HD4000: DX10 Performance

The HD 4000 iGPU built into the Ivy Bridge processors is the first Intel integrated GPU to support DX11. The Sandy Bridge's HD3000 iGPU only supported up to DX10.1, so for my first graphics tests I stuck with DX10 software. I compared the HD3000, HD4000, and Radeon HD5770 GPUs using Unigine's Heaven 3.0 benchmark set to DX10 graphics, with shaders set to "medium", no anti-aliasing, 4x anisotropic filtering, and a resolution of 1680x1050. This benchmark takes you on a fly-through exploration of a beautifully-rendered city floating in the clouds.

I also used Futuremark's PCMark Vantage, selecting the "Jane Nash" and "New Calico" benchmarks. The former tracks a 60s-era female spy as she's discovered in the evil villian's lair and must run for her life, stealing a jet-powered flying boat to escape, while the latter shows a giant space battleship hovering outside an asteroid belt, dispatching a fleet of space fighters which mercilessly bombard the planet below. I set PCMark Vantage to the "Entry Level" presets with "optimal textures" and the same 1680x1050 resolution used in the Heaven benchmark.

As these results show, neither iGPU is suitable for serious gaming at this resolution. And in the case of PCMark Vantage, "entry level" settings mean precisely that: water is a static, unmoving texture, even as boats plow through it; cloth doesn't drape, and so forth...it's a pretty bare-bones experience. While the HD4000 does substantially better than the HD3000 in these tests, outperforming its older incarnation by 45%, 70%, and 49%, respectively, it's still nothing that any gamer would consider even close to playable. Even casual gamers would be well advised to pony up the $100 or so for a Radeon HD5770 video card, or something else in that class, as it makes the difference between playability and non-playability.

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