Intel Haswell integrated graphics are on par with GeForce GT 650M

Intel’s Haswell chip made an appearance at this year’s CES although it wasn’t the star of the show. The chip maker wasn’t keen on playing show and tell with the CPU itself but we did get a pretty solid look at what the integrated graphics on Haswell (codenamed GT3) are capable of courtesy of a comparison video recently posted by the Tech Report.

In the video below, one system was running Intel’s Haswell CPU with integrated graphics while the other system was packing a Core i7 Ivy Bridge chip and a discrete Nvidia GeForce GT 650M graphics card. Dirt 3 was running at 1080p resolution with all of the details set to high and as you can see for yourself, it’s tough to determine which system is which.

We are reminded that the GeForce GT 650M is a midrange graphics card with 384 ALUs, a 128-bit path that dips into dedicated memory and clock speeds as high as 900MHz. The part is Nvidia’s fastest mobile GPU under the GT banner and is used in Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display.

The publication also points out that drivers have been a sticking point with Intel graphics for some time but they are now releasing updates on a quarterly basis. The fact that Intel has released a new QuickSync SDK will help to ensure developers will have compatible software by the time the chip launches. At last check, Intel is planning to launch Haswell by the end of Q2 2013.