So what is special about the Intel Clarkdale Core i5-661? Well for starters, Intel has finally integrated a GPU core inside the actual CPU with the i5-661.

Clarkdale also uses the newer 32nm process (Nehalems used the “old” 45nm process) that is part of the Westmere family. Westmere is not merely a die shrink of Nehalem but also has some improvements over it’s successor.

So how fast is the graphics capability of this Clarkdale? Maximum PC says “You probably only care about one thing: How fast is the GPU inside the chip? By rough estimates, it’s about 1.5x times faster than the graphics in a current Intel G45 chipset found in most laptops and mainstream motherboards. If that sounds great, remember that Intel’s integrated graphics history hasn’t been stellar. Put plainly, Intel’s integrated graphics have stunk up the joint for years and it’s probably an insult to graphics cards to actually call Intel’s integrated parts graphics accelerators. A 3-year-old $65 discrete graphics card with a hairball jammed in the fan is slightly faster than what you get from the G45 chipset. In fact, we’ve long blamed Intel’s subpar integrated graphics for helping to push mainstream gamers to console gaming.

Intel’s reasoning is that if people are buying systems with integrated graphics, they probably don’t care about graphics. Sadly, that’s probably true. Mainstream consumers browse the web, use Microsoft Works, and don’t play anything more graphically intensive than Yahoo Bingo before heading down to the social hall for a game of bridge with Madge, Maude, and Betty.

Intel bluntly says the graphics core in Clarkdale is definitely not meant for hardcore gamers. We wholeheartedly agree. We first tested the Clarkdale using 3DMark Vantage on default and after getting a score of 0, abandoned all hope of it being capable of serious gaming.

To see if it was even capable of playing more moderate games, we fired up Left 4 Dead 2 and found the frame rate almost playable at 800×600 with the graphics set on maximum ugly. Borderlands at 1280×1024 was also over the Clarkdale’s head, but almost playable at a mobile phone resolution of 800×600. We did actually see 60fps in Counter Strike: Source at 1280×1024, with somewhat compromised graphics. Still, that’s better than nothing. As easy as it is to make fun of integrated graphics, it’s a moot point for someone who doesn’t play games.”

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