I'm going to try to build a page detailing how to do good stuff with Intel Graphics 
Hopefully I can collect build options, versions, and softwares that result in having nice graphical acceleration for most intel adaptors.
Right now it's just a link dumping page until I get everything organized.
Phoronix site regarding some benchmarks: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_904_intel&num=1
Phoronix site regarding how to turn it on: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_uxa&num=1
Apparently something called UXA is needed, EXA is on by default. UXA does the GEM awesomeness.
Start of a thread on the Mailing list regarding some of this: http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/sm-discuss/2009-January/019157.html
Dell Latitude D630 with Intel i965GM and GEM