First post, by kainiakaria
Intel Graphics have been a meme since the year 2000. We used Intel Integrated Graphics and we knew how crappy they were, that was why it was the butt of every joke when it came to graphics. Expecting integrated graphics to run games is like expecting a Honda Civic to win Le Mans. I remember trying to run Star Wars Jedi Knight Jedi Outcast on a Compaq Deskpro EN Intel i810 based system and it not wanting to even boot up, the Dell Optiplex GX1 that I had been using at the time could run that game and that computer had ATI 3D Rage PRO as its integrated chipset and that by the way says a lot about 1998 era tech. 1998-1999 models of the Compaq Deskpro EN also have the ATI 3D Rage PRO. I think the ATI 3D Rage PRO was a DirectX 5 based chipset. I used to run Half-Life on the Compaq Deskpro EN that not just had the ATI 3D Rage PRO but I also ran it on the Compaq Deskpro EN that was based on the Intel i810 video chipset and it ran. I also ran Half-Life on the Dell Optiplex GX1.
I will always have some amount of respect for Intel Integrated Graphics or at least on laptops from 2006 all the way to the present. Laptops with Intel Integrated Graphics from 2003 were as far as I could tell garbage. The fact that I could run Warcraft III on a Dell Inspiron B130 was mindblowing. The fact that I can run windows 2000 on the Inspiron B130 makes it good for backwards compatibility purposes. Not even my Gateway M320 which also had Intel IGP could run that game let alone any game for that matter. I am a huge fan of the ATI Mobility Radeon IGP Xpress Series when it comes to integrated laptop graphics mainly because they are DirectX 9.0B compatible. Because the Dell Vostro 1000 has an ATI Mobility Radeon IGP Xpress 1150 makes the retro gaming aspect of this laptop almost limitless.
Before ATI got into making mobile laptop video chipsets you had video chipsets like the Cirrus Logic GD7543, Cirrus Logic GD7548 or Trident Cyber9397 which was standard fair for integrated video chipsets on desktop computers from 1996-1997. These chipset usually had 1 MB to 2 MB of VRAM available. Socket 7 based HP Vectra Intel Pentium-Pentium MMX based machines had Cirus Logic and S3 integrated video chipsets. ATI 3D Rage LT PRO was one of ATI's greatest contributions to integrated video chipsets back in 1997-1998. Wikipedia says that the 3D Rage LT (aka Mach64 LT) was often implemented on motherboards and in mobile applications like notebook computers. This late 1996 chip was very similar to the 3D Rage II and supported the same application coding. It integrated a low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS) transmitter for notebook LCDs and advanced power management (block-by-block power control). The 3D RAGE LT PRO, based on the 3D RAGE PRO, was the very first mobile GPU to use AGP.
The 3D Rage LT Pro offered Filtered Ratiometric Expansion, which automatically adjusted images to full-screen size. ATI's ImpacTV2+ is integrated with the 3D RAGE LT PRO chip to support multi-screen viewing; i.e., simultaneous outputs to TV, CRT and LCD. In addition, the RAGE LT PRO can drive two displays with different images and/or refresh rates with the use of integrated dual, independent CRT controllers. The 3D Rage LT Pro was often used in desktop video cards that had a VESA Digital Flat Panel port to drive some desktop LCD monitors digitally.