Integrated graphics solutions
Integrated graphics solutions, or shared graphics solutions are graphics processors that utilize a portion of a computer's system RAM rather than dedicated graphics memory. Such solutions are less expensive to implement than dedicated graphics solutions, but at a trade-off of being less capable. Historically, integrated solutions were often considered unfit to play 3D games or run graphically intensive programs such as Adobe Flash[
citation needed]. (Examples of such IGPs would be offerings from SiS and VIA circa 2004.)
[3] However, todays integrated solutions such as the Intel's
GMA X3000 (
Intel G965), AMD's Radeon X1250 (
AMD 690G) and NVIDIA's GeForce 7050 PV (
NVIDIA nForce 630a) are more than capable of handling 2D graphics from Adobe Flash or low stress 3D graphics[
citation needed]. Of course the aforementioned GPUs still struggle with high-end video games. Modern desktop motherboards often include an integrated graphics solution and have expansion slots available to add a dedicated graphics card later.
As a GPU is extremely memory intensive, an integrated solution finds itself competing for the already slow system RAM with the CPU as it has no dedicated video memory. System RAM may be 2 GB/s to 12.8 GB/s, yet dedicated GPUs enjoy between 10 GB/s to over 100 GB/s of bandwidth depending on the model.
Older integrated graphics chipsets lacked hardware transform and lighting, but newer ones include it.
[4]