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Intel GMA HD graphics review deems them excellent for video, mediocre for gaming
Our Intel Arrandale / Clarkdale review bonanza was sprinkled with a few graphics benchmarks, but there was never a concerted effort to break down the specific upgrades on the 45nm GPU that comes as part of the new CPU package. That omission has now been corrected by Bit-tech, who've delved deep into the murky waters of embedded graphics and report that Intel's focus appears to have been firmly on video playback. Noting full bitstreaming (our HD editors inform us that's a big deal), Blu-ray with picture-in-picture, and HDMI 1.3a support, the lads commended the "very smooth" 1080p playback of h.264-encoded video. While their conclusion about gaming was less glowing -- finding that Intel's latest gen only keeps up with older hardware -- they couldn't help but recommend the new processors on account of their feature-rich video playback and energy efficiency. More benchmarks at the source link.
GMABooster gives your netbook's integrated graphics a nudge
It won't exactly provide an Ion-level boost in performance, but it looks like the GMABooster app that's been floating around for a little while does indeed deliver on its promise of providing a small helping hand to the stock Intel GMA 950 graphics found in the majority of netbooks out there. More specifically, the application boosts the clock speed from the standard 133MHz or 166MHz to a full 400MHz, or the same as the non-low voltage chipset found on standard laptops. According to the folks at UMPC Portal, that translates to about a 20% gain in Crystal Mark benchmarks, although you can also unsurprisingly expect to take a slight hit in battery performance as a result. Better still, the app is even available for OS X and in addition to Windows and Linux, so folks that have already been busy tweaking their netbooks in other areas aren't out of luck.[Via TweakTown]
