Intel GMA X4500HD or NVidia Quadro NVS 160M?

[G_G_]

I am due for a laptop upgrade and will probably be offered a Dell Latitude E6500. I will be doing mostly developing work but I would like to be able to play some games on it as well. I am not looking for massive framerates, but I do not want a card/driver combination which leaves me stranded due to limitations in the hardware.

It all boils down to:
Is the Intel GMA X4500HD good enough to let me play (for instance) Football Manager 2009 under Wine or do I need to go with NVidia and proprietary drivers?

Thanks for any tips and/or experiences with these cards.

[Kano]

Quadro NVS 160M is not really a fast card, it is similar to GeForce 9300M GS. So basically low end, no idea how well your games run with wine at all. The only thing you can use currently more with Linux and the Nv binary driver is VDPAU, best with disabled composite. But this has nothing to do with gaming. For real gamers both cards are too slow.

[G_G_]

So I'm probably screwed either way and can then choose the card that has a working open-source driver (Intel?).
Thanks for the info.

[wswartzendruber]

I have an GMA 4500MHD and HIGHLY recommend it with X Server 1.6 and Linux 2.6.29.

[G_G_]

That is certainly reassuring.
It may turn out that I get a Dell Precision M4400 instead which would have a nVidia FX770M instead. Time (and budget) will tell.

[MU_Engineer]

I have an GMA 4500MHD and HIGHLY recommend it with X Server 1.6 and Linux 2.6.29.

I have a Dell E5400 with the X4500MHD (GM45) and with Xorg 1.6, xorg-video-intel-2.6 or better, and kernel 2.6.28 or better, you get XvMC, GEM, and pretty decent performance for an IGP. It's enough to run games like OpenArena at my computer's native 1440x900 resolution at a playable framerate.

If you use an older X server, kernel, or xorg-video-intel driver, 3D performance is terrible on this chipset. I also have to say that no matter what driver you use, there are some tearing issues with video playback using Xvideo. The tearing isn't that annoying and is roughly like what you get with an ATi card using a recent fglrx version, but it is still there. I'd recommend an ATi card and the open-source driver or the NVIDIA card if you want tear-free video right now.

[BlackStar]

What kind of OpenGL support does the 4500HD offer? Does it have FBOs, GLSL and texture compression (i.e. OpenGL 2.1)?

[MU_Engineer]

What kind of OpenGL support does the 4500HD offer? Does it have FBOs, GLSL and texture compression (i.e. OpenGL 2.1)?

The OpenGL version string says 2.1 Mesa 7.3, so that should be a yes.

[wswartzendruber]

I have a Dell E5400 with the X4500MHD (GM45) and with Xorg 1.6, xorg-video-intel-2.6 or better, and kernel 2.6.28 or better, you get XvMC, GEM, and pretty decent performance for an IGP. It's enough to run games like OpenArena at my computer's native 1440x900 resolution at a playable framerate.

If you use an older X server, kernel, or xorg-video-intel driver, 3D performance is terrible on this chipset. I also have to say that no matter what driver you use, there are some tearing issues with video playback using Xvideo. The tearing isn't that annoying and is roughly like what you get with an ATi card using a recent fglrx version, but it is still there. I'd recommend an ATi card and the open-source driver or the NVIDIA card if you want tear-free video right now.

Hold on there man, xf86-video-intel-2.7 has some fixes for XV tearing and that's already in the RC stages. I would hold out for the Intel IGP.

[BlackStar]

The OpenGL version string says 2.1 Mesa 7.3, so that should be a yes.

Cool, I'll have some people test my prototype on Intel then. I'm not very optimistic, the FBO blit extension (now core) is still giving grief with Catalyst, but maybe it will work without too many modifications!