As the Apple blogosphere and message board world rages back and forth about the potential merits and (mostly) demerits of using Intel's GMA 950 integrated graphics solution in the new Mac minis Steve Jobs rolled out yesterday, it's been difficult to track down hard numbers reflecting how the machines will actually perform.
This is largely because the GMA 950 is somewhat older technology. The most extensive tests, matching the GMA 950 against other bottom-of-the-line graphics solutions (see these ExtremeTech and Anandtech reviews for the gruesome details), while they show the Intel product lagging in most cases, especially for 3-D, they were also specced using Pentium 4s.
So far, the only benchmarking of the 950 running with a Core Duo I've been able to find is this Hardware Zone review, which compares a Windows laptop running a Core Duo with 950 against a previous-generation Centrino machine with the generally even worse GMA 900 chipset and then against a gaming laptop tricked out with a mobile GeForce 6800 with 256 MB of video RAM. You'll be shocked to learn the latter dominates.
However, it is worth noting that the Core Duo machine just barely outpaces the older Centrino box on 3-D performance. So Doom 3 is probably going to run like a dog on the new minis, even at 640x480 and low quality.
But you knew that. In more positive news, the 950 is designed by Intel to handle HD video, though Apple's own specs for HD have higher minimum requirements. Intel probably knows what they're talking about, so 2-D performance should be fine.
Either way, nobody appears to be thrilled about the announcement, though it was likely predictable. Could anyone really have expected Apple to go with one of NVIDIA or ATI's integrated graphics chipsets when they've made this big a deal out of their partnership with Intel?