Intel graphics - still not up to par

There are basically 3 companies that control the computer graphics market; Intel, ATI (a.k.a AMD), and nvidia.  Total these 3 companies have something like 99% of the market, so you have to try very hard to find a computer with another chipset.

Intel owns the commanding share, greater than 50%.  But they don't own this much because their product is better, but because embedded graphics are cheap and most computer manufacturers go with that option.  It's long been know that Intel graphics are basically unplayable in 3D games.  You'll get such low frame rates that if you want to do any gaming you need ATI or nvidia.  Because of this, for more than a decade I've always spent the extra money for a dedicated graphics card.  That said, Intel has put forth some major effort into improving the graphical capabilities of their cards, probably due in large part to Windows Vista/7 and the aero glass effects.  This improvement combined with the fact that I don't have time to "game" at home on my computer has lead me to build several computers lately using the default Intel graphics.

Well I can say, Intel still has work to do here.  The problem isn't so much the graphics performance.  I was able to play some older games just fine.  No, the problem is graphical stability and glitches.  On one system, if the computer went into standby power mode, when coming out of power standby Windows had graphical glitches.  The text on many Windows was gone never to return, and the mouse would sometimes track slow or jump around.  On the second machine, it would experience random HARD reboots - typically during graphical applications such as watching a video.

In both of these cases, installation of an nvidia card cleared up the problems.  On the first machine I suspect the problem is driver related, but I have installed the latest and greatest version of the driver.  The second machine (hard reboot) is a hardware problem.  Either way, Intel still has work to catch up here.  I'm hopeful Intel will fix these problems and continue to close the gap in performance just because they hardware is so common.  I guess you could say they are the slowest person on the team, but the team can't finish until the slowest person crosses the line.  So we all benefit from a better performing Intel graphics.