HD 3000 definitely does dithering. Just recently I've read somewhere that they plan on keeping 16-bit color. Not sure if it's so great overall for old games because I did experience glitches. Could be Win7 compatibility issues as well, so YMMV.

I'd rather wait for the new Haswell generation which will be out soon and is supposed to have pretty substantial GPU and battery life improvements though. It's up to you whether that matters of course. XP drivers for the GPU itself will surely be available, the problem will be finding a notebook with XP drivers for the other parts I guess. But if you plan on running DX9 titles in common notebook resolutions as well the extra speed should be welcome.

I don't know about compatibility, but AMD integrated graphics are superior in performance if you seek that.

No, just DirectX and older game compatibility as well as 16-bit dithering working properly.

Jedi Knight works fine with an HD4000, so I /think/ that confirms it has the 16 bit whatever- the game is entirely 16bit dx6.

I was pleasantly surprised when using intel Sandy Bridge graphics for some older games. As compatibility is good. But I detest one aspect of this graphics chipset: no way to force FSAA....

Maintain aspect ratio can be forced, but the option is only visible when the resolution differs from the flatpanel's native resolution.

Speaking of an 8800GT, my personal testing has proven the HD4000 in a MacBook to run as fast as one. Not exact, but goddamn impressive considering the GPU is integrated into the CPU die.

Intel has the resources and they are very determined to narrow the graphics gap.

I'd say maybe close to a 8600 GT... which is a lot slower than the 8800. This site also reinforces my assumption. With notebooks you additionally have to consider thermal limitations, the graphics part will be clocked down when everything gets too hot. Which is not that hard considering that the CPU and GPU are on one die.

Haswell is out now, I wonder how fast it'll be relatively.

I have a netbook with a GMA950 and System Shock 2 LAGS on it like hell even through it is just 3 years old and the game is 14 years old. Avoid Intel "GPUs" at all cost unless you really have NO other choice.

Netbook? GMA950? Of course it lags 😀

Get a 11" AMD notebook with one of these APUs. They should do the trick, although the CPU isn't much faster...

Don't generalize like that. HD 3000 is vastly more powerful and is ok for some ~2004 games. Mine plays NFS MW acceptably.

I'm necroposting here because there wasn't enough anecdote provided on the topic.
My experience with Intel HD Graphics 4000 was overall not good in Win XP.
I've tested 2 driver versions: 6.14.10.5407 and 14.51.11.5437, the results about the same.
I was using dual channel low latency DDR3 and the fastest Ivy Bridge CPU containing this IGP: i7-3770K.

At a glance, 3DMark results look promising:

3DMark2001SE: 26439pts

3DMark2003: 14281pts

In reality however pretty soon I found some issues:

• Quake III Arena (1999, OpenGL). The FPS is ok but how the image looks differs significantly. It is more sharp and the color/hue is off, sort of washed-out.
• Project I.G.I. (2000, D3D7). Exhibits insane FPS drops on open terrain. Riva TNT2 is a recommended card for this game so that shouldn't happen.
• Far Cry (2004, D3D9). Crashes on startup or freezes on intro movie if "Very High" settings are enabled in the setup utility. Problem solved by reducing the quality level to "High" or changing "r_Quality_BumpMapping" config value to “2”. In every resolution the FPS was inconsistent in 10...50 range making smooth gameplay impossible.

There is also no support for FSAA and refresh rates above 60Hz in high resolutions.
So I recommend against using it for XP gaming and stick to NV/AMD.

To add to this, I recently got an i5 3570K CPU and have briefly tested its integrated GPU as well.

It doesn't support paletted textures and table fog, at least with the official WinXP drivers. Was kinda hoping that it would have those legacy features, but no dice. I guess they weren't much of a priority during the early 2010s.

Bruno128 wrote on 2023-06-14, 14:05:

I'm necroposting here because there wasn't enough anecdote provided on the topic. My experience with Intel HD Graphics 4000 was […]
Show full quote

I'm necroposting here because there wasn't enough anecdote provided on the topic.
My experience with Intel HD Graphics 4000 was overall not good in Win XP.
I've tested 2 driver versions: 6.14.10.5407 and 14.51.11.5437, the results about the same.
I was using dual channel low latency DDR3 and the fastest Ivy Bridge CPU containing this IGP: i7-3770K.

At a glance, 3DMark results look promising:

3DMark2001SE: 26439pts

3dm01se-26439pts-i73770k-hdgt4000-ddr31600cl7.JPG

3DMark2003: 14281pts

3dm03-14281pts-i73770k-hdgt4000-ddr31600cl7.JPG

In reality however pretty soon I found some issues:

• Quake III Arena (1999, OpenGL). The FPS is ok but how the image looks differs significantly. It is more sharp and the color/hue is off, sort of washed-out.
• Project I.G.I. (2000, D3D7). Exhibits insane FPS drops on open terrain. Riva TNT2 is a recommended card for this game so that shouldn't happen.
• Far Cry (2004, D3D9). Crashes on startup or freezes on intro movie if "Very High" settings are enabled in the setup utility. Problem solved by reducing the quality level to "High" or changing "r_Quality_BumpMapping" config value to “2”. In every resolution the FPS was inconsistent in 10...50 range making smooth gameplay impossible.

There is also no support for FSAA and refresh rates above 60Hz in high resolutions.
So I recommend against using it for XP gaming and stick to NV/AMD.

On Windows 7 or later I would experiment with it and DGVoodoo2 and those old D3D games.

Also, Intel didn't prioritize MSAA performance until the Gen8 IGP (Broadwell / Cherry Trail). The hardware functionality wasn't entirely there yet and so performance was awful. Better to crank the resolution as high as possible.

swaaye wrote on 2023-06-14, 17:42:

On Windows 7 or later

Yeah but well that solution defeats the purpose of XP gaming: EAX, incompatible disk check DRM, water reflections in aforementioned Far Cry, etc.

Someone did try it though: Issues with Intel HD 3000 (Gen6) and Intel HD 4000 (Gen7) iGPUs and dgVoodoo

Bruno128 wrote on 2023-06-15, 06:58:

Yeah but well that solution defeats the purpose of XP gaming: EAX, incompatible disk check DRM, water reflections in aforementioned Far Cry, etc.

Someone did try it though: Issues with Intel HD 3000 (Gen6) and Intel HD 4000 (Gen7) iGPUs and dgVoodoo

I suppose. But most of that isn't a big problem. Audigy and X-Fi work up to Win10. There's DSOAL, etc. None of it works perfectly, including Creative's XP drivers. There are workarounds for copy protection issues most of the time.

The Intel IGPs are an interesting curiosity but yeah not exactly something you want to be forced to use. Get yourself something fun like a Radeon X1900 that still dithers 16-bit color, has rocking image quality, and has drivers that were tested with the old games. At least up to a point, because games prior to DirectX 7 get tricky.