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Intel updates graphics with multimedia capabilities

The company's long-awaited DirectX-10 graphics update for its chipsets is available.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor
Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.
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Intel's long-awaited DirectX-10 graphics update for its chipsets is available.

DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling multimedia tasks in Microsoft-based environments, especially those tasks related to games and video. DirectX-10 support was mentioned by Intel as far back as 2006 when its popular 965 chipset was introduced.

Microsoft

The new Windows Vista driver enables DirectX10 functionality for Intel GM965 and G35 Express chipset based platforms. The GM965 uses the X3100 Intel graphics engine, while the G35 uses the X3500.

The update is available here.

"We have been able to add features to products using these chipsets via driver updates. DX10 is the latest capability we have been able to add," an Intel representative said.

Asus is now selling a motherboard that the computer maker is billing as the "world's first to provide an Intel platform with an onboard integrated VGA solution that features built-in support for Windows Vista DirectX 10."

Intel has also announced a G35-based DG35EC Classic motherboard. The DG35EC board is based on GMA X3500 integrated graphics and includes HD video playback for movie clips and media streams without the need for an add-in video card and is the first to have integrated Microsoft DirectX10 capability with OpenGL 2.0 support, according to this report.

But don't expect top-flight gaming performance with integrated graphics--even with the new DirectX-10 driver. Typically, the frame rates in games using integrated graphics pale against the frame rates allowed by discrete graphics chips from Nvidia and AMD-ATI. More information here.