Many of you are aware that the graphics performance on the GMA500 GPU included in the Pouslbo chipset, part of the Menlow platform used in most UMPCs, Intel MIDs and even some netbooks like the ASUS T91, is not a great graphics workhorse. 3G graphics performance (from the PowerVR architecture) is extremely poor and under Windows XP, the hardware accelerated video playback capability is left unused by most programs.
Intel have just relased production version 3.0.2.32 (6.14.11.1012) of the GMA500 driver to developers and as you’d expect, many people are hoping it will unleash some hidden potential. I’m one of those people and when I heard the news I immediately grabbed the Viliv X70 and downloaded the drivers.
Yes, there’s some improvement. A measured 5x improvement in DirectDraw 2D graphics performance on the Viliv X70
Old and New GMA500 drivers. Note the D2D scores.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t really translate to anything interesting for your daily ultra mobile PC usage as far as I can tell. I’ve done side by side tests with standard apps and YouTube and can’t see any differences. Full-screen HQ is, in most cases, not as smooth as it should be. I couldn’t see any differences with Google Earth either (DirectX mode.) The release notes list a lot of fixes and I certainly can’t see any down-side to installing the drivers so go ahead, do some testing and let us know what you think.
For everyone considering the Compal/Gigabyte/Aigo MID and looking for XP upgrade capability, re-tune now to JKKMobile.com where JKK is testing out the new drivers. First reports are that the new drivers may not be working with the current hardware but JKK is working further to confirm this.
Customers are waiting for XP drivers for the Aigo MID and sales appear to be suffering as a result. Early adopters simply don’t trust a Moblin-based device to deliver exactly what they need and want the option of running XP otherwise they’re not going to buy. It’s not that they don’t want Moblin, its because they want a choice. Without XP and at current prices, they’re not buying. I’m sure that customers in France and Italy are happy with their low-cost carrier offerings but there’s a billion more people in the western world that don’t have that option.
How do we know this? We speak to the resellers. They tell us that there are early adopter customers waiting in the wings for XP-based MIDs but they won’t buy until they know the option is available. The resellers won’t even put their money down on large orders until the XP drivers are there which means prices remain high as volumes stay low. We hear what customers are saying too. These advanced, early-adopter users want choices and value. The current offerings are locked down to an OS that doesn’t give them VFM. There’s a lot of people out there that want to run a mature desktop OS and use the Aigo MID as a productive UMPC. They will not trust their personal or business processes to a fresh, problematic, asia-sourced operating system based on Moblin.
People are trying hard to get it working but there are a lot of potential customers out there, that don’t have the time to mess around and will simply hold back and buy something else in the meantime. It isn’t difficult for these customers to justify buying a netbook. Intel and their hardware partners need to get focused and bring the required software to the market to provide badly-needed confidence in their products.
The size and form factor is of no interest to most readers but what’s going on underneath is very interesting.
Up until now, the performance of Z-series-based PCs running XP or Vista has been less than exciting. Video playback and 3D performance is almost non-existent in devices like the Kohjinsha SC3 and way below what people are seeing on the cheap Atom-based netbooks. In theory, it should be a lot better. Many people have been waiting for fresh drivers for the system controller hub (SCH, Aka Poulsbo) chipset under Vista and for XP-lovers, there’s absolutely nothing out there except rumours. Intel have no choice now but to ship good quality drivers otherwise they will have a big customer problem.
So why are Dell using the Z-series Atom processors? Battery life. Atom Silverthorne and the SCH offer much higher power efficiency so it gives Dell’s engineers the best possible chance to produce an 8hr device. The SCH also has the video decoding hardware built-in so we could be looking at a great long-haul video playback device here.
