The "SW" indicates that the vertex shader support is software instead of hardware. In the column Shader model (vertex/pixel) there’s the entry "3.0(SW)/2.0". Look at the 3rd generation in the line 3100. Have a look at the Intel graphics comparison chart: Link The problem is that the Intel GMA 3100 graphics don’t have hardware support for vertex shader. 4 GB harddisk space, keyboard, mouse, speakers (Intel: GMA X3200 and up, ATI: Mobility Radeon 9800 and up, NVidia: GeForce Go 6800 and up) * integrated/onboard graphics: 128MB VRAM, DirectX 9 and Shader 2.0 support (ATI: Radeon 9800 and up, NVidia: GeForce 6800 and up) * video card: 128MB VRAM and Shader 2.0 support * 512 MB RAM (Windows XP) / 1024 MB RAM (Windows Vista and up) * Intel Pentium IV or comparable processor with 1.5 GHz and SSE1 support Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950 400 MHz 0.The complete minimum requirements (taken from the box of the german retail version): Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950 250 / 400 MHz Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950 0.1 GB Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950 400 MHz 0 GB Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950 166 / 400 MHz 0.1 GB Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950 166 MHz Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950 400 MHz 0.1 GB Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950 400 MHz Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950 166 MHz 0.1 GB No Hardware Transform & Lightning (T&L), Hardware Motion Compensation, Hardware MPEG2 acceleration
#Intel gma 3100 shader model 3.0 drivers#
The newest drivers support Windows Vista with Aero Glass effects and according to some of our readers it should run fluently.
For office programs and surfing the performance is more than sufficient. Furthermore, the laptop may stay cooler and more silent than laptops with dedicated graphics cards. The advantage of integrated graphics cards, is that they have a low power consumtion and therefore save battery life. Some old 3D games and especially 2D games should run without problems. Still Intel published a list of games that will run (not needingly beautiful) on the notebook (list is for the GMA 900). The GMA 950 can not be described as a graphics card that is sufficient for gamers. Using the GMABooster tool, slower variants can be clocked to 400 MHz to increase the 3D performance (use at your own risk, not supported by Intel!).
The GMA 950 is integrated in the following chipsets with different rendering clock rates (that affect the 3D performance): Modern HD videos in MPEG 4 or VC-1 can not be decoded with the graphics card. Furthermore, the chip is able to accelerate the decoding of MPEG2 videos and supports Motion Compensation (2 HD Streams simultaneously). It supports DirectX 9.0 with Shader Model 3.0 (Vertex Shader are calculated in Software - by the CPU) and OpenGL 1.4. Compared to the GMA 900 it now supports Shader Model 3.0 (instead of 2.0) and can decode 2 HD Streams simultaneously. It is a faster clocked version of the GMA 900 and does not support hardware T&L (Transform & Lightning) calculations (which is required for some games). The Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 (also known as Intel GMA 950) is an integrated (onboard) graphic chip on the Mobile Intel 945Gx chipset for Intel processors. Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950