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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.
Bioshock for Mac on October 7th
I can personally attest to Bioshock being a terrific game, but the problem is that probably, many of you can as well. Let's be honest -- it actually came out for PC and consoles a full two years ago. At this point, a Mac port is probably useless, but it's coming out anyway. Feral Interactive has announced that they'll be releasing the port on October 7th of this year, so those of you Mac diehards who refuse to play games on any other platforms can finally get your fix. The game will be released for $49.95 in the US, and can be preordered on Feral's store right now. Or, you know, you can run out to Best Buy, pick up a copy for $20 and run it in Boot Camp, it's up to you. If you are going for the Mac version, however, you should know that the game doesn't support the Intel GMA integrated video cards, so you'll need a dedicated video card in your Mac to play it. Bioshock is a great game, as I've said, and if you really stretch it out, it might give you a good six months of free time entertainment -- just in time for you to pick up the Mac port of Hellgate: London, a game released in December of 2007. Oh wait.
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]
