The Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3150 or GMA 3150 is an integrated (shared memory) graphics card that is located on the processor package of the Intel Atom N4xx processors. The graphics core is based on a GMA X3100 design (according to Intel) but features only two processor cores clocked at 200 MHz. Therefore, the performance is only a bit better than the old GMA 950 found in many Netbooks with N270 Atom CPUs.
The 3D performance of the GMA 3150 is therefore only suited for some low demanding 3D games in low details. In our tests only the old Quake 3 Arena ran fluently (even with high detail settings). Furthermore, Torchlight ran more or less fluently in 800x600 - low, but Fraps only showed 10fps. More modern low demanding games like Trackmania Nations Forever or Left 4 Dead only showed a slideshow. In our tests with the Dell Mini 1018 many modern games didn't even start (driver 8.14.10.2117):
Crysis
Anno 1404
Supreme Commander
Need for Speed Shift
Mafia II
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
According to Intel, the GMA 3150 can help the CPU decode MPEG2 videos. The DXVAChecker shows hooks for MPEG2 (VLD, MoComp, A, and C) up to 1920x1080. Therefore, the performance of the N450 and N470 with GMA 3150 is currently not sufficient to watch H.264 encoded HD videos with a higher resolution than 720p. HD flash videos (e.g. from youtube) are also not running fluently on the Atom CPUs.
Another drawback of the GMA 3150 are the supported display types and resolutions. The GMA 3150 supports one digital LVDS port (to connect the internal display) with resolutions up to 1366x768. Furthermore, an external analog VGA port with resolutions up to 1400x1050 (according to Intel, 1680x1080 reported on a Samsung NC10) is supported. DisplayPort, HDMI or DVI are not possible (no SDVO ports to connect them). Therefore, AtomN450 Netbooks with HDMI ports will only be possible with the upcoming ION 2 GPU.
The main advantage of the new GMA 3150 is the low power consumption as it is integrated in the Atom CPU.
The Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3650 or GMA 3650 is an integrated processor graphics card (e.g. in the Atom N2800) without dedicated memory. It is based on a PowerVR SGX 545 design similar to the GMA 500 (SGX 535). It is still not very fast and is therefore not really suited for gaming. Our tests also show that many games wont even start with the GPU and are therefore not playable. Furthermore, the announced DX 10.1 support is not given at launch, only DirectX 9.
The GMA 3650 also features a HD video decoder and is able to output to HDMI ports.
Average Benchmarks Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 3150 → 100%n=8
Average Benchmarks Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 3650 → 224%n=8
- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card - Average benchmark values for this graphics card * Smaller numbers mean a higher performance 1 This benchmark is not used for the average calculation
Game Benchmarks
The following benchmarks stem from our benchmarks of review laptops. The performance depends on the used graphics memory, clock rate, processor, system settings, drivers, and operating systems. So the results don't have to be representative for all laptops with this GPU. For detailed information on the benchmark results, click on the fps number.
[X]Asus Eee PC R052C-WHI002S Intel Atom N2800 1.9GHz Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 3650 Problem during benchmarking occured: game wont start Freezes, extreme graphic errors