By Lakshminarasimhan Ranganathan, published on September 1, 2011
Jun 16, 2010 How can I increase my gaming graphics? In order to play games properly. My windows (7) doesn't play any game properly. What's the problem is? Kinldy help me Skip to main content. Increasing gaming graphics. Windows 7 / Performance & system failures; Answer Mike Hall. Always Replied on. This file is written specifically for the Intel Express 3D graphics card only. Business Entertainment. With the best online photo storage for 2019 Clean out junk files in Windows 7. A good graphics card benchmark will put your GPU through its paces, and the results will paint a good picture of what your graphics card can and can't do well.
Benchmarks and Performance Tests We create benchmarking software that helps you measure the hardware performance of your PC, tablet and smartphone. Running our benchmarks regularly, and especially before and after making changes to your system, can highlight setup and stability problems. Here are the best ways to optimize gaming performance in Windows 10 natively or via third party apps. How to Optimize Gaming Performance in Windows 10. How to Optimize Gaming Performance in Windows 10. Last Updated. These kind of software bind with your graphics card driver and try to optimize the game at suitable settings for a lag. How to Run a Benchmark. The most important of these are Gaming Graphics and Graphics. These will rate your graphics card’s performance on a scale of 1.0 to 7.9. The Gaming Graphics category, in particular, is an important metric for your GPU’s performance in relation to non-gaming applications that are GPU-intensive, such as rendering and CAD.
Some of the older generation Intel Processor Graphics solutions were targeted at business computers and home consumers who don’t need high level of graphics capabilities on their machines. Most of the 3D games available in the market today demand a high level of graphic capabilities, making them unplayable on older generation processor graphics solutions. Because more and more business users and home users started playing 3D-games on their home and office PCs, the requirement for greater graphics capabilities on these PCs also increased. Intel continues its commitment to improve the graphics capabilities of its Processor Graphics solutions.
As an end user you need not spend hundreds of dollars to buy a high end video card to play 3D games on your computers. You can get a very decent game play experience using the Processor Graphics offerings from Intel. We have now reached a stage where most of the popular 3D games play with decent frame rates on Intel® GMA. For example, consider the games listed below:
A complete list of games compatible with Intel Processor Graphics solution is available at the following URL:
http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/cs-012643.htm
Although for an ultimate gaming experience in demanding gaming environments, you might still need a high end graphics card, it is possible to achieve a playable experience of these games on machines with Intel Processor Graphics solutions.
The other important factor to consider is Intel's market share in the graphics space. Those in the gaming industry may be of the opinion that Intel's graphics market share is quite low. That’s not true any more. Intel has got close to 50% of the Overall graphics market share, which is clearly evident from the graph below.
Source: IDC, Mercury Research PC Graphics Report, John Peddie
With the advent of Intel® GMA X3000 (which was the GPU for the G965 chipset), the hardware capabilities increased multifold making room for playing 3D games on the Processor Graphics offerings. The drivers for this hardware added more features thus giving an acceptable experience for users who wanted to try out 3D games on Intel Processor Graphics solutions.
Intel® GMA X3000 is the first generation of Intel Processor Graphics solution to have the ability to do hardware vertex processing for Shader Model 3.0. Additionally, while previous hardware provided only a subset of DirectX 9.0 features and OpenGL 1.4 compliance, GMA X3000’s improved feature set includes a full DirectX9.0C/Ex feature set as well as OpenGL 2.0. The core frequency increased to 667 MHz and the maximum available memory for the graphics system increased from 224MB to 384MB. All these features enable more textures, larger vertex buffers, and larger models to be stored. Finally, the peak memory bandwidth for the desktop version of Intel Processor Graphics solution increased by 20% from the previous generation to a peak of 12.8 GB/s. GMA X3000 graphics supports both Windows* XP* as well as Windows* Vista* operating systems.
Now that the graphics capabilities have improved multifold from X3000 onwards, Intel wanted to help game developers utilize these features/capabilities in the games that they develop. Intel has been working with the gaming industry to proactively enable games on Processor Graphics solutions. Most of the highly rated games are optimized for Intel graphics and Intel is continuously working to improve the game play of the current and future games that would be available to consumers.
In India, Intel has been working with leading game companies to optimize their games for Intel Processor Graphics solutions and some of the games are ready to be released as early as January of 2009. As a game developer, if you are interested in optimizing your game for processor graphics, you can get in touch with Intel representatives through the Intel Software Partner program. For more details, please use the following hyperlink:
http://www.intel.com/cd/software/partner/asmo-na/eng/index.htm
As a part of this program, partners can get access to alpha and beta graphics drivers, file bugs for the existing drivers, and avail many other benefits. All of this can be done through the Intel validation Internet portal, if you have all the required legal documents. For more information on how to develop games that play well on Intel Processor Graphics, please follow the following URL: /en-us/visual-computing
More references on Intel Processor Graphics, the developers guide, and so on are available at the following websites:
/en-us/articles/intel-gma-3000-and-x3000-developers-guide
/en-us/articles/common-misconceptions-of-intel-integrated-graphics
Ever since Microsoft released Windows Vista, all Windows PCs have included a benchmark tool called the Windows Experience Index, which gives you a quick look at how well you can expect the system to handle basic Windows tasks, Aero graphics, more-demanding applications, games, and more. Hitting the overall maximum score--7.9, at the time of this writing--isn't easy without investing in a lot of expensive, specialized hardware, but we've found a PC build that you can tweak to reach 7.8 overall (with a 7.9 in every category except processor speed) for about $1000.
Frankly, a PC with a 7.8 WEI score packs enough power to do just about anything you want to do with a PC--except brag about your perfect 7.9 score. So unless you're willing to spend a few thousand dollars to show off that 7.9, we think you'll be plenty satisfied with this build.
When Vista launched, it came with a built-in suite of benchmarks designed with multiple purposes in mind. The Windows System Assessment Tool, or WinSAT, consists of five benchmarks that evaluate the performance of a system's processor, memory, graphics subsystem, and primary storage drive. Each individual benchmark score in the Windows System Assessment Tool contributes to the calculation of the PC's Windows Experience Index, or WEI. You can find your own WEI score by going into Control Panel and selecting System.
Microsoft's main goals in creating the Windows Experience Index were to give users a simple metric by which they could evaluate their computer's performance (or that of a new PC), help system builders find performance bottlenecks, and give software developers a score to refer to in lieu of hard-and-fast system requirements. (Instead of listing minimum CPU, memory, and storage requirements, for example, developers can list a minimum WEI score.)
The Windows System Assessment Tool runs five individual tests to come up with a Windows Experience Index score:
On Windows Vista systems, the scores ranged from 1.0 to 5.9. With Windows 7, the maximum score increased to 7.9 to compensate for newer, higher-performing hardware that wasn't available when Vista debuted.
The processor test runs both single- and multithreaded workloads to assess a CPU's performance. Microsoft has stated that a system with a processor score above 6.0 would be suitable for demanding applications, and would rarely be CPU-bound. The memory benchmark evaluates memory operations per second, but is also limited by total capacity on 64-bit editions of Windows; a 64-bit system with less than 4GB of memory will have its score capped at 5.9. The basic graphics benchmark examines interface and Aero performance on the Windows desktop, while the gaming graphics benchmark evaluates a GPU's DirectX 9 and 10 texturing and fill-rate performance. For a GPU to achieve a score above 6.0, it must be DirectX 10 compliant and have WDDM 1.1 drivers; older GPUs with WDDM 1.0 drivers will be able to run only the DirectX 9 portion of the benchmark, and will be capped at a score of 5.9. Finally, the primary hard disk test assesses the drive's transfer rate.
As I've mentioned, each of the individual tests in the Windows 7 WinSAT produce a score ranging from 1.0 to 7.9. The overall WEI score, however, is determined by the lowest of the five scores, not an average of the five. If four of the five tests report a score of 7.9 but the fifth is 4.2, for instance, that system's WEI score is 4.2.
According to Microsoft, 'A PC with a score of 2 is typically sufficient for basic tasks like word processing or web browsing. Running the Aero desktop experience requires at least a 3, while graphics-intensive software frequently requires a 4 or higher.' As PC enthusiasts, we at PCWorld respectfully disagree with Microsoft's assessment. A system with a WEI base score of 2.0 would be torturous to use even for basic tasks, and a 3.0 or 4.0 isn't all that great, either--which is why we've picked out the parts to put your PC in the top ranks without breaking the bank.
Our goal with this project was to see how close we could get to a perfect 7.9 WEI score using roughly $1000 worth of hardware. If money were no object, maxing out the WinSAT benchmarks and overall WEI score would (theoretically) be easy; but with only $1000 to spend, we'd have to make some strategic decisions with our hardware.
Knowing how the Windows System Assessment Tool works, we focused the largest portions of our budget on the system's processor, GPU, memory, and storage. For the CPU, we jumped right to the top of Intel's current Sandy Bridge Core i7 lineup and grabbed a Core i7-2600K. We also scored 8GB (two 4GB modules) of fast DDR3 memory, a relatively powerful Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti-based graphics card, and one of OCZ's SandForce SF-2281 controller-based Agility 3 solid-state drives. We never want to skimp on other components, such as the motherboard, optical drive, case, or power supply, but because those items wouldn't directly affect the WEI score, we set aside less of our budget for them.
Our build consisted of the following components.
Astute readers will notice a couple of omissions in our build tally. Although the components we chose for the build are enough to assemble a fast, perfectly functional system, you'll probably want more than 120GB of storage, and possibly an optical drive. We left them out since we wanted to stay under $1000, but you can grab a 500GB, 7200-rpm Seagate Barracuda hard drive ($39) and a Lite-On DVD-R/CD-R drive ($18) and still stay pretty close to $1000. Alternatively, you could use the hard drive and optical drive from your existing desktop PC, if you have one.
Originally we hadn't planned to shell out as much money for the GPU as we did; but when we tested the parts ourselves, we discovered that we needed to spend that extra cash. AMD's Radeon HD 6850 and 6870 graphics cards earned scores of 7.7 and 7.8, respectively, in the WinSAT graphics tests. Nvidia's GeForce GTX 550 Ti hit 7.4, and a GTX 560 reached 7.8. We tried overclocking all of the boards as well, but ultimately we couldn't attain that elusive 7.9 with the more affordable cards. The GeForce GTX 560 Ti, however, pulled it off right out of the box.
Next page: Firing up the assembled PC