10 and Shader 4.0 (except the X3000, which is limited to version 3). The X3000 has 8 units of calculation, the 4500 has 10. The 3000 series comes in 3 versions: X3000, X3100 (mobile) and X3500. The three chips decode MPEG-2 and partially decode VC1 but not H.264. The GMA 4500, X4500, X4500 HD AND HD X4500M have the same architecture and differ in the video: no acceleration on the 4500 partial acceleration on the X4500 and full acceleration on the X4500 HD and HD X4500M.

The built-in CPU

As we have seen, the GMA 3150 integrated in the Atom does nothing more than the GMA 3100 classic. GMA of the HD Core i3, 5 and 7, meanwhile, is an enhancement of GMA X4500 HD: 12 stream processors instead of 10 and a dual decoder for HD formats.

The GMA 500

Unlike other GMA from the work of Intel, the GMA 500 is a PowerVR chip reputation. Compatible (in theory) with DirectX 10.1, this chip offers 4 stream processors and fully decodes the major HD formats. It is usually related to Atom processors, even if this chip SoC integrates a Pentium M also exists.