Intel HD Graphics: device characteristics

The family of integrated chips Intel HD Graphics is an excellent replacement for a discrete, that is, a separate module of video cards. Especially actual use of the built-in video chip will be for various laptops and netbooks. Advantages of such solutions are increased battery performance and less heating of the internal space of the mobile PC.

A family of video chips

Intel HD Graphics Family includes several generations.

1. Intel HD - installed on the family of Pentium G processors and the first generation iCore 3/5/7. It is code-named Nehalem / Lynnfield. The capabilities of such a video card are very limited. Therefore, if the laptop will be used to work with graphics and for multimedia entertainment (watching movies as HD, games), then this chip will not be the best solution.
2. Intel HD 2000/3000. The second generation of integrated video chips from Intel is installed in iCore 3/5/7 processors of the second generation. It is code-named Sandy Bridge. Today it is almost not used in new notebook models, but still is a significant player in the market.
3. Intel HD 2500/4000. The third generation of integrated video logic, at the moment it is the most massive representative of the mobile device market. Such cards are part of the third generation iCore processors. This video is code-named Ivy Bridge. On performance, it is close to the cards Radeon HD 65hh.
4. The latest generation of Intel HD Graphics, codenamed Haswell. It is part of the new iCore 4 generation processors. The main model of this generation is 4600. It has two stripped down versions - 4200 and 4400. The most powerful are the 5100 and 5200 cards. By its performance, the latest model of the Intel HD 5200 card outruns most discrete mid-range video cards.

Intel HD 3rd and 4th generation allows you to fully enjoy the quality of movies with a resolution of up to 4K. Also, such video cards easily cope with the loads of video games of the last 2-3 years. Since the first generation of processors and integrated video logic is already a little outdated, we will omit it from the review of Intel (R) HD Graphics cards. Go ahead.

The second generation of video chips

To date, the video architecture of Intel HD Graphics 3000 is still used quite often. It is the ideal solution for lower-end mobile PCs. This solution allows you to comfortably watch high quality movies and even sometimes enjoy the delights of video games released in 2011-2012. However, given that budget laptops and netbooks are not bought for the purpose of multimedia entertainment, everything falls into place. The maximum resolution supported by the video card is 2560 x 1600 pixels. In addition, this generation of video logic supports HDMI-output. In order to optimize the operation of this interface, it is desirable to have the latest Intel HD Graphics driver installed.

As mentioned above, the family of the second generation graphics core is represented by two models. This is Intel HD Graphics 2000 and 3000. Despite the fact that they are both produced by the same technological process, the productivity of cards can differ by half. The reason is that the younger model has a lower core clock speed, in addition, it is equipped with only six executive devices (against 12 for the older version of the card).

Due to such differentiation, a sufficiently clear segmentation of the market is achieved . So, the user can buy a laptop with a dual- or quad-core processor and a full-fledged graphics core HD 3000 or stripped-down HD 2000 graphics. Of course, this affects the cost of production.

The third generation

The video architecture of Intel HD Graphics 4000 was presented in 2012. It is based on a 22-nm process. The peak performance of the chip is 200 gigaflops. At the same time, the previous generation of video cards from Intel was performed on a 32-nm process, and the performance was exactly 2 times smaller.

Integrated graphics allow you to use all the features of DirectX 11 and OpenGL 3.3. According to the developers' assurances and repeated tests, the Intel HD 4000 card allows you to enjoy all the charms of high-definition movies. In addition, this video logic makes it possible to feel comfortable enough in most modern games. Of course, it should be understood that some of them will require lower resolution and lower quality settings.

And what if the game does not work correctly or do any artifacts appear in the image? To fix this problem, you need to find a driver for the Intel HD Graphics 4000 driver on the manufacturer's website, download and install it. This advice seems trite, but in fact it helps. The fact is that the engineers of the company try to regularly update the drivers of their products and improve compatibility with the newest applications.

If we compare the performance of the video card with the previous generation, it increased by 30%. In addition, you can gain power by using a faster processor i7 and more RAM.

The fourth generation of video

To date, the Intel HD Graphics is installed almost in half of the notebooks. This is due to both the excellent marketing moves of the corporation and the correct approach to integration. With each new generation, video logic is becoming more and more perfect, which allows it to compete on an equal footing with discrete mid-price cards.

The release of the same chip last generation markedly affected the sales of video cards from other manufacturers. After all, there is no point in paying extra money for something that can work "out of the box". Just a few years ago, few people interested in the performance of the embedded video graphics. After all, everyone understood that such chips as Intel HD are needed only for office applications, viewing photos and films of low resolution. However, after the release of third-generation iCore processors and Intel HD Graphics 4000 video chips, the situation began to drastically change.

The budget video card has become a real competitor for discrete chip manufacturers. And these are not empty words, just look at the decline in the dynamics of sales of cards from AMD and nVIDIA. In addition, AMD was forced to abandon the release of budget graphics Radeon HD 70xx due to its non-competitiveness.

Description

Intel HD Graphics 4600 is an evolutionary development of the integrated video chip. Due to the fact that in 2010 Intel company refused from the classical scheme of separating vertex and pixel pipelines at that time and switched to the unified shader architecture, it managed to achieve regular updating of its own video logic. Every year the company improves the process of manufacturing chips, which positively affects the number of execution units and, as a result, on performance.

In the Intel HD 4600 there are already 20 executive units, which allows you to compete on an equal footing with AMD and nVIDIA chips. For comparison, the previous model HD 4000 had 16 blocks, and HD 3000 was only 12. Thus, even if we take the HD 4000 and HD 4600 chips with equal core frequency, then the computing power of the latter will be more by 25%. In addition to the number of execution units, the frequency of the video core was also increased. Now it is 1250 MHz, against 1150 MHz in the past generation. The hallmark of Haswell's processors and video logic is reduced power consumption in idle mode.

New graphics Intel allows you to support OpenGL 4.0 and DirectX 11.1 (shaders of the fifth version). Other possibilities of the chip include full-screen anti-aliasing, HDR and a number of other technologies, which allows to improve the received image. It should be mentioned that, like the previous generation core, the HD 4600 can work simultaneously with three monitors.

Theoretical calculations of productivity

Knowing about the features of integrated graphics of different generations, you can move to a comparison of their performance. For greater objectivity in the test, the budget discrete GeForce GT 630 card will participate. The performance of the cores at peak load is:

• HD 4600 - 400 gigaflops;
• GT 630 - 311 gigaflops;
• HD 4000 - 294 gigaflops;
• HD 3000 - 194 gigaflops.

As we can see, already at this stage the discrete card is inferior to the last generation of integrated graphics. However, you can not ignore the performance parameter, such as the fill rate of the scene. For this indicator, discrete graphics are several times better than integrated solutions:

• GT 630 - 13 Mtex / s;
• HD 4600 - 5 Mtex / s;
• HD 4000 - 4.6 Mtex / s;
• HD 3000 - 1.35 Mtex / s.

On the speed of rasterization, GeForce also shows the best results:

• GT 630 - 3.2 Mpix / s;
• HD 4600 - 2.5 Mpix / s;
• HD 4000 - 2.3 Mpix / s;
• HD 3000 - 1.35 Mpix / s.

At the moment, we will not affect the memory bandwidth , as the Intel HD Graphics chips have the characteristics of this indicator depending on the CPU load.

Integrated Graphics Tests

Well, let's move from theoretical principles to practical tests. First, let's compare the performance of three generations of chips from Intel. Graphics HD 3000 is tested based on the processor Core i7-2700K, HD 4000 - i7-3770K, HD 4600 - i7-4770K. At maximum load, the frequencies of the graphics cores were 1350, 1150 and 1250 MHz, respectively.

Verification is carried out with the minimum settings for video game graphics and 1920 x 1080 resolution. Moreover, filters such as anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering are disabled. The 3DMark application for the performance test was run on the default settings. Since the HD 3000 does not support the DirectX 11 technology, other video chips are tested without turning it on.

The Cloud Gate test from the 3DMark package showed the following test results:

• HD 3000 - 3221 points;
• HD 4000 - 5795 points;
• HD 4600 - 8253 points.

The Unigine Heaven test also demonstrates the significant performance of the latest generation of chips:

• HD 3000 - 213 points;
• HD 4000 - 327 points;
• HD 4600 - 446 points.

Performance in games

This concludes with the synthetic tests and turn to a comparison of card performance in gaming applications. In the game Crysis 2, the HD 4600 card is faster than its predecessor by almost a half (11.5 points against 7.7). HD 3000 received only 5 points.

F1 2011 is not so sensitive to the performance of video chips. Due to this HD 4600 has outstripped HD 4000 by only 28 percent. Noteworthy is the fact that the game is excellent even on the HD 3000 graphics, which can not but rejoice the owners of old laptops.

Applications with high quality graphics such as Metro 2033 and Tomb Raider allow you to play normally at medium or low settings in DirectX 10 mode on the HD 4600 card. Unfortunately, older chips do not allow you to normally feel in the game, since the number Frames per second noticeably sags, and the picture becomes similar to a slide show.

As a result of all tests conducted, we can say that the next round of integrated graphics development based on Haswell processors is a real step forward. Particularly pleased with the fact that even in the games of 2013-2014 release can achieve acceptable results. That is, even a budget laptop will fully enjoy the quality of multimedia entertainment.

Comparison of integrated and discrete maps

Now, from the test of integrated chips, let's move to the comparison of Intel HD 4600 and GeForce GT 630. As you can see from the figures above, the solution from Intel has a good peak performance indicator. Although at the same time, this chip is inferior to memory bandwidth and rasterization speed.

First, let's check our maps on synthetic tests 3DMark and Unigine Heaven. The comparison is performed with the maximum graphics settings in the Full HD resolution and using DirectX 11. As a result, the following test results were obtained:

1. 3DMark:

• HD 4600 - 980 bp;
• GT 630 - 919 b.

2. 3DMark 11:

• HD 4600 - 361 bp;
• GT 630 - 360 b.

3. Heaven 3.0:

• HD 4600 - 344 bp;
• GT 630 - 320 b.

As you can see, the HD 4600 chip competes on an equal footing with a discrete card, which has advantages in the number of blocks of rasterization, speed of processing textures and pixels. But, unfortunately, in gaming applications, things are a bit, but still worse. In such games as Battlefield-3, Crysis-2, F1-2011, the HD 4600 lag is somewhere around 5-20%. In the game Metro-2033 integrated graphics lagged behind the GeForce GT 630 by more than half. But in such games as DiRT Showdown and Tomb Raider, the card from Intel got the result by 12 and 22% better respectively.

results

The new integrated core from Intel is a significant step forward in the development of such technologies. Modern video chips easily bypass all performance indicators of their previous generations - the average separation from HD 4000 is 40%. And what about discrete graphics? Here we can say with confidence that if the laptop is not used only for games, it is much more correct to refuse to buy a mid-priced video card, since the built-in kernel allows to completely replace it. In addition, do not forget about energy consumption. The top processor Core i7, along with the integrated graphics consumes only 84 watts, while the discrete GT 630 based on a simple dual-core processor will initially consume 130 watts of energy. As a result, this will result in a lower battery reserve, as well as overheating of internal components.

That's why, when buying a new laptop, forget about cheap discrete graphics cards, even if they belong to the last generation. In reality, they will not be able to give the productivity gain that could justify such a purchase. Moreover, Intel HD Graphics 4600 can easily satisfy all the demands of a modern user.

In this article we used the top-end processor Core i7 for testing, but today you can buy more affordable models for the average user i5 and i3. As in the case with the previous generation, the new graphics card has a truncated model - the Intel HD Graphics 4400. Despite the smaller number of execution units, it still outperforms the third generation cards. Well, fans of ultrabooks and expensive laptops were much more fortunate, because the Haswell series processors can be equipped with a more powerful graphics core HD 5100/5200, which already has 40 execution units, which is twice as large as that of the HD 4600.

More about performance

As already mentioned above, integrated graphics cards use RAM on an equal footing with the processor. Therefore, if you install a fairly powerful crystal of the last generation in a laptop, but only a few gigabytes of slow memory, the performance results of such a configuration can be very distressing. Memory is a bottleneck for video logic, and therefore, to achieve good results, it is recommended to use its latest models with high frequencies and low latencies.

Another nuance that significantly affects the performance of not only video graphics, but the computer as a whole, is overheating. If a certain degree is exceeded, the video chip and the processor show low results in various tests and real applications. Therefore, it is recommended to regularly clean the coolers and internal space of mobile PCs from dust. The result will not take long.

It is also important to understand that the quality of graphics will depend on the chosen processor. The matter is that when the load on the core increases, the video chip receives a lower priority in the transmission of packets, thus, this affects the quality of the image. Therefore, the results of tests when comparing the budget and top processors and the same video logic will not be in favor of the former. Thus, the choice of the "heart" of the laptop directly affects the capabilities of the video chip.

And the last advice for today. For the Intel HD Graphics driver, you must install the latest driver. Even if you purchased a laptop already fully configured for work, do not be lazy to go to the official website of the manufacturer and download the latest version.