Want to play the latest Blu-ray or HD DVD films on your PC and hope that your motherboard's integrated graphics is up to the task of displaying them in fully high-def glory?

We already know that AMD's 690G chipset is able to natively hardware-accelerate high-definition content and output it via HDMI, although performance with a midrange CPU and at full HD - 1080p - isn't quite as smooth as a dedicated hardware solution's.

Intel is jumping on the same bandwagon and positioning its G965 chipset for full-HD (H.264) decode from the onboard X3000 graphics....with a twist.

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Here's a test system equipped with both HD DVD and Blu-ray drives, with the latter playing at 1080p. We noticed smooth playback and wondered how Intel had managed to pack hardware acceleration into the chipset. A new revision, perhaps?

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The truth was more mundane. Intel's G965 isn't particularly effective as the processor for the latest formats that use H.264, unlike the competition, so it's got Broadcom in on the act. It will release a x1 PCIe card with hardware-accelerated decoding for H.264-encoded Blu-ray and HD DVD, with the video outputted from the G965 via HDMI/DVI (SDVO).

The Broadcom card is designed as a low-cost replacement for a discrete graphics card which also carries the same functionality. If cost isn't a major issue, though, we'd opt for an integrated chipset with native hardware-accelerated support.