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]

Senseless driver. No change in performance

[idata]

please provide detailed information on where you saw them, how it happened, and what steps to reproduce.

The simplest:

For example, scrolling and menu of this site are terrible in all browsers at this GMA 3600

Windows Aero - the same

About 3D I generally silent

[NICHOLAS_F_Intel]

Hi Viktor,

Do you have Microsoft* Aero disabled?

Thanks,

-Nic

[idata]

Off, but it's not really affect performance

[powerarmour]

nic wrote:

Version 1091 just went live today, and I would again like to ask everyone to provide constructive feedback on it.

Still poor 2D performance, shockingly bad even. Just grab a window and move it around... I once had a Cirrus Logic 2MB ISA card that performed better.

[ASt_]

Hello

I've installed the latest 1091 driver on my Netbook with N2600 Atom CPU.

Sadly performance is poor - also there's much flickering - most of the time in the lower left side.

I've also tried some games...

The very old game "Half Life 2" has severe stuttering as soon as sound or animation is played.

I've set all details to low.

In comparison to my old Asus EeePC 1000H with GMA945, the performance is poorer than on the EeePC.

The flickering is the most annoying part of the driver.

More optimization on some games would be fine too!

I'v´ve also got some weird error message when trying to start Dungeon Siege 3...

Problemsignatur:

Problemereignisname: APPCRASH

Anwendungsname: Dungeon Siege III.exe

Anwendungsversion: 1.0.0.0

Anwendungszeitstempel: 5005e0fc

Fehlermodulname: Dungeon Siege III.exe

Fehlermodulversion: 1.0.0.0

Fehlermodulzeitstempel: 5005e0fc

Ausnahmecode: c0000005

Ausnahmeoffset: 002ccf10

Betriebsystemversion: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48

Gebietsschema-ID: 3079

Zusatzinformation 1: 0a9e

Zusatzinformation 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

Zusatzinformation 3: 0a9e

Zusatzinformation 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

Kind regards

Andreas

[KHans13]

Dungeon Siege 3 on a netbook? Yikes. That c0000005 error is really annoying, and I've experienced some flickering in the lower-left corner as well, in certain scenarios. Trying to play Tribes Vengeance with some of the more advanced graphical features enabled comes to mind. But Half-Life 2? Running it on low settings should be a breeze! Andreas, have you had your flickering problem before you updated the driver as well? The release notes claimed to fix some flickering in Google Earth, maybe it caused more flickering elsewhere...

[ASt_]

Yes, worth a try Thought it would run @ 5 fps at least, but an immediate error?

Half-Life 2 on low settings only runs "OK" when launching with -dxlevel 70 for me.

Running Dungeon Siege 1 (!!) results in a freezed Netbook. Showing only the dots bottom right which is the loading "bar" for the intro.

Only shuting down helps...

PS: I bought a Toshiba NB520 netbook today, so this is my first driver installed.

[KHans13]

I'm under the impression these drivers are worse than the old ones! Maybe you just got unlucky with your selection of games. The only one I've tested out of your list is Halo, and no, it doesn't run well at all. I've tested the game on some other old PC's, and they consistently pummel my netbook in performance. An old laptop with a Mobility Radeon 9000 part (with a measly 32 MB of RAM) runs Halo at 1024x768 with medium texture detail better than my netbook at minimum settings, and without visual glitches. On a desktop with a Nvidia GeForce 6150 SE GPU and a tri-core Phenom CPU, it's also a beatdown. I haven't tried Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga, but I have tried the original LSW (episodes 1-3), and it works...OK...but only at 640x480. It crashes when I try to change to 800x600, and 1024x768 is unacceptably slow.

Have you tried turning on Vsync? That's helped me in some cases with flickering.

[ASt_]

I tried LSW Complete Saga (via Steam) and it works at 1024x600 on my Toshiba NB520 netbook very well.

As soon as you select extra graphics and bloom it gets below the 24-fps mark...

By the way... I installed LSW on a 5 year old Dell Notebook with GMA 965. It runs on 1440x900 more than good with all effects switched on. So I don't really get it what's the problem with the 1 year old GMA 3650 :'(

I really hope, Intel can improve the driver.

The GMA 3650 is on the market for a few months now, so I assume they are working on it to get this done.

Many netbooks nowadays are equipped with a combination of Atom N2600 + GMA 3650!

[ASt_]

Dear Nic

I've tested some older games to check performance with this driver.

Sadly the flickering is in nearly ALL games tested.

For example:

Torchlight (when entering ingame menu, the background flickers)

http://img4.fotos-hochladen.net/uploads/img2013033019tarzgfum21.jpg http://img4.fotos-hochladen.net/uploads/img2013033019tarzgfum21.jpg

Far Cry (watch the video and you see what I mean, the same flickering)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKWaoj8SiqE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKWaoj8SiqE

Lego Starwars Complete Saga

Performance in the game is very good, but main menu (animated spaceships in the background) and movies have very low FPS - these even run more fluid on an old GMA945!

Halo Classic

Menu runs well, but game performance on low details is poorer than on an old GMA945!

Regards, Andreas

[idata]

Ty for trying to improve this driver, I'm sure that with time it will be always better.

I noticed that from the first driver the video playback became better (less lost frames), now with this last driver for GMA 3600 I also noticed a little more performance when I play Torchlight (but it's still much smother on my Atom N450 with GMA 3150).

I also noticed that on my Atom 2600+GMA 3600 Torchlight works smoother with graphic card excluded (Turning hardware skinning off), even if as I said before now with (hardware skinning on) it runs a tiny bit smoother.

One thing that deludes me was seeing that the first Segas Virtua Tennis for PC slows down often with my GMA 3600 machine even with all effects switched off, but it works perfectly on my N450+GMA 3150 Netbook and it works perfectly on my old P500 computer with all effects on(I'm talking of the first Virtua Tennis made, NOT VirtuaTEnnis 2, 3 or 2009 versions but VirtuaTennis ONE).

Also being able to set a higher resolution (for example 1024x768) like it was possible for the GMA 3150 series would be a good addition.

Thank You for reading and I wish you good work on Improving this driver, hoping that the performance (at least for these 2 games will increase).

[idata]

Don't laugh, but I've been trying to play EvE-online under win7 and amazingly it just about runs on the lowest client settings. A low 8-10 FPS when docked I thought was quite reasonable but the problem I'm having is that all game windows are transparent, buttons and ship icons are not rendered properly. Flying around, the frame rate of course drops and only the left side of the screen seems to be updating. There's just too many user interface glitches to make the game playable. No window backgrounds, is the most annoying problem.

Before I get flamed alive, of course I'm not expecting to play EVE at a decent fps on netbook hardware, but it would be wonderful if the user interface at least rendered properly.

Nice to see some work is still being done on this problematic driver - now, how about open sourcing it and speeding things up a bit 😉 I have heard the hardware is pretty decent and we can expect good things once the driver is fixed.

Art.

[idata]

Before talking about the unpleasant, I want to thank intel for their effort, for trying to improve the drivers (despite improvements being mostly bug fixes only) and for paying attention for feedback, if they do.

Now the unpleasant part ...

Well, as previously said, since the initial release of the drivers, updates have mostly been bug fixes - which are always welcome - and performance boosts very few... (not blaming, just talking about facts)

And room for improvement, there is a lot. For the issues unresolved by the update, the following is still pending:

- sluggish aero experience under Windows 7, even when no other process/program uses the IGP (or putting a noticeable burden on it)

- sluggish video playback (seen with Media Player Classic) with Aero enabled (fullscreen and windowed)

- sluggish performance with games using Unreal Engine 1 (e.g. Adventure Pinball, Unreal Tournament)

- SWAT 4 crashes during launch (and crashes Windows -> bluescreen)

- DirectX 10 still not supported

- poor flash performance in browsers and sluggish scrolling in flash-heavy websites

- window tearing when moving them (Basic theme), the same applies sometimes for the taskbar when set on autohide

That's all for me, I will report again if I notice anything new.

Thanks in advance for everyone that is willing to help,

Regards, Lio.

[ASt_]

@Nic:

Can we have information on what Intel is planning to do on further driver development of the GMA3650?

By the way, just tried "Farming Simulator 2011" - working on low settings like a charm on a 5 years old GMA965, but slideshow on the GMA3650. But the bad thing is, the grain disappears as soon as you get in proximity of around 50 metres with a harvester, and appears again as you leave it.

[ASt_]

I noticed that the flickering disappears, as soon as I activate VSYNC in a game and as soon as a game uses DirectX 8+ (it doesn't happen for me with a game using DirectX 7.0).

I just tried this with Half Life 2 launching it with "-dxlevel 70" and "-dxlevel 80".

• With DirectX 7.0 mode there's no flicker - no matter if VSYNC is on or off.
• With DirectX 8.0 mode theres much flickering with VSYNC off - with VSYNC on there's none, but game is a bit slower!

Update: 07.04.2013

I can confirm the same for Lego Indiana Jones - with VSYNC no flicker, without there's flickering.

[KHans13]

I haven't noticed much of a difference in gaming or otherwise with the new 1091 driver. All the bugs and performance levels from the 1089 driver remain from the few apps I've tried, but my Windows Experience Index scores improved. The Processor rating jumped from 3.2 to 3.3, and the Graphics (not Gaming Graphics) increased from 5.7 to 5.9. Huzzah!

Thanks to Intel for the effort so far.

[ASt_]

Hmm, my CPU is stuck to 3,2.

Graphics are stuck to 5,3 (2D) and 3,2 (3D).

Did I anything wrong?

[idata]

Yeah, your 2D performance is surprisingly low. Did you run the benchmark with a lot of opened proograms ?

CPU rating could be a bit higher also...

[ASt_]

Oh I forgot to mention it's an ATOM N2600 Dualcore CPU. No opened programs opened during benchmark...