Windows* 7 Driver (32-bit) - Version 1091 - Intel® GMA 3600

[NICHOLAS_F_Intel]

Hello again everyone. Following in the same spirit as the last Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 3600 driver feedback thread, I'm making a new one to announce our latest driver release. Version 1091 just went live today, and I would again like to ask everyone to provide constructive feedback on it.

The link to the download is here; http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3468&DwnldID=22633&ProductFamily=Graphics&ProductLine=Netbook+and+Tablet+Graphics&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+Graphics+Media+Accelerator+3600+Series&DownloadType=Drivers&lang=eng Download Center

The same rules apply for this thread as did apply for the last one. This thread is dedicated specifically to this driver and the feedback for this driver. This thread is not a discussion place for Windows* 8 GMA 3600 driver questions/complaints, nor is it for Windows* 7 GMA (64-bit) driver requests/complaints. Any such comments will be promptly deleted. However, please feel free to use any of the already-existing threads of that topic to discuss and provide feedback there.

Along with the feedback, if there are any new issues that resulted from the new driver, please provide detailed information on where you saw them, how it happened, and what steps to reproduce.

Thank you,

-Nicics_media_

[idata]

Claus silverstone написал:

I Dont get all the replys about gaming on gma 3600. If you want to play games get another graphics card!

Wrong.

At AMD netbook for the same price you can even play in some of the latest games with good graphics.But the problem is not the point, and that slows even the operating system interface, websites and scrolling in the browsers! What generally unacceptable.

And we have been cheated, shoving under the name Intel GMA 3600 incomprehensible deficiencies PowerVR SGX5. I've been seduced, and I'm sorry about what ... With this attitude, more than anything I will not buy from Intel.

[KHans13]

powerarmour wrote:

Yeah, VC-1 decoding isn't too great with the GMA 3600/3650, it's not using CPU acceleration as the load is still fairly low (<20%), but the driver or just simply the GPU struggles with high bitrate VC-1 so it often plays them slowly.

H.264 and MPEG2 in general are accelerated fine under Windows 7 however, but I agree that this 1091 driver isn't as stable as the 1065 driver in regards to video playback (better in many other areas, but I've noticed more video playback glitches)

I tried playing the WinSAT videos in WMP 12, and I didn't see any corruption like the screenshot on page 3 shows in the VC-1 video. However, the H.264 video played even more slowly than the VC-1; both were slow, but the H.264 was really slow. It completely bogged down my computer during the 5 seconds of video (which took a lot longer than 5 seconds to play), but the CPU usage never got higher than 11%. Weird...

I tried some new games out, and it's mostly more garbage from the driver.

DLC Quest: The framerate is nice, around 53 consistently, but once you buy the HD DLC pack in Live Freemium or Die (it gives the picture a sepia tone), the framerate drops to 21. And there are no refunds in the game, so I can't just go back and unbuy it.

Duke Nukem Manhattan Project: In D3D8 mode, all shadows and blood decals are constantly flickering. In OpenGL mode, there are no bugs and the framerate is much better, but FRAPS can't record any video.

Spider-Man (2001): Never in my life have I played a game as slow as this. Framerates are absolutely awful 80% of the time (1-2 fps), which is pathetic, since the game runs on hardware less than 7% as powerful as the GMA 3600 (think original Voodoo Graphics). Shame, Intel, shame.

Cube 2 Sauerbraten: Just slow in general. I think the CPU's being overloaded by the execution of both graphics and conventional CPU commands.

Is there any progress being made at all on the driver? It's been almost 2 months since the last driver release, and we've heard virtually nothing. Granted, it took 4 months to move from 1089 to 1091, and the jump fixed just about nothing as well.

[powerarmour]

Kory Hansen wrote:

Is there any progress being made at all on the driver? It's been almost 2 months since the last driver release, and we've heard virtually nothing. Granted, it took 4 months to move from 1089 to 1091, and the jump fixed just about nothing as well.

It's never been right since release day, let alone 2 months!

In fact, has any PowerVR based driver from GMA 500/600/3600/3650 series actually been any good?, that's the main issue we have at the moment, simply not enough care or enough being done about it.

[KHans13]

No. No they haven't.

Scottie's Tech wrote:

The only two possibilities I see here are:

1. Intel's driver crew is seriously inept at writing drivers for Windows, but they have no problem producing said code for an embedded demo
2. Intel is purposefully not releasing good GMA 500 drivers because they want to push their other chipsets – in more expensive, CULV-based notebooks. In other words, they are crippling netbooks and MIDs on purpose to make more money off of you instead of giving you what you want.

I don't know about you, but in either case, that pisses me off.

And I demand satisfaction!!! Who's with me?!?!

^This.

Full post below.

http://scottiestech.info/2009/10/01/the-truth-about-the-performance-and-capabilities-of-intels-gma-500/ http://scottiestech.info/2009/10/01/the-truth-about-the-performance-and-capabilities-of-intels-gma-500/

[powerarmour]

Scottie's Tech wrote:

In other words, they are crippling netbooks and MIDs on purpose to make more money off of you instead of giving you what you want.

All all these years of poor support on the PowerVR based GPU's, it does make you wonder.

I think many looked at the specs of the SGX545 and thought 'That's actually not a bad little unit, DX10.1 capable, runs/performs fine in Android etc'

What do we have?, no DX10.1, no x64, no Windows 8, and shockingly dire 2D/3D performance even worse than the GMA 3150...

It's the automotive equivalent of taking a 4 cylinder petrol engine, pulling out three spark plugs and plumbing it up to a diesel fuel tank...

[KHans13]

powerarmour wrote:

I think many looked at the specs of the SGX545 and thought 'That's actually not a bad little unit, DX10.1 capable, runs/performs fine in Android etc'

What do we have?, no DX10.1, no x64, no Windows 8, and shockingly dire 2D/3D performance even worse than the GMA 3150...

Specs are always key for me when buying something. I knew I wanted a netbook with a hardware T&L-capable GPU and a little bit of muscle, and after a lot of research, I thought the GMA 3600 would be perfect for my needs (i.e. on par with the GeForce 6000 series) and put all the previous-gen netbooks I've used to shame. Wrong. I played Nerf Arena Blast on an old Atom N270/GMA 950 netbook with a constant 60 fps a while ago, and the GMA 3600 can only manage, what, 14?

[KHans13]

More bugs.

Unreal Tournament '99 GOTY: When using the third-party D3D 9 renderer, there are some graphical error when the player picks up a Shield Belt or the Damage Amplifier. Normally, I use the OpenGL renderer, but it's unable to cooperate with FRAPS for video recording, as I've said before.

Shield Belt:

Damage Amplifier:

Unreal Tournament 3: I thought I could play this game on my netbook, since the minimum requirements are a 2 GHz single-core processor and a GeForce 6200/Radeon 9600. Boy, was I wrong. All I can get out of the game is a screen full of shifting, psychedelic colors. FRAPS reports 2 fps.

[KHans13]

Tried playing Fieldrunners the other day. I was surprised(ish) to find that the game was flipped vertically. Everything is upside-down, and y-axis movement on the mouse is inverted (but not x-axis movement). While it's not impossible to play, it's not enjoyable at all. Other Cedar Trail and Clover Trail users have reported this issue as well in the Steam forums, and no one has a solution. Fieldrunners 2 doesn't exhibit this problem; in fact, it runs flawlessly.

[KHans13]

The flickering decal bug in Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project I mentioned a few posts ago is back in UT2003. It seems this problem applies to decals, projectors, and certain shadows in some DX 8.1 game. I've posted a video at

http://youtu.be/fq1VsVR-KbE DirectX 8.1 Graphical Bugs - YouTube

[agree11]

Hi,

So I've now begun to be able to use my N2800 after installing 4GB of RAM, your really realise how crippling Windows 7 is when I realise that my N270 will do the same things on 1GB. That annoyance aside lets get down to some facts.

The good news is that of the two games I play on my netbook, the first Simutrans has no issues with graphics, thanks for that Intel.

The relatively good news is that the other game Kerbal space program works relatively well, on startup the kerbonaut has a red and black face, when he should have a green face, but I'll live with that, he even looks a little like Darth Maul, maybe my driver has a sense of humour? However I'm also getting quite a bit of screen flicker.

Once into the assembly centre I have no issues, pan and tilt of camera are fast and smooth with no problems.

However once on the launchpad their is the progressive rendering problems coming from the lefthand side as we are all well aware of.

Two interesting points are that if you switch to map mode, to track your orbit, there is no flickering or other problems, but the parts of the display that normally give you information about orbital height etc. are not displayed correctly (see image below). Even more surprisingly when I arrived at another planet (the Mun) there are no graphical problems at all, in fact the landscape looks positively beautiful.

Now I know nothing about graphics, but for me that is surprising, the rendering on earth does not work, but in what should be an identical situation there are no problems. I'll be emailing the developer to see if I can uncover why that might be.

If you need any more info on this please just let me know, we all want this pretty sorry situation sorted as soon as possible.

[VCian]

I just tried Pro Evolution Soccer (PES), and it works almost perfectly in Windows mode, but in full screen it flickers a lot (I mean black semi-transparent squares come and go continually on the bottom half of the screen), I don't managed to start any version of FIFA Soccer (not even the 2006 one), every version hangs on a black screen, even if I can quit it. browsing speed should be increased and also flash play performance.

Other games work perfectly, like StarTrek Armada 2 and the demos of Sword Of The Stars and ONI.

[agree11]

Hi Viktor,

Thanks for posting the info, it's always useful to know when things are working, maybe it will help if or when we are able to begin an independent driver development. One thing that might help all of these bug posts (mine included!) might be more information about your platform.

So I'm running an Acer Aspire One, but with an N2800, not the standard N2600, along with 4GB of DDR310600 RAM on Windows Starter (Yes it's been hacked ).

[agree11]

I would also suggest before blaming the graphics solely for this bombsite, that anyone upgrades to a minimum of 2GB of RAM, these netbooks are simply unusable without that as a minimum, games will not load and even when they do they crawl, through no fault of the GPU.

[agree11]

Some further info on applications, installing Internet Explorer 10, which apparently has Direct X 10 support as part of it's installation is a very bad idea for graphics performance. So try and avoid this...

[VCian]

Just for information, I actually have 2 GB of Ram installed, and all the graphics issues that I reported happened actually with 2GB on board.

So I guess it is a GPU fault or more probably its a driver problem related problem.

Configuration

CPU > Atom 2600

Memory > 2 Gb Ram

Video > GMA 3600 (driver version 1091)

Audio > Realtek HD

System > Windows 7

[KHans13]

I ran some synthetic benchmarks, just for curiousity's sake. All benchmarks run at their lowest settings.

FurMark:

No rendering errors, but a score of 26 points, or between 0-2 fps.

Unigine Heaven:

Lots of rendering errors (example below). Also very slow, with a score of 34 points (1.1-1.9 fps).

Unigine Valley:

This one won't even start. The loading screen appears, but the benchmark crashes right as it attempts to do any rendering. Here's the Windows report:

Problem signature:

Problem Event Name: APPCRASH

Application Name: valley.exe

Application Version: 1.0.0.0

Application Timestamp: 511cbdf2

Fault Module Name: igdumd32.dll

Fault Module Version: 8.14.8.1091

Fault Module Timestamp: 5142c2bb

Exception Code: c0000005

Exception Offset: 0006fd3d

OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.11

Locale ID: 1033

Additional Information 1: 0a9e

Additional Information 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

Additional Information 3: 0a9e

Additional Information 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

NovaBench GPU Test:

No rendering errors (I think). I get 32 fps out of it, which is good for 8 points.

[NICHOLAS_F_Intel]

Hi everyone, just a quick heads up. I'm still passing along all the feedback you are all submitting. Please keep it constructive and try to keep the politicking to the other GMA 36XX threads.

Thank you,

-Nic

[KHans13]

Thanks for the update, Nic. I hope the information you are passing on is being put to good use. I'll keep looking for bugs in the meantime.

I've been playing FlatOut lately, and while there aren't any visual artifacts, the framerate is lower than I'd expected. On the minimum settings (except for resolution, which is 1024x600), I never get more than 27 fps. Seeing as I meet and exceed the recommended system requirements (2 GHz P4, 512 MB RAM, 128 MB VRAM, etc.), I'm a little disappointed.

[agree11]

Logan, check post 79, there are other places to tell Intel how much we dislike them

[agree11]

Logan, clearly you did not read this post, number 1 says the following:

The same rules apply for this thread as did apply for the last one. This thread is dedicated specifically to this driver and the feedback for this driver. This thread is not a discussion place for Windows* 8 GMA 3600 driver questions/complaints, nor is it for Windows* 7 GMA (64-bit) driver requests/complaints. Any such comments will be promptly deleted. However, please feel free to use any of the already-existing threads of that topic to discuss and provide feedback there.

Now I am as annoyed as you are with what Intel are doing, but this is not the post to complain about that on, this post is to try and resolve the issues we have with Windows 7. Now if you honestly feel like you were sold a product that did not meet the specifications or promises that you were given, I suggest you look at more formal channels for making and dealing with those requests. If you can send me an email address I can email you a similar situation with a better outcome than we have now, but I'm almost definitely sure I can not post here.

Please rant elsewhere, just like I have done, otherwise we will probably get even less support than what we are getting now...

[VWija]

Hi Nic , i want to know if you can make this driver support with OpenGl 2.0, before i update the driver its only support OpenGl 2.0 for 50%, when i done update the driver it went to 68%, i wonder if you can make it 100% .