Microsoft Windows -Software support

GMA 900

This IGP is theoretically capable of running Windows Vista’s Aero interface and is certified as DirectX 9 compliant. However, no WHQL certified WDDM driver has been made available. Presumably this is due to the lack of a "hardware scheduler" in the GPU.[62]

Many owners of GMA900 hardware believed they would be able to run Aero on their systems as early release candidates of Vista permitted XDDM drivers to run Aero. Intel, however, contends that Microsoft's final specs for Aero/WDDM certification did not permit releasing a WDDM driver for GMA900 (due to issues with the hardware scheduler, as mentioned above), so when the final version of Vista was released, no WDDM driver was released.[63] The last minute pulling of OpenGL capabilities from the GMA drivers for Windows Vista left a large number of GMA based workstations unable to perform basic 3D hardware acceleration with OpenGL and unable to run many Vista Premium applications such as Windows DVD Maker.

GMA 950

This IGP is capable of displaying the Aero interface for Windows Vista. Drivers have shipped with Windows Vista since beta versions were made available in mid-2006. It is integrated in many subnotebooks nowadays, such as the Acer Aspire One, including Atom processor and is able to display a resolution up to 2048x1536 at 75 Hz and up to 224MB of video memory.[64]

GMA X3000

T&L and Vertex Shaders 3.0 are supported by Intel's newest 15.6 drivers for Windows Vista as of September 2, 2007. XP support for VS3 and T&L was introduced on August 10, 2007. Intel announced in March 2007 that beta drivers would be available in June 2007.[65][66] On June 1, 2007 "pre-beta" (or Early Beta) drivers were released for Windows XP (but not for Vista).[67] Beta drivers for Vista and XP were released on June 19[68]. Since hardware T&L and vertex shading has been enabled in drivers individual applications can be forced to fall back to software rendering[69], which raises performance and compatibility in certain cases. Selection is based on testing by Intel and preselected in the driver .inf file.

Intel has released production version drivers for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista that enable the Aero graphics. Intel introduced Direct X 10 for the X3100 and X3500 GPUs in the Vista 15.9 drivers, though any release of DX10 drivers for the X3000 is uncertain.

OpenGL 2.0 support is available since Vista 15.11 drivers[70] and XP 14.36 drivers[71]. Note that Windows and Linux drivers currently have no GLSL support.