Intel HD Graphics Questions???

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My laptop came equipped with Intel HD Graphics and I'm kinda wondering how powerful it is (I'm not sure if it's a 2000, 3000, or just plain "HD Graphics"(if that exists) help on that would appreciated too). I know that it's nothing compared to a Nvidia GPU but, this being a laptop, I don't really have much to go on I've been everywhere else and I've gotten things from "It's a piece of crap" to "It's great! I can play (name of really graphics intensive game here) on it just fine!"

Here are my specs:
Intel core i3 (quad core) ~2.5GHz
4 gigs RAM
Intel HD Graphics (128 MB - though it appears that if it needs more, it can use up to 2 gigs(!) from the system RAM. How well does that work?)

I can play:
Team Fortress 2
Portal 1 & 2
Doom 3
Deus Ex 1

Most people who have told you one thing or another have probably never done a working comparison. The graphics are as good as you think they are for your purposes.

Different applications have different graphics requirements. I believe the integrated graphics Intel offers is optimized for media such as streaming movies and so on.

nVidia GeForce cards are optimized for game playing. nVidia Quadro cards are optimized for CAD programs and nVidia Tesla is a GPU designed for use in scientific rendering.

There is no absolute best.

I guess the one thing that's really tripping me up is the memory. 128 MB isn't a lot these days, but it seems that it could bump it up to 2 gigs if it needs more. (Like i said, it looks like it "borrows" what it needs from the system RAM) I know there are video cards that cost hundreds more that have less than that. And since it seems that the most important part of a gpu is its memory (judging from how system requirements are rarely more specific than saying "video card needs x amount of RAM"), what are the caveats???

With modern hardware, i.e., essentially anything produced within the last seven years, the amount of video memory available to a display controller is not a primary factor in determining that controller's rendering speed.

hmmm... Is there a way to test it's capabilities? Maybe like a program or something?

Benchmarks do exist. Whether any of them are particularly useful I cannot say. If you're interested in such things you can Google for "benchmark" and "direct3d" or "opengl" depending on your platform(s) and application(s).

Well, I don't put much stock in "base" hardware. Intel's GPU that's usually standard for any laptop is more than adequate for most uses, even low-level gaming. I think the question is how much it can handle before it's apparent it's inferior for gaming.

All the games you list DO NOT strike me as high-end games by current standards. Normally, the issue with GPU power is one of screen size and frames per second. Many games that run at 800 x 600 don't need a lot of GPU power. If you want a game to run at the same resolution as your laptop's display, then it may become apparent the GPU isn't powerful enough.

At least, in the old days, if your video card wasn't up to the task, you just set the game play resolution to something lower.

And the 128 MB that can go up to 2 GB...there really is no "discrete" memory allocated just for the video card...it uses system RAM for VRAM purposes. That's a performance downgrade, but most applications don't notice it. That's why when I got my last laptop, I ordered the nVidia GeForce card that had "discrete" RAM on the card itself rather than an arrangement that tapped into the system RAM to deal with GPU processes.

the onboard intel series also lack many of the newer hardware featues of dedicated cards and in some of the newest games that will create quite heavy visual distortions as layers go missing or worse.

Yeah, I have a PS3 for the higher end stuff. I think that Portal 2 is the most intensive on there, and it runs just fine. The funny thing is, it handles Portal just fine but Doom 3 (which is almost 7 years old now) lags from time to time...