Tech Reaction

Now that you have read my first blog (*cough* HERE *cough*)  about the HD4200 IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor). We will be moving on to overclocking the HD4200 in this article and seeing what all it has! Hopefully, this is satisfy all the advanced users curiosities, if you have any, about this IGP. This was a new experience for me, because I am an avid gamer and have always had a stand alone GPU. IGP is not in my vocabulary when it comes to building gaming systems. Needless to say, I was pretty excited about testing this, because of the massive unknown about IGP and overclocking it. So I began on my journey of overclocking and learned new things along the way!

First lets get the specifications and test settings and all that boring ‘mumbo jumbo’ out of the way.

Features:

Integrated Graphics HD 4200

• DirectX 10.1 support
• 2nd generation Unified Video Decoder (UVD 2.0)
  • Full hardware decode acceleration of H.264/VC-1/MPEG-2
  • Hardware decode acceleration of a secondary video stream (Picture-in-Picture) (10-20% CPU usage decrease)
• Improved ATI Avivo Video Post Processor
  • Enhanced DVD up-conversion to HD
  • Automatic dynamic contrast adjustment
• Multichannel LPCM over HDMI (no PAP, no HD audio bitstreaming

Test System:

• AMD X4 965 @ Stock
• MSI 785GM-E65
• 2×2GB Gskill Eco
• Corsair HX 750W
• 500GB WD Black

Test List:

• 3DMark06
• 3DMark2001 SE
• Call of Juarez
• World in Conflict
• Far Cry 2

The IGP stock clock speed is 500MHz. I was able to boot up into windows at 775MHz but was greeted with a very nice lock up about 30 seconds into using windows. I could use 750MHz but it locked up during benchmarking. I was finally able to get a solid benching speed of 710MHz. So I took that and ran with it!

Max boot able screen shot (even though it failed to bench)

Screen shots from BIOS so you all can take a look at how they set it up.

The MSI BIOS gives you decent control in overclocking the IGP. I was really surprised by this as I was just expecting a gimp set of options that would not really let you do too much. You can see several options that this MSI BIOS gives you to tweak. You can go all the way from VGA frequency to being able to adjust the shared memory and SIDEPORT memory frequency.

3DMark06:

Stock

OC @ 710MHZ

OK, not as big of a boost as I was expecting, but for 210MHz OC, a 455 point gain is still better than nothing.

3DMark2001 SE:

Stock

OC @ 710MHZ

Once again we see minimal gains. A 2,953 point gain with a 210MHz overclock.

Finally we have those benchmarks out of the way. We can now move on to some benchmarks the majority of people can relate to. So lets take a look!

Call of Juarez:

Stock

OC @ 710MHZ

The big thing I look for in FPS benchmarks is the average FPS you can expect. This is basically what you will have 90% of the time while playing a game. So if the average is low then the game will not run well and you definitely will notice it. If the average is high then you have nothing to worry about! As we look at these averages though, they will make the game unplayable at that FPS. It will be ‘lag city’ and you would not be able to tolerate the headache you would receive if you played for any length of time! We do see a jump in FPS, however, the increase is not enough to make a difference in actual game play. Even with a 256MB memory boost and 210MHz clock speed boost, it did not help the overall outcome of being able to play the game.

World in Conflict:

Stock
OC @ 710MHZ

Once again, the overclock could not increase performance enough to save World in Conflict either. With an average of 3FPS, while being overclocked, performance is still laughable, at best.

Far Cry 2:

Stock ( High Res / Low Res)

OC @ 710MHZ (High Res / Low Res)

With a quick glimpse at the Far Cry 2 benchmarks you may notice 2 things. High settings tear this IGP up and it can not handle them. However, set all the options to low and you get a ‘playable’ average FPS. When I say ‘playable’ I mean the game will run, but there is a good chance of lag. The bad thing about this is that you are on low settings and everything will look atrocious! If you can deal with that, then more power to you. I, on the hand, would go insane not having my eye candy to look at. If my settings cant all be maxed or close to it, I refuse to play the game.

Final thoughts of the overclock:

It was a very fun experience to overclock the IGP. It was interesting getting to play with all the options that MSI gives you. The overclock will not really make any of the games tested playable from when we benched them at stock speeds. There was an improvement in performance, but it is negligible at best. Overall, if you run the HD4200, either at stock speeds or overclocked, it will not make a noticeable difference. This brings me back to the point I made in Part 1 of this review, know your needs before attempting to run your setup off  IGP’s. If you are a pro email sender and an elite web surfer then the HD4200 will satisfy your needs. However, if you enjoy playing games made in the past 10 years then you better spend the extra money on a stand alone card!