Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 600 vs Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 4500M vs Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 900

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 600

The Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 600 (also called GMA 600) is a graphics cards for embedded products (e.g. MIDs), netbooks and other small mobile devices. It is integrated in the Atom Z600 series CPUs and compared to the GMA 500 it features a twice as high clock speed of max. 400 MHz. The integrated video decoder is able to accelerate MPEG-2, VC-1, and AVC HD videos.

The graphics core is based on a licensed PowerVR SGX core and is clocked with max 400 MHz. The GMA 600 should be theoretically compatible with DirectX 10.1 and features 4 unified shaders. Because of the missing Windows BIOS support, the Lincroft SOC is currently not able to run Windows (only CE) and therefore supports OpenGL ES 2.0, Open VG 1.0, DirectX 9.L. Another restriction is the max. resolution support of 1366x768 with LVDS and 1024x600 with MIPI.

The performance wont be sufficient for playing demanding 3D games.

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 4500M

The Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500M (GMA 4500M) (sometimes also called GMA X4500 M) is a DirectX 10 capable integrated shared memory graphic card for laptops. The mGPU is integrated in the Intel GM40 and GL40 chipsets and designed for cheap laptops. The graphics card is also called Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset Family in the Intel drivers.

Compared to the GMA 4500M HD, the 4500M features a slower core clock (400 MHz versus 533MHz) and is thus a bit slower in games.

The chip itself is capable of supporting the CPU to decode HD videos, but because of the slower clock rate, the 4500M has troubles decoding 1080p videos fluently and therefore has no full Blu-Ray logo support.

The gaming performance of the 4500M is not really good. Only less demanding 3D games and very old games may run fluently in low detail settings. Sims 3 and F.E.A.R. for example achieved 30 fps (with stutters) in low deatails and low resolustions (combined with a fast CPU). 2D applications, games and Windows Vista / Windows 7 Aero are supported without any performance problems.

Compared to other modern integrated chipsets like the GeForce 9400M or the Radeon HD 3200, the 4500M is clearly the slowest especially for 3D games. Still the power consumption of the chip is quite competitive, so it may be the right choice for office tasks.

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 900

The Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 (also known as GMA 900) is an integrated (onboard) graphic chip on the Mobile Intel 915GM chipset for Intel processors. It does not support hardware T&L (Transform & Lightning) calculations (which is required for some games).

It supports DirectX 9.0 with Shader Model 2.0 (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.

The GMA 900 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. 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.

Currently there are no drivers that support Aero Glass for Windows Vista.