It looks like Intel is starting to take graphics seriously. It promises that G45 chipset will be three times faster than G33. When Intel makes this kind of statement this means it will be three times faster in 3Dmark06.

We checked our review of MSI G33 that we did a few months ago and we found out that G33 scores between 325 and 338 points in 3Dmark 06. Our head of the test lab, Rados Sanjin, said that Intel scores are  bad, as G33 lacked Shader model 3.0. This means it is realistic to expect around 1,000 points from the new chipset.

This is much better than Intel offered in the past but it is still not great. However, Intel will get the score that is getting close to 2400PRO. The Radeon 2400PRO, the cheapest discrete card on the market, scores about 1,300 to 1,400, depending on the version; and with this one you can play some games at low settings.

It looks like with G45 a casual gamer will be able to play a game or two. This has never happened before, as many notebook users are doomed to solitare, as that is the best that Intel IGP has to offer.

Before we forget, G45 graphic will be branded as GMA X4500 and will support DirectX 10, at least on paper. It will also have native support for Blu-ray and HD-DVD at top resolution.