Intel Graphics Media Accelerator

Anyone know anything about the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator? Does it compare to any video card and if so, what card would be an approximate comparison? I'm seeing some Quad core, 3-GB-of-ram machines for $800, but warranty is voided if you add a graphics card or video card. They say the on-boards are excellent, but I'm skeptical. Thanks.

Maybe an ATI 9200 or nvidia 6200/5200 depend it's GMA 950 or GMA 3000/X3000/3100. Currently all of them don't have hardware vertex shader support so all of them can't run games that specific check for that (so they are worse in that aspect compare to the real cards I listed above). Intel will release a newer driver that support HW vertex shader on GMA X3000 (965G) and G35, but there's a news on digitimes states even with that they still won't work well with some games. They're good enough to do other things beside gaming though IMO.

EDIT: You can use 3DAnalyze to trick any game that wants HW vertex shader to run but whether the game run good or not is up to heaven.

For video editing any solution will work. If you are adding transitions and particles effects for fading then certain effects will utilize the video card. In those cases a dedicated video card can help with the effects, but other than that you will not see any performance improvements.