The version 2729 of Intel HD Graphics driver has been released with OpenGL 4 support. It’s rather a big surprise even if it was somewhat foreseeable. So let’s see how the HD Graphics 4000 GPU (Ivy Bridge processor) handles the OpenGL 4 tessellation in the following tests: TessMark 0.3.0 and Unigine Heaven 2.1.
– Testbed for discrete graphics cards: Asus Z77
– Testbed for Ivy Bridge CPU/GPU: Gigabyte Z77
1 – TessMark: OpenGL 4 Tessellation Benchmark
TessMark works like a charm with the version 2719 of Intel HD Graphics driver. This is really a good start for next versions of the OpenGL 4 driver.
Settings: 1920×1080 fullscreen, map set 1, no postfx, no AA.
Tessellation level: moderate (X8)
| – EVGA GeForce GTX 680, R301.24 (Win 7 64-bit) – 65742 points, 1097 FPS  |
| – MSI Radeon HD 7970, Cat 12.4 (Win 7 64-bit) – 61961 points, 1032 FPS |
| – ATI Radeon HD 5770, Cat 12.4 (Win 7 64-bit) – 23436 points, 391 FPS |
| – Intel Ivy Bridge Core i7 (2.2GHz), HD 4000, driver v8.15.10.2729 (Win 7 64-bit) – 6337 points, 106 FPS, |
Tessellation level: normal (X16)
| – EVGA GeForce GTX 680, R301.24 (Win 7 64-bit) – 46521 points, 776 FPS |
| – MSI Radeon HD 7970, Cat 12.4 (Win 7 64-bit) – 38583 points, 643 FPS |
| – ATI Radeon HD 5770, Cat 12.4 (Win 7 64-bit) – 10974 points, 183 FPS |
| – Intel Ivy Bridge Core i7 (2.2GHz), HD 4000, driver v8.15.10.2729 (Win 7 64-bit) – 3300 points, 55 FPS, |
Tessellation level: extreme (X32)
| – EVGA GeForce GTX 680, R301.24 (Win 7 64-bit) – 24641 points, 411 FPS |
| – MSI Radeon HD 7970, Cat 12.4 (Win 7 64-bit) – 14802 points, 247 FPS |
| – ATI Radeon HD 5770, Cat 12.4 (Win 7 64-bit) – 2885 points, 48 FPS |
| – Intel Ivy Bridge Core i7 (2.2GHz), HD 4000, driver v8.15.10.2729 (Win 7 64-bit) – 1565 points, 26 FPS, |
Tessellation level: extreme (X64)
| – EVGA GeForce GTX 680, R301.24 (Win 7 64-bit) – 10446 points, 174 FPS |
| – MSI Radeon HD 7970, Cat 12.4 (Win 7 64-bit) – 4373 points, 73 FPS |
| – Intel Ivy Bridge Core i7 (2.2GHz), HD 4000, driver v8.15.10.2729 (Win 7 64-bit) – 767 points, 13 FPS, |
| – ATI Radeon HD 5770, Cat 12.4 (Win 7 64-bit) – 611 points, 11 FPS |
Incredible! Ivy Bridge HD 4000 GPU is faster than the Radeon HD 5770 for high level of tessellation. This is a very nice result!
2 – Unigine Heaven: OpenGL 4 Benchmark
Unigine Heaven is a Direct3D 11 and OpenGL 4 benchmark. So let’s test the OpenGL 4 version.
Settings: 1920×1080 fullscreen, tessellation: normal, shaders: high, AA: 4X MSAA, 16X anisotropic filtering.
| – EVGA GeForce GTX 680, R301.24 (Win 7 64-bit) – 1661 points, 65.9 FPS |
| – MSI Radeon HD 7970, Cat 12.4 (Win 7 64-bit) – 1199 points, 47.6 FPS |
| – ATI Radeon HD 5770, Cat 12.4 (Win 7 64-bit) – 351 points, 13.9 FPS |
| – Intel Ivy Bridge Core i7 (2.2GHz), HD 4000, driver v8.15.10.2729 (Win 7 64-bit) – 108 points, 4.3 FPS, |
Wow actually decent for IGPU…
let’s see Rage performance
Rage is perfectly playable on Ivy.
yeah, prfectly. I have problems with my 560Ti, streaming textures, poor image quality, etc.
I’ve installed the driver on my sandy bridge – HD 2000 – but GPU caps viewer still says it is only OpenGL 3.1.
Another thing is that even simple demo “Simple mesh” does not work.
I’ve returned to previous driver: 8.15.10.2712 (3-26-2012) – it is OpenGL 3.1, but somehow GLSL 330 can be used!