Graphics Battle

As a CPU reader, you’re probably aware of the perpetual battle between NVIDIA and ATI for dominance in the desktop graphics arena. There’s a significant third party, however, pushing myriad pixels in the mobile space: Intel. However, Intel’s presence in the mobile graphics field is felt more in the mid- and low-range markets. Both NVIDIA and ATI have various mobile graphics processors available, targeted at different groups of customers. But Intel has only a few options that are integrated into its mobile chipsets. Because we’re now transitioning between AGP and PCI-E, there are many options available in mobile graphics. There are AGP and PCI-E IGPs, numerous discrete AGP GPUs, and multiple discrete PCIE GPUs, as well. At the low end, Intel’s Mobile 8xx and mobile 9xx chipsets with a “G” designation in their model numbers have either Intel’s Extreme Graphics 2 (AGP) or Intel’s Graphics Media Accelerator 900 (PCI-E) integrated into the chipset. These GPUs have limited 3D functionality when compared to NVIDIA’s and ATI’s solutions, but they’re well-suited to 2D operations or video playback. Competing with Intel at the low end are ATI’s entire line of Mobility Radeon IGPs (AGP) and their Radeon Xpress 200M chipsets (PCI-E) for Intel and AMD processors. ATI’s Mobility Radeon 7500/9000/9200 discrete AGP GPUs also compete at the low end, alongside its Mobility Radeon X300 with HyperMemory (PCI-E). Additionally, NVIDIA offers the GeForce4 440 Go and GeForce FX Go 5200 for low-priced and thin-and-light AGP notebooks and also has the new GeForce 6200 with TurboCache available for similar PCI-E notebooks. These discrete AGP graphics processors all have varying amounts of frame buffer memory, while the low-end PCI-E parts from NVIDIA and ATI use limited amounts of discrete graphics memory in conjunction with proprietary technologies, TurboCache and HyperMemory, to dynamically share system memory.