Graphic Memory Intel HD 4000 Review or Performance

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Notice I did not say "good" I said "fairly decent".

However, Intel has made very good progress since their GMA 4500 integrated graphic core in only a few years; due to Apple's prodding for better integrated graphics performance. The Intel HD 4000 is basically equal to to the desktop Radeon HD 5550 and the integrated Radeon HD 7660g is basically equivalent to a desktop Radeon HD 5570. Yeah, sure, the Radeon HD 7660g does perform better than the Intel HD 4000. However, how long has AMD/ATI been producing integrated...

blazorthon

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It performs generally a little behind the Radeon 6450 in gaming performance. It's an integrated GPU, so its memory depends on how much memory you give it from your system memory. All in all, it is among the worst options for gaming, but it's decent for basic stuff such as most average usage, HTPC usage, and office work.

Other than its dismal performance for gaming, it is also hindered by the poor Intel drivers and in the case of many OEM systems, even worse custom drivers.
 

cumi2k4

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check this chart out: (you might have to scroll down a bit, it's on the right table)
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html

basically, it's good enough for browsing or office work.... for gaming? good enough if you want to play games from 2005 or below.

Also, don't bother minding the video memory, i think they share it with the RAM (btw even if you have 128 GB RAM, the gpu performance will still suck)
 
The Intel HD 4000 is a fairly decent IGP especially since it is from Intel. Below is a review. Note that not all Intel HD 4000 in laptops are equal. The Intel HD 4000 more or less comes with 5 clockspeeds depending on which laptop CPU you intend on buying. Ultrabooks will have the slowest version because the ULV Ivy Bridge CPUs are tweaked for low power consumption. A the Intel HD 4000 in a quad core i7 "QM" CPU will be operating at full speed since these are the high end laptop performance CPUs where power consumption is not as important as in Ultrabooks.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-4000.69168.0.html


I was testing out the Intel HD 3000 in my laptop (Lenovo IdeaPad Y470 with 1366x768 screen). It actually was not too bad. I was able to play Fallout 3 with a mix of low and medium graphic settings which gave me pretty decent performance, not great, but decent. I also completed Mass Effect 3 in Insanity Mode; using the low graphics quality the game was definitely playable. I had to reload a few times in the last major battle on Earth with several waves of enemies including Brutes and Banshees.

Naturally, playing those games with the nVidia GT 550m was "funner", but if you have low expectations and a low budget. Intel's IGP will let you play most games that are not very graphics intensive. Crysis is not playable with the Intel HD 3000. The Intel HD 4000? Since it is 35% more powerful on average than the HD 3000, it should give you better performance, but not sure if it will be enough performance. Metro 2033 would be out of the question.
 

songorocosongo

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The HD 4000 can play COD and DayZ on Low settings and low resolutions, but even there the experience will not be smooth. Maybe around 25 frames per second in DayZ and a little more on COD. So don't even think about playing BF3.

 

DarkSable

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... you DO realize that AMD is the one who has good integrated graphics, right? Intel never has, and likely will never bother.
 

blazorthon

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Intel has made larger improvements per generation with every IGP generation in the last few years compared to AMD's improvements from Llano to Trinity. If AMD doesn't manage to improve faster than Intel, then it's not entirely unlikely that Intel won't overtake AMD in integrated graphics within another one to three generations.
 





Notice I did not say "good" I said "fairly decent".

However, Intel has made very good progress since their GMA 4500 integrated graphic core in only a few years; due to Apple's prodding for better integrated graphics performance. The Intel HD 4000 is basically equal to to the desktop Radeon HD 5550 and the integrated Radeon HD 7660g is basically equivalent to a desktop Radeon HD 5570. Yeah, sure, the Radeon HD 7660g does perform better than the Intel HD 4000. However, how long has AMD/ATI been producing integrated graphic cores that are capable of playing games compared to Intel?

Interestingly enough, the Intel HD 4000 is overall more powerful than the nVidia GT 610m. The one thing that holds back the performance of the Intel HD Family IGP is driver support. If they can improve optimization of their drivers, then Intel does not have to rely overwhelming on better hardware to improve performance.

Earlier in the year, there was an article about how the "Intel HD 5000" (not official name yet) was going to be a graphics core "monster" because it is going to have up to 20 shaders in the laptop CPU (GT3). Not sure how many shaders the desktop versions will be (GT1 & GT2), perhaps they will have 16 shaders; whatever. But at least for the release of Haswell, the shaders are going to be used more for lowering power consumption rather than a large increase in performance. While the "Intel HD 5000" is going to be more powerful than the Intel HD 4000 (I'm guessing around 15%, maybe 20%... maybe...), the clockspeeds are going to be lower to reduce power consumption. So the "Intel HD 5000" will likely be slower than the Radeon HD 7660g.

This should change when Intel releases Broadwell in 2014. With the die shrink down to 14mn, Intel should be able to maintain low power consumption while increasing performance dramatically. CPU core performance aside, the "Intel HD 6000" (for lack of a better name) might see an average of 35% increase in performance over the "Intel HD 5000"; similar to going from Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge.







 
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Naturally, AMD will not be standing still. Their 3rd generation APU, Richland, will likely include the Sea Island GPU core (Radeon HD 8xxx series). How much more of an increase that will be is unknown, but the "flagship" graphics core should be faster than the Radeon HD 7660g.

Will Intel's IGP loose ground in 2013 compared to AMD's IGP? Sure, I expect Richland's IGP performance gains will greater than 15%. But it is too early to say. AMD also needs to focus on lowering power consumption, but so far it hasn't yet. In 2014 Intel will be releasing Broadwell which should be provide a significant performance improvement as I stated in my previous post.

AMD's Kaveri has been delayed yet again into 2014 so it will be competing against Broadwell instead of Haswell. Hopefully, it is indeed delayed and not cancelled since there were cancellation rumors floating around. AMD needs to pull this one off because it more or less will define them as a CPU + GPU company, and more importantly I think from a financial standpoint, AMD will be depending on Kaveri to remain in business until AMD can diversify their product line where they are not overly reliant on the CPU/APU/GPU segments in computers and laptops.

Anywaste, Kaveri is AMD's next evolution of the CPU + GPU which will hopefully bring about shared memory and unified address space between both CPU and GPU cores. AMD claims this evolutionary step can dramatically improve overall performance (CPU & GPU) as well as decrease power consumption (by 33% ??). But that's in 2014...
 

blazorthon

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Even the best HD 4000 can't touch the Radeon 5550 on average. That's around where the Radeon 6550D from the Llano A8s sits at with cheap memory such as DDR3-1333 and maybe also DDR3-1600, with the Radeon 5550. HD 4000 usually tops out near the Radeon 6450. Also, the Radeo n7660D with decent memory is closer to the Radeon 6670 DDR3 than it is to the Radeon 5570 DDR3. Maybe the 5570 GDDR5 can keep up, but not the 5570 DDR3 unless it gets a good overclock.

Also, AMD's Trinity did reduce power consumption. It did such a good ob of it that not even the Ivy Bridge Pentiums and i3s can get idle power consumption as low as the A10-5800K on average. Even the desktop Piledriver (Vishera) lowered power consumption a little compared to the Bulldozer models.

AMD claimed that Kaveri is still set for 2013 just a few days ago, so I'm not sure of where the 2014 numbers came from (they were probably just rumors). Kaveri will use a GCN GPU based on Cape Verde that will be comparable to the Radeon 7750's GPU, although it'll probably perform more like the Radeon 7750 DDR3 if there aren't any memory improvements be they in the controller, cache, and/or memory controller channel count.

More than performance improvements from Intel, I want to see driver improvements. All the performance in the world won't matter if they don't get drivers in line. From what I've seen of their improvement over the last year, I expect Intel to achieve graphics driver quality parity with AMD and Nvidia in record time compared to how long it took AMD to catch Nvidia.
 
While Trinity APUs did reduce power consumption compared to the desktop Bulldozer CPUs, it still uses more power than the Llano APUs. If I remember correctly, the difference between Trinity and Intel CPUs is a mere 2w at most with Trinity consuming less. The problem come when the CPU core is stressed. Even with one core stressed, Trinity APUs can consume a decent amount more than Intel CPUs.

With the Richland APU being rumored to be released in Q2 2013, I really do not think Kaveri will be offered in 2013. A Q2 2013 release for Richland makes sense because that is when the Radeon HD 8xxx are expected to be released and Richland's APU should be have the Sea Island core as I mentioned previously.
 

blazorthon

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Kaveri is set to use a Radeon 7750-based GPU, so unless AMD has changed how they're doing things, this Richland APU seems unlikely unless they're one and the same. AMD has never had an APU made with the GPU using a current GPU architecture, all of AMD's APUs use a previous (for the time) generation GPU architecture. If AMD is changing this, then great, but it seems unlikely.

EDIT: I'm not saying that you must be wrong, only that what you're saying seems to clash with what I've read.
 
All I've read are rumors and opinions I suppose. It's kinda difficult to get decent info especially when AMD is not doing very well. But Richland is coming out next year regardless of whatever cores it is using. I really doubt they will release Kaveri in the same year. Doing so can lead to the samething that happened this year with the release of Trinity called the Osborne Effect. That is basically people knowing that something better is coming soon so they postpone their purchases until the new product become available. This means very little sales until the new products are released and whatever products are currently in the market must be discounted or written off as a loss.

You can read about the Osborne Effect regarding Trinity in the following article.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/919691-advanced-micro-devices-warns-on-weak-demand-what-s-next
 

agney

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well its 32 mb is its video memory but many recent games like assassins creed revelations ran on it smoothly
 

agney

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well its 32 mb is its video memory but many recent games like assassins creed revelations ran on it smoothly but in medium graphics
 

blazorthon

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HD 4000 has however much memory is allocated to it. It is not limited to 32MB (also, "mb" doesn't mean anything and by using that meaningless term, OP wouldn't know if you're referring to Mb or MB, two terms for significantly different numbers).
 

beeding

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Haha. Dont think about BF3? Boy, I play BF3 Lowest settings on 1280x1024 on LOW settings. THATS RIGHT. LOW 30 FPS though. Wont recommend using Helos.
 

User4154

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No way only 15-20%. No way. The HD 5000 will be at least a 50% increase. The HD 5100, and I'm just guessing, will be a 70-80% increase, and the HD 5200 will be 2x faster than Hd 4000. Only when the drivers are optimized, of course. Without good drivers, I would dock about 20% from each. Hope Intel gets serious about drivers or else they're screwed.
 
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