Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 900 vs vs Intel Extreme Graphics 2

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.

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.