Surprised by integrated graphics performance

My parents just bought a low cost computer with the integrated Intel 3100 GPU, Pentium dual-core 2.2 Ghz, 3 Gigabytes of RAM, 500 Gig hard drive and a decent DVD burner. For $699 bundled with a 19" widescreen monitor, Windows Vista and a Canon printer/scanner/copier, it looks like a great buy.

I asked them if I could upgrade the graphics processor so that I could test, develop and debug the game project in a dual-core environment, and running on Vista is another variation worth testing. I figured that the integrated GPU would choke horribly.

However when I loaded a recent version of M.A.D. onto their computer just to see how bad it is, I was very pleasantly surprised to get 25-30 FPS! Kicking up some graphics settings didn't hurt much either. It ran quite well actually, with fog as it should be, and no crashes or glitches. That's more than I can say with my supposedly high performance GeForce Go 7800GTX, which causes Direct3D-related exceptions a bit too often, even with latest drivers and Direct3D.

So the good news is that I don't need to buy a graphics card, and even better news is that the game can be expected to run with decent perfomance on most any PC computer sold in the current market.