NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250M vs vs Intel Extreme Graphics 2

NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250M

The Nividia GeForce GTS 250M is a DirectX 10.1 graphics adapter for notebooks based on the 40nm GT215 core. It features 96 shader cores as the 9800M GT, but the memory bus is only 128 bit wide. To compensate this, the GTS 250M supports GDDR5. With DDR3 graphics memory the performance is only a a bit above the Mobility Radeon HD 4670.

The core of the GTS250M is internally called GT215 and according to Nvidia based on the current high-end desktop architecture (GTX 200 series). Furthermore, Nvidia has improved the micro-architecture for further power saving and performance increases. Therefore, the performance per shader unit should be slightly improved compared to the previous generation.

As the GeForce 9800M GT, the GTS 250M features 96 stream processors that do the work of the former dedicated pixel- and vertex-shaders. The unified shaders of Nvidia are 1-dimensional (AMD has 5-dimensional shaders which leads to the higher number of shaders).

The GeForce GTS250M also supports CUDA, DirectX Compute, OpenCL, and PhysiX to use the shaders for other tasks than rendering images (like encoding videos, calculating the physics of a game or mathematical tasks). For these special tasks, the GPU can be noticeably faster than current CPUs.

The mobile graphics card has a built in video decoder called PureVideo HD with VP4. The Video Processor 4 (VP4) supports the full decoding of H.264, VC-1, and now also MPEG-4 ASP (e.g. DivX or XviD). MPEG-1 still wont be supported, but the decoding of this codec is quite trivial on a CPU.

In conjunction with a chipset from Nvidia with integrated graphics (e.g. 9400M), the GTS 250M supports Hybrid-SLI (HybridPower and GeForceBoost). HybridPower is a technique to choose between the integrated and dedicated graphics core, if performance or battery runtime is needed. This works only in Windows Vista (and possibly Windows 7). Up to now the user has to use a tool to switch between the GPUs. Later Nvidia wants to switch automatically in the drivers. GeForceBoost is not supported by the GTS 250M because the SLI combination would not perform better.

The performance of the middle class to high end gpu GeForce GTS 250M should be clearly above the GT 240M because of it features twice as much shader cores. Demanding DirectX 10 games like Crysis should run fluently in medium to high details. Older or less demanding games should run in high detail settings and high resolutions.

Depending on the the used type of graphics memory (GDDR5, GDDR3) the performance may differ.

The power consumption of the mobile graphics card is with 27 Watt TDP relativley low (especially as the GTS 260M which is a bit higher clocked needs 10 Watt more). Furthermore, according to Nvidia, the new improved core does only need half of the power in Idle mode (compared to the previous generation).

Compared to desktop graphics cards, the GeForce GTS 250M is similar to the GeForce GT 220. The desktop GPU is higher clocked (625/1360/500-1000) and therefore should be faster in games.

Intel Extreme Graphics 2

The Intel Extreme Graphics 2 is an integrated (onboard) graphic chip with shared memory on the Intel 852 / 855 GM, GME, GMV chipsets for Centrino, Pentium 4 and Celeron based laptops. The 3D performance is very low and therefore the graphics card is not suited for 3D games. For example the 3D Mark 05 does not start due to the lack of pixel shader support. Furthermore, the card does not support Windows Aero in Vista and Windows 7.