A few chaps who are responsible for Intel’s graphics including Intel’s graphics fellow have told Fudzilla that Sandy Bridge has DirectX 10.1 graphics core. This should not come as a surprise to most of you but we were reminded that 3Dmark 11 won’t score that great with DirectX 10.1 cards.

This is ATI’s and Nvidia’s key advantage in the struggle over the good performance of Intel’s monolithic core. It has quite decent graphic, but then again the 3Dmark 11 score won’t be great.

Intel tried to defend this fact by saying that most people don’t need DirectX 11 and we do agree with that, but 3Dmarks are something that people care about , a bit too much even. In the hands of skilled marketing manager, a good 3Dmark score become a great weapon.

Intel won’t care that much about this, as everyone expects that Sandy Bridge graphics should end up behind the competition, but most people will be surprised with its performance, not because it will be so great but because it will suck less.