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Hardware

Integrated 3D Graphics Motherboard Round-Up 188

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-want-my-3d-pc dept.
Keefe writes "In the recent past, integrated video was seldom a viable solution for hardcore computer gamers. Enthusiasts shunned from motherboards with integrated video, and opted to buy ones without it, in additional to a much faster ATi or Nvidia-powered graphics accelerator. Today, the picture is beginning to change. The last few integrated motherboards sported decent graphics chipsets, like the Nvidia NForce (GeForce2 MX), ATI IGP320 (Radeon VE), or Intel 845G. Techware Labs has taken a look at the current integrated 3D video chipsets on the market and concluded how they perform in the latest 3D software."
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Integrated 3D Graphics Motherboard Round-Up More

Integrated 3D Graphics Motherboard Round-Up

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  • Uhh... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Spazntwich ( 208070 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @11:14AM (#4396943)
    The submitter makes it sound like these integrated video platforms are good enough for gamers. WTF? At no point in history, including now, have integrated video accelerators offered acceptable performance for current games. Sure, these things might run Quake 3, but they better, seeing as it's so many years old.

    True gamers are never going to use integrated video, when even the cheapest of new videocards spank them in all terms of performance, and most joe blows don't need anything approaching good 3d performance in their integrated video, because their activities consist of emailing and web surfing.

    These motherboards are trying to fill a niche that doesn't exist. Power users will ignore the integrated video, and normal users (if they have any say in what goes into their box) will get cheaper integrated video solutions that don't cost as much as 'supAr fast 3d shared memory game integrated 3d card things'.

    • Re:Uhh... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Howie ( 4244 )
      Don't assume the only market for a 3d-capable video is gamers, then. Don't assume that all 'joe blows' do what you think either. Hell, or that all games require good 3d performance.

      I have a PC by the side of my TV based around a Duron and an nForce board to get me a very quiet system (no extra VGA fan, no southbridge fan) to run through my TV. The 3d is used for some gaming (yes, mainly Q3A and similar), but also for some set-top box multimedia applications I'm writing, which use the 3d too.

      If what you say is true, all 'normal consumers' would still be buying a Tseng Labs ET4000 for their Pentium 200 MMX, because they don't need anything more. Obviously that isn't the case.
      • You're unbelievably incorrect.

        Don't assume ... that all games require good 3d performance.

        You like to play games with poor 3d performance?

        What you are doing is a very rare thing. Would the manufacturers be making these if their only intended use was for a TV set top box? Hell, no. There isn't the market for that.

        I think what you don't understand is what I have an issue with here. I have no problem with integrated video chipsets being made. I think in some applications, they are useful. What I have an issue with is how these things are being marketed. They are being pushed as replacements for a typical computer in which you use both a seperate motherboard and video card, and these are most certainly not that.

        I am running my games with a Geforce 3 Ti 200 right now, overclocked about 10%. I STILL have trouble running games like Battlefield 1942 or Soldier of Fortune 2 at even 1024x768 with moderate details on at acceptable frame rates. These integrated video solutions will be hard pressed to run these games AT ALL.

        I'm not one of those morons questioning technological advancements in the PC field. I'm just saying that these products are ill-conceived and mis-leadingly marketed.
        • You're unbelievably incorrect.
          Start out with the bold statement - good. I'll try to be less incorrect.

          You like to play games with poor 3d performance?

          I like to play Age Of Empires and Command & Conquer, or Warcraft III (I don't actually, but I know plenty who do). Games which don't need good 3d performance.

          No, STBs are not a big enough market in themselves (although VIA seem to do OK with chipsets and CPUs aimed at the embedded market), but they would certainly benefit. Just like Apple before them, I think that OEMs would be happy to be able to say 'Nvidia graphics onboard' (or ATI Radeon) for cheap, simply because people may have heard of those - it is perceived value. Since Dell's base spec for a 900UKP PC is still using a Rage128, it might even be a step above the 'typical computer'.

          The last part confused me a bit, because I've been playing SoF2 alright on an original GeForce 256 DDR until recently. Maybe I just have lower standards... *shrug* Is 1024x768 really an absolute minimum for FPS these days?
          • Start out with the bold statement - good. I'll try to be less incorrect.

            Yeah, sorry. I'd just read some of the more confrontational replies to my original post, and I was a little peeved. Your reply was a lot less confrontational, and I should have been less mean-spirited. With that said, AoE and C&C are old by a number of years. I'm referring to current games. Warcraft III apparently (I say this because I don't have it, but know people who do) is very graphics intensive, and to run it in high detail and normal resolution requires quite a bit of horsepower.

            You're right about VIA doing well with their Eden platform (I own an EPIA-800 myself, and it's fun as hell), but they're not bringing in the big bucks off these as just STBs. People are buying them as 'cute little computers' or office PCs to save space, and personally, I think the Eden platform is much more relevant to today's market than these other reviewed motherboards are. They're smaller, quieter, cheaper, but they still get the job done for 90% of people.

            The last part confused me a bit, because I've been playing SoF2 alright on an original GeForce 256 DDR until recently. Maybe I just have lower standards... *shrug* Is 1024x768 really an absolute minimum for FPS these days?

            What settings do you use? 1280x1024 with all settings on brought my system down to 15 FPS levels. 1024x768 medium details is acceptable most of the time (50-70fps), but in any sort of a large fire-fight, it slows down significantly (20-30 fps). And while it is totally subjective, yes, 1024x768 seems to be the general consensus for the minimum any game should run at. 800x600 is just noticeably worse on a 19" monitor.

    • Re:Uhh... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ciannait ( 82722 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @11:33AM (#4397003)
      I take it you haven't really looked at the specs for this integrated chipset.

      While it's convenient to think that there are two and only two groups of users - the ubergamers, and the drooling morons - this isn't the case. If it were, there would be two, and only two, cards on the market. The "eke out 3 more fps in Q3A" card, and the "maybe it'll play The Sims" card.

      These integrated chipsets have a lot of nice features, including digital 5.1 sound. It's essentially like having a GeForce4 MX (a card I have in my machine at home) with a good quality sound-card - only, two fewer cards to buy.

      Not everyone likes having a mess of cards in their PC. Not everyone needs bleeding edge. Lots of people are perfectly happy not having the latest-greatest.

      That's who this integrated chipset is for.
      • Uhh, how is having a intergrated GeForce2 mx like having a Geforce 4 mx? Either you made a typo unlikely since you make no others or you are a bit confused or of course the MX series sucks as much as I feared and there really is no difference between them.

        Everything else I btw I agree with. Different people different needs. If you want internal good luck, just don't whine to me when mafia runs at 2 frames per sec.

        • According to this [nvidia.com], the new nForce2 chipset features either a GeForce4 MX or a GeForce2 MX.

          I have a GeForce4 MX, and have zero problems with it. It plays all my games flawlessly.
          • " According to this [nvidia.com], the new nForce2 chipset features either a GeForce4 MX or a GeForce2 MX."

            Want to know something interesting? It doesn't matter which of those 2 cores they put in the chipset. You'll get the same performance. Why? Ram bandwidth. Even the geforce2 mx is limited by the pathetic amount of bandwidth it receives from the motherboard's ram, so just increasing the core's clockspeed, which is what the geforce4 mx does, does VERY VERY little, almost nothing, to increase the performance.

        • Re:Uhh... (Score:3, Interesting)

          by vipw ( 228 )
          The Geforce2 mx and Geforce4 mx are nearly identical. There was a bit of concern at the time of the Geforce4 mx release as to why it was given the number 4. There was never a geforce3 mx, and the geforce 3 performed far stronger than the Geforce4 mx. A geforce 4mx card does have a pretty good edge though, the memory controller is way faster than the nforce's, since the nforce uses shared memory. It also runs at a higher core clock frequency. It's not exactly orders of magnitude better though.

          The bulk of card sales is in the low end market which integrated video can compete with nicely. Integrated video platforms make quite a bit of economic sense if they come with an AGP slot for a future upgrade. The nforce especially looks promising, all your drivers can be from 1 source, and from a company that has an excellent track record with drivers (except on linux/bsd, where the record isn't near as impressive). But if I were to build my parents a computer, it would be nforce/nforce2 based: Decent video, excellent sound and networking, only 2 driver packages, moderate price, and excellent upgrade path.

          Integrated video speed not as bad a situation as a lot of people imagine it to be; integration keeps getting better also.
          • It appears that I made the mistake of thinking that MX cards are based on the same chipset as their non-mx name suggests (like 386DX-SX). If those two are the same then the argument that these cards would be adequate for a gamer is moot indeed as they simply will not run some of the latest games. And certainly not the games coming out with in the life time of a new system.

            Thank you, and the other poster who replied as well, for pointing out my mistake.

      • The problem is, as the OP said, with the way the submitter wrote the story.

        Integrated video is still not a viable solution for hardcore computer gamers. Enthusiasts will still shun motherboards with integrated video.

        Which is exactly contrary to what Keefe said. Certainly these motherboards are useful and fulfill a rather large niche in the market, but anyone with a clue will not buy a MX chipset or a stripped down ATI product. They're too limited and are getting outstripped too fast.

        Oh, and just because you're a hardcore gamer doesn't mean you upgrade your box every 6 months (ok, maybe the true hardcores do). My main box is over 2 1/2 years old now. It runs UT2k3 pretty well, although with all features turned off and only at 800x600. It has a GeForce2 in it which I bought the 2nd day the card was available. And while I paid a premium for it, it's certainly done me well. I'll buy a NV30 (GeForce5?) when it comes out, and probably pay a premium for it. But I won't have to upgrade my card every year because it's become outpaced so quickly. Which is why I won't even consider integrated video - sure, it runs current games fine. Will it run the top of the line games at an acceptable level in 2 years? I doubt it.

        • Re:Uhh... (Score:3, Informative)

          by GigsVT ( 208848 )
          but anyone with a clue will not buy a MX chipset or a stripped down ATI product.

          There we go again with the elitist crap. Have you ever considered that it's possible to have a clue, and at the same time, choose not to get the highest end video card? Not everyone thinks games are the most important part of "computing".
          • The wording was misleading, and obviously so.

            Substitute "any serious gamer" for "anyone" and it reads properly.

            And no, games are not the most important part of computing, but if it's what you want to use your home PC for then you are a moron to buy an MX card.

        • GBA? (Score:2, Interesting)

          by yerricde ( 125198 )

          Will it run the top of the line games at an acceptable level in 2 years?

          Top of the line in 3D graphic detail, or top of the line in fun? I choose the latter, which is why I play games on my GBA and my GBA emulator. You don't need 3D accelerated video for that, just a fast (866 MHz PIII) processor and some bandwidth from the processor to the video card (TNT2). Take it up a bit (recent Athlon and GeForce 2) and you can emulate many N64 games.

      • Re:Uhh... (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Spazntwich ( 208070 )
        You're putting words into my mouth.

        I take it you haven't really looked at the specs for this integrated chipset.

        I have. Integrated Geforce2 mx core. Wow! Geforce 2 mx! That was the BUDGET (read, slow) version of the geforce 2, released 1 or 2 years ago. Gosh, that must be fast.

        Radeon VE! Wow! VE = Value edition, in case you didn't know. The VE was the bastard child of the radeon family. It was known for it's crippled core and slow performance.

        Wow, 845G! That thing's using technology that Nvidia and ATI have had in their cards for, going on 2 years now? And, what's that? It's also unstable [theinquirer.net]?

        So yes, to answer your question, I have looked at their specs. They are pathetic and slow. They are more than an average person needs, and far far less than an average gamer needs.

        These integrated chipsets have a lot of nice features, including digital 5.1 sound. It's essentially like having a GeForce4 MX (a card I have in my machine at home) with a good quality sound-card - only, two fewer cards to buy.

        Not everyone likes having a mess of cards in their PC. Not everyone needs bleeding edge. Lots of people are perfectly happy not having the latest-greatest.

        That's who this integrated chipset is for.

        Thanks for missing my point. I'm not arguing against integrated chipsets. I'm arguing against the integrated video cards in them.

        And you know the nail in the coffin for the integrated solutions? They leech bandwidth from the CPU. Your gf4 mx at home is fine in performance because it has a 128 bit bus running at 400mhz effective to it's gpu. An integrated video solution has to run off the bandwidth supplied to the cpu. If it's the ATI chipset, it's cannibializing part of the piss-poor 64-bit 333mhz bus going to the cpu. If it's the Nvidia part, it's for a while 64-bit 333mhz bus to play with too. Big whoop. That's LESS THAN HALF of what the card has as a standalone soltuion. And keep in mind even on the standalone cards, these things are bandwidth limited, not fill-rate.

        So, tell you what. I'm willing to admit I'm wrong if you can come up with facts and information to prove me wrong. Just don't fight back with more conjecture and subjective arguments that don't mean anything in the real world.
      • You know what... I'm getting tired of not so informative posts getting posted as such. The nforce which sported a Geforce2 MX core performed well below an actual geforce2 mx, in some cases running at 1/3rd the frame rate on games like Unreal Tournament and max payne.

        Why? Just because these motherboards have the awesome graphics cores doesn't mean anything. They lack the dedicated high speed memory bandwidth that standalone cards have. Even with the dual channel ddr that nvidia used on there nforce the thing still performed like crap.

        This is why the new nforce2 will come with a new model that doesn't include the igp.

        • Re:Uhh... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Hoser McMoose ( 202552 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @08:16PM (#4399359)

          I know that people tend to really hate it when I post facts instead of blathering out mindless opinions.. however I'm going to go with the facts anyway.

          Here's a link [anandtech.com] to some real and true benchmarks of the nForce 220 and 420 with their integrated graphics as compared to a GeForce2MX in Unreal Tournament and Max Payne.

          For UT, the nForce 420 is 9.5% slower than the GeForce2 MX (at 1024x768), and for Max Payne the nForce is just under 15% slower. That's a far cry from "1/3rd the frame rate".

          Ohh, and the original nForce was available without integrated graphics as well (the nForce 415 chipset).

          Long story short, the nForce can and does play games just fine. It's not getting 200+ f/s at 1600x1200, but as long as you can get by with only 30-60f/s at 800x600, the nForce is up to the task. The nForce 2 should be about twice as fast since it has somewhat higher memory bandwidth and some new stuff which reduces it's dependance on memory bandwidth.

    • Re:Uhh... (Score:5, Funny)

      by epukinsk ( 120536 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @11:44AM (#4397041) Homepage Journal
      These motherboards are trying to fill a niche that doesn't exist.

      You mean the OEMs-looking-for-cheap-marketable-components market?

      Yeah, that market never existed, never will. What are these guys thinking?

      Erik
      • There are boards that are cheaper that have poorer performing 3d cores. The OEMs will use the cheaper ones at the expense of performance. The consumers will never notice the difference.

        There's a market for integrated video solutions, just not "performance" ones, because the very notion of high speed integrated video is oxymoronic.
        • sure, a line like
          "Real Gforce technology, for all your 3D neads" doesn't help, sure.

          Even the non geeks have probably heard of a Gforce by now, having the chip will help. An earlier poster even said it could be a Gforce 4MX.

          So it could be "Uses the cutting edge Gforce 4 graphics core".

          Thats gotta be worth 50 dollors anyway, so what is the OEM price difference?
          • Actually, in all of the advertisements I've seen for nForce board based computers, they say "Uses nForce technology". They don't even try to hype up its 3d, and your average consumer isn't going to know WTF "nForce" is.

            I'll look up the price differential in a second. I haven't priced motherboards in a long time, but a few months ago, you could get a SiS integrated Video/Sound/Lan board for ~80$, and an nForce board for $130.
    • These are actually subsidizing notebook 3D chipset development...Most of these manufacturers already have Notebook Chipsets...the thing is, these are cheaply made and they keep their engineers developing new technologies.

      nVidia already has GeForce4 GO line of processors for notebooks...and to think that this chipset would be just as good/affordable as it is without integrated desktop video development is denying the obvious.

      As for what use are they...what about using these chips in Micro-ATX systems [asus.com]?

      At least these are using integrated DDR memory rather than SMA!!! (which is probably the only thing that makes these things "Performance")

      These chips are the kind that end up in the hands of Schools, Businesses, and "Joe Consumer". Most of the systems shipped by major manufacturers (Dell, IBM, Gateway) are sold with integrated video. It's cheaper, and it just works for most things...

      Most of these chips won't even see 3D GFX half the time, and when they do it will be things like UT, EA Sim* Games (which tend to be 2D anyhow), etc...

      Like it or not, 99% of game sales will probably end up going to systems with integrated video.

  • Good enough for gamers? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DjMd ( 541962 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @11:24AM (#4396966) Journal
    Regardless of the level of chip you put into an integrated motherboard no serious gamer will buy this...

    If for no other reason than upgrade-ability. What's they point of intergrating the latest chip when a year from now (in the gamers mindset, and the games development) that chip will be out-dated...

    and from a manufacturing standpoint you will be left with motherboards that are too expensive for the low-mid end user and useless to the high end gamer...

    All arround pointless....

    • Re:Good enough for gamers? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nilstar ( 412094 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @11:31AM (#4396992) Homepage
      It does make sense from this perspective - integrate a cheap graphics core now. If the consumer wants to upgrade, most of these core have an AGP slot (if the mobo maker has one that is). Cheap now, Cheap later (when an decent AGP card usable for then-in-styles games is cheap).

      It is also cheap in the future - when these mobos become outdated the law of supply & demand (and discounting) - will make this cheaper than the then-current motherboard - with the added caveot that you can build a really cheap system (ie, no vid card) - or you can buy an AGP card.... as some solutions like Nforce 2 have superiour memory controller solutions - even compared to intel/via's next generation (dual channel ddr for example).
    • I don't think it is hard-core gamers that they are aiming at with these. However, for business use, or general family/AOL use, with the possibility of some games either after hours or when cousin Jimmy comes up for the holidays and brings his laptop.

      Integrated video is not always bad, and is in some cases quite good. What makes it bad is using shared system memory, and not being able to be disabled. What makes it really good is when it can be over riden in the bios to use a add-in PCI card. For example, my Dell Optiplex at work a few years ago (p2-350,128mb ram, 8mb ATI video) was quite a "average" machine for gaming - it ran Quake2 in GL mode and could maintain a decent 35fps average. Just fine for those "lunch time LAN parties" and after work frag sessions, but not what I'd plan on using to build that monster box that makes everyone at the LAN party ph34r your hardware advantage (remember the days of dual Voodoo2 cards?)
    • Regardless of the level of chip you put into an integrated motherboard no serious gamer will buy this...

      Yeah, but lots of casual gamers will. There's WAY more casual gamers out there than hardcore gamers. YOu just don't hear about them because they don't live and breathe games, and don't spend hours posting in forums. IN fact, the only reason that hardcore gamers are relavent in the market at all is because they are willing to pay MASSIVE amounts of money for video hardware. If the weren't, there'd be too few of them for the hardware companies to even bother with.

      Like it or not most games are played on integrated video hardware.
    • Let's consider this.

      The new motherboards that use the nVidia nForce2 chipset will be extremely fast, especially since it supports the latest AMD Athlon XP CPUs (2200+ to 2800+) and also has native support for DDR333 DDR-SDRAM memory.

      At these high speeds, the onboard GeForce4 MX equivalent graphics will be quite fast, capable of playing games like Unreal Tournament 2003 at 38 to 50 frames per second speeds. This is above the point that the human eye can see stuttering of motion. Also, because the video is GeForce4 MX equivalent, DVD playback will be excellent, since nForce2 supports Hardware Motion Compensation, Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform, Alpha Blending and Adaptive de-Interlacing acceleration of MPEG-2 video decoding. (This is actually as good, if not better than ATI's much-lauded hardware DVD decoding solution.) Best of all, nForce2 allows you to install an external graphics card if you want to upgrade to even faster video with the latest graphics cards.

      Secondly, nForce2 supports Dolby Digital 5.1 audio with a low-cost expansion card. This allows you to have true surround sound for the latest games and DVD movie playback.

      Finally, nForce2 supports up to six USB 2.0 ports and three IEEE-1394 Firewire ports, saving you the need to get a dedicated interface card.

      In short, the nForce2 chipset motherboard could save you from having to buy as many as three additional expansion cards right out of the box; this is something a LOT of system OEM's really love.

  • postgresopengl (Score:5, Funny)

    by j1mmy ( 43634 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @11:28AM (#4396984) Journal
    The motherboard in our DB machine at work has an ATI Rage chip integrated. Especially useful for rendering our logs in 3D. It doesn't support vertex shaders, though, so the lighting on the timestamps is kind of shoddy.
  • The problem is that graphics accellerators undergo a major increase in performance about every 6 months - they increase in speed FAR faster than Moores law would lead you to expect. (There are several good reasons for this that I won't go into here).

    Hence, it's almost certain that you'll want to upgrade your graphics card before your CPU, memory or motherboard which are all plodding along at Moore's law rates (or slower in the case of memory).

    Worse still, the integrated chipsets are always at least one or two years behind the cutting edge of graphics technology - and often share RAM with the CPU which slows everything down still further.

    So - would you buy a motherboard where the CPU and RAM couldn't be upgraded?

    No?

    Then WTF would you want an integrated graphics chip?

    The ONLY reason to do this is to get a cheaper PC in the first place - but if you buy one of these ultra-cheap boxes, remember that it's graphics are a year or two out of date on the day you bought it.

    Fortunately, it's usually possible to plug a real graphics adaptor into these motherboards and have it automatically override the built-in chipset - but since you nearly always want to do that, the extra expense of the built-in chipset is a waste.
    • yea but who cares for a surf/Word-for-your-dad-type-machine, where an integrated geforce 2 is still a substantial increase from what he currently has and is more than enough to run Diablo

      just because it doesn't fit your needs doesn't mean it doesn't meet someone elses, besides many integrated boards come with the ability to disable the on board video as well as add a card if you want,a nd coupled with integrated 10/100 and decent sound they can save you tons of money w/o sacrificing much flexibility if all you are is an end user do you really need to go beyond changing out harddrives and adding some ram later maybe anyway? probably not, my $.02

    • WRONG! Saves a slot. (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The newer generation of boards also have an AGP Port. Many older integrated boards did not, and the ones that did were either onboard video OR AGP. The newer boards allow BOTH.

      So you can run two monitors, one with high speed for games, the other for console stuff (and it does not slam main memory hard at all) without burning any precious PCI slots.

      This is somewhat mitigated by 2 and 3 way video out AGP boards, but still...

    • Re:Video on motherboard == Stupid. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @11:46AM (#4397051)
      "Then WTF would you want an integrated graphics chip?"

      If you're a bussiness. Seriously, most of the computers at work, even the ones we got receantly, have something like a Matrox G400 or a GeForce 2 MX or soemthing like that. There is just no need for a fast 3d card because it is for work, not for games. Now some of the systems come with built-in video cards and this is rather nice. Saves money and it's all interrgated. Does just fine for office apps.

      Not everyone needs the latest greatest accelerator. Yes, I have a GeForce 4 in my home computer, I play games here. At work I'd be fine with an integrated graphics card.
      • I only wish that we had that kind of video power in our corporate machines. Brand new 1.6GHz desktop machines are arriving with Nvidia TNT2 cards stuffed into them. Having said that, however, the TNT2 is more than powerful enough to drive my powerpoint presentations and display my excel spreadsheets and stuff. I have even on occasion played a game of Return to Castle Wolfenstein (RTCW) on it.
      • There is just no need for a fast 3d card because it is for work, not for games.

        That's starting to become untrue. How about Jaguar and it's double buffered desktop? When the Windows and Linux guys decide to bring inovation to the desktop, you'll need more memory to render your desktop.

        How about alpha-blended menus and windows?

        How about enough memory to run 16 desktops at the same time? How about throwing some of that data onto the video card rather than RAM.

        How about being able to run your desktop at 1600x1200x32? It's nice being able to see 3 different word processor documents at the same time.

        How about multimedia playback? Have decompression and rendering take place completely on the graphics card.

        A video card that would be great for business is different than a video card that is great for games. That's part of the reason we don't see inovation in the desktop department. Everyone is still running onboard video cards with 4MB of RAM.

        1600x1200x32 ~ 7.5MB. Double that amount if you want to double buffer your desktop.

        • I am getting the feeling that you didn't read the article. Integrated graphics chips aren't what they used to be. These integrated chips are full 3d accelerators, and have access to plenty of ram since they share system ram. Performance is actually on par with low end accelerators like the GeForce 2 MX. They are full and well capable of what you are talking about.

          Some other things:

          1) Even the best consumer video cards can't handle video deomcpression, mainly because there are too many codecs out there and they need something more general purpose (CPU) to implement them. The most any card does is things like smooth scaling, hardware motion compensation and iDCT. Well the integrated chips handle the first two and the only company thus far to put iDCT on their cards is ATi.

          2) All the flashy glitz you are talking about is all well and good, but still not necessary for work, at least the kind of work I'm talking about. Word processing, e-mail, the web, router configuration, none of those are going to benefit form having a transparant window. I'm not against eye-candy in OSes but you have to be realistic as to if it is needed or not.

          3) I fail to see why Mac users are so obsessed with the "double buffered desktop" in Jaguar. I'm guessing simply because it is something that OS-X has that Windows doesn't. Amusingly enough, most don't understand what it is or what it does. Double buffering is simply the process of drawing to a page of video memory not on screen and flipping when done. Even VGA cards can do that and Windows does use it (or triple buffering) just not for GDI operations. You can gave a Window being drawn with GDI calles and tehn things going on in it using DirectDraw, Direct3D or OpenGL and it will double (triple) buffer that. It just doesn't bother for things like windowsa nd menus, since it really isn't necessary. At any rate not something that does anything for bussiness productivity apps, no something that these integrated accelerators can't handle.

          The bottom line is that there IS a demand for low-end integrated graphics accelerators, hence that demand is being met. It's not "stupid" it's capatalism.
        • Integrated video solutions as a general class are not very good for running the newest games. Why do reviewers insist on focusing on 3d benchmarks? I read a bunch of reviews for the various ATI All-In-Wonder cards and most of them copy and paste the marketing boilerplate for unique video capture features, and then focus on game benchmarks. Who the hell is going to buy an All-In-Wonder just to play games?

          An AIW costs at least $100 more than the equivalent Radeon card without the video features. It doesn't make sense to buy this card unless you are going to record video, and I finally found a couple of reviews written by people who realized this fact.

          I don't think anyone is going to use integrated video primarily to play games. And I doubt any of these chipsets can't handle email and browser usage at low resolutions. So why can't someone test the things that might matter? Things like typical workstation resolutions (1280x1024, 1600x1200), video, and the TV out if there is one? These are all glaring questions for the tested chipsets.

          I appreciate free hardware reviews but sometimes I wish the typical review sites weren't so focused on one aspect of computing and spent a little time trying to figure out who their audience is.
    • I built my system with an nForce board. I use the integrated video right now. The reason? $$$

      Now that its been a while and some games that actually might need more than a GeForce2MX are coming out I'm going to upgrade, but for any budget concsious person integrated video is great as long as an AGP slot is included for the future.

      If my smaller monitor wasn't dying and I wasn't concerned about the integrates ability to push enough pixels to make a larger one look decent I'd probably wait until Doom3 to upgrade, too.
    • Video on the motherboard is smart. I always get one of those boards now. Figure $75 dollars for a high-end, such as NForce, and sell it a year later on Ebay for $35. What does this really mean? Time=money. Less money, more time to play with the computer.

    • Re:Video on motherboard == Stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by stew77 ( 412272 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @12:32PM (#4397246)
      Then WTF would you want an integrated graphics chip?

      You save
      • money
      • space
      • cooling
      • installation trouble

      And if you use your computer not for 3D work or gaming, there probably won't be a reason to upgrade for the next 3 years. Doing my daily work, I can't tell a difference between a TNT and a GeForce4.
    • sometimes the cheapest sh*t you can find come's with integrated gfx ;) (being nforce or intel cheappo). then it's not bad to know how much the gfx is worth for example if you later upgrade the whole machine and would like to relocate your gfx card to your friend, and use the mobo for divx box or similar. same with integrated audio, nics and other stuff sometimes.

      and people are buying via's mobos with integrated CPU ffs.
    • Then again I haven't upgraded from my Geforce 2. Am I a uber leet gamer? Maybe - I play a lot of online video games, to be honest there's only one game that I could use a faster video card on - operation flashpoint.

      Even the latest greatest UT game seems to work just fine - at frame rates consistantly above 60 fps.

      I heard the same arguments when motherboards started coming with intergrated ide, serial/paralel. I was working at a small computer shop then and people were telling me they didn't want intergrated serial/io because they couldn't upgrade and what would they do if it went bad?

      Fact is most OEM's are going to be switching to these new boards - simply because there's less that can go wrong (and trust me on this - when it comes to tech support this is a major major plus) - and as a plus its a reasonably fast video card as well.
      • Try Ut2003. Then tell me if your geforce2 is fast enough. Its only a matter of time before doom3 comes out. ALso expect third party game developers to use both of these graphics engines. UT is very old and was designed for 1998 era machines.

        • Some people just don't read - or don't know how...

          I said,

          Even the latest greatest UT game seems to work just fine - at frame rates consistantly above 60 fps.

          And yes UT 2003 plays just fine on this machine. I usually do pretty well on most any server.
          • hehe

            My athlonXP +1800 maybe could break out at 30fps if I was lucky on my geforce2mx playing ut2k3. It now averages around 50fps on my geforce4 ti. There is no way in hell you could sustain those frame rates except in special circumstances. Try the outdoor level in the demo. This creamed my geforce2mx into the teens and made me purchase my geforce4.

            • Well the benchmark said 59 fps average. In game its usually above 60. If you don't believe me and you live in the Portland area maybe you should drop by and see it.

              No - I don't run with all the settings maxed out - they are at defaults. Still looks pretty good.
    • And just how hard is it to stick a video card in the AGP slot included with these boards?

      Come on people! Take a look at the boards before sprouting off mindless opinions! Every single board in the review had a fully functional AGP slot alongside their integrated video!

      I bought a nForce board about a 8 months ago. I play games from time to time, but I'm not worried about getting 200+ f/s on all my games, so the integrated graphics is fine for me for now. In 6 months to a years time, the integrated graphics will probably be getting a touch on the slow side, so I'll probably pick up a GeForce4 Ti 4200 than (which should be nice an cheap after the GF5 comes out) and it should serve me well for at least another year, possibly two.
  • Raise your hand if the first thing you did was disable the AC97 trash on your motherboard. This is a sad thing to have to do, disable well intentioned chipsets. Perhaps, in some distant future of the motherboard this will be helpful. Now if I can just figure out how to get UT2003 to run on my machine with a i870 and NO AGP slot (DOH!)

    Hey - is that the right usuage of shunned? Just checking.
    • Usually I'd tend to agree with this, anything onboard tends to leech its resources, taking up RAM or CPU when a seperate card might have handled this on its own. At least most newer board (not all) have the option of disabling the onboard devices from the bios so that you can install others without conflicts.

      For power computer users, most onboard sucks. For an office-type PC, it's nice if you have your NIC, Video, and Sound all on the mainboard. This tends to make configuring the thing a little easier (with the exemption of some board which don't duely identify the onboard chips causing driver nightmares when installing a newer OS).

      Onboard sound is a lot less messy than video though, also depending on the chipset. My board came with a SB PCI128 clone. Nothing super by most standards, and yet performance-wise I notice very little difference between it and peripheral soundcards. The "surround" feature is ok, it lets me use the line-in as a line-out for a 4 speaker effect, which works in a lot of games supporting 4 speaker directsound-surround.

      I'm looking to build a new system now. I'll probably piece it together over a month or to, so built-in is nice in this case. After paying for the motherboard+cpu+HD+drive+case+CD-ROM (have a GeForce4 for it already, thank goodness), I think that I can allow for a cheap onboard soundcard and/or NIC. As long as I can disable them through the BIOS, then I won't have to start without sound, but I can always pop in a decent soundcard later.

      On a related note, does anyone know which SoundCards are decent but not hugely expensive for somebody who is very into gaming, etc but not really sound development (although an input I could jack my guitar into would be way cool).

      When can I get a dual-AGP board? - phorm
  • This page is temporarily unavailable.

    The reason for this is we had to limit the bandwidth for this article at ~1.0 MBPS because we were linked at Slashdot.
    Interesting, i haven't seen a notice like that before. /me raises one eyebrow.
  • Enthusiastic gamers won't buy this. What it offers maybe top notch for today, but Average Joe now knows Moore's Law :)
    Upgradability(is it a word?) is the key, I think.

  • Video for the Masses (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BaldingByMicrosoft ( 585534 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @11:34AM (#4397007)
    Don't be elitist. There are plenty of gamers out there that can't bloody afford the latest and greatest, much less upgrade every two years (6 months?). Some folks are actually interested in knowing what the best integrated video is, even if it doesn't compare to your Robocop 6000 SUX.

    If only they had a sample of the NVIDIA nForce2 [anandtech.com] to compare. Then again, maybe they did -- anyone seen a mirror? I loaded their page once, it linked a supposed mirror, but it was for a 40x CDRW review...

    • the latest and greatest is largely unnecessary (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Perianwyr Stormcrow ( 157913 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @12:28PM (#4397224) Homepage
      You can play Everquest, Ultima Online (3D client,) America's Army, Warcraft 3, all Sims versions, and every half-life mod known to man with a GeForce2 MX and an Athlon 1 ghz quite nicely. It may not be as pretty as your more powerful cards, but your gaming experience with older gear is still quite good. You're not really missing out on the most popular gaming venues with an old system.

      Also, it's often not a matter of not being able to afford the card, but a matter of interest. If the low-end integrated video can play the more popular titles, it's possible that the player might develop an interest in gaming that he didn't have when he bought the machine (reason no. 1 to ALWAYS make sure you have proper expansion slots!)
    • You gotta pay to play period, I don't think it has anything to do with being an elitist. If you want to be a gamer and not have to upgrade your video card you'll be relegated to playing older games at 640x480. If you want to blame someone blame the game designers who create the games which require ever increasing graphics and cpu horsepower. And to be honest with you I actually don't even think its fair to blame them. The game designers are just trying to produce the best looking games possible. They are literally just using the technology that is available to them. You can't expect them to give up on all graphical progress just so people with Geforce 1's can continue to play every game at 1024x768.

      I can also completlely relate to how much it sucks to have to upgrade your hardware so often. But like I said that's the price you pay for being a gamer. This is NOT a cheap hobby. I don't know where people got the idea that gaming is a cheap hobby. I assume its a relic from the mid 1990's when the pre hardware accelerated games didn't require the latest and great videocard, but those days are long gone. These days it's a 24 month cycle for older games and a 12-16 month cycle for the latest FPS's. Of course like I said you can turn all the options down, but who wants to play games at 800x600 on a 19" monitor?
      • Of course like I said you can turn all the options down, but who wants to play games at 800x600 on a 19" monitor?

        If there were any PC games that were actually fun, I wouldn't mind playing them at 320x240 with no fancy-shmancy T&L using a 2 button controller. Oh wait, that was Nintendo.

        The main thing that I find valuable about the need-to-have-the-latest-greatest-video-card-for-$4 00 early adopters is that it pushes the video card manufacturers forward and makes life cheaper for us losers who don't mind being a generation behind on the hardware. So keep on buying 'em new every 6 or 12 months. You're probably saving me about 50 bucks.
  • Anyone have a mirror of the article?

    This page is temporarily unavailable.

    The reason for this is we had to limit the bandwidth for this article at ~1.0 MBPS because we were linked at Slashdot.

    This page will automatically retry the article every 45 seconds.

    If you would like to be updated when we post new content, sign up for the mailing list located to the left.

    Thanks to the good guys over at Stanford we now have a mirror of the review. Click here to view!

    While waiting for this page to load check out our irc channel at irc.techwarelabs.com #techwarelabs
    • "Thanks to the good guys over at Stanford we now have a mirror of the review. Click here to view!"

      by the way, this "mirror" is for a different article, not onboard video one.
  • Sure, it still may not be enough for you 'hardcore gamers'...

    but Shuttle computers and nVIDIA are planning on releasing an integrated GeFORCE 4 MX motherboard. This will be particularily cool for shuttle itself, who makes relatively small (and attractive) barebones systems. Not having to leave space for an AGP card will help them a lot. (btw- I have nothing to do with either of these companies)

    Their joint press release [nvidia.com]

    Also, I don't think the purpose of these integrated cards is generally to keep gamers happy, they'll want to upgrade every few months anyhow. Integration is there to make it cheaper for the rest of us to get decent graphics on a cheap box.
    • Hate replying to my own post but I should point out that I couldn't read the article (they know they've been posted here). I can't tell if the geFORCE 4 mobo is mentioned or not.
    • The geforce5 is due out in decemember and will be twice as fast as a geforce4 ti. Its pointless to think about integrated graphics if your a gamer. Also the geforcemx series is the low end of the spectrum due to crippling bandwith on the card. I would be supprised if it can even run ut2003 properly on even the highest end systems while a geforce3 ti would run smoothly. John Carmack hates the mx series with a passion. He even mentioned that the geforce3 series will outperform the geforce4mx due to bandwith. ITs all in the bandwith.

      In 2 years from now both the hightest end geforce5 and the low end geforce4mx will seem quite obsolete and slow so it wont matter how good the integrated graphics are.

      Constant upgrading is quite the norm in the video card bussiness like it was in the cpu industry a decade ago.

  • Like another poster pointed out, integrated motherboards aren't targeted at serious gamers. They're targeted at average people.

    Some of the early-generation ones didn't come with an extra AGP slot or a way of disabling the on-board options, but that seems to have been fixed now.

    True, you might not find 5.1 sound or AGP8x/GeForce4 4400 performance, but if you consider who these motherboards are targeted at, it's good enough.

    Just a comparison in Singapore:
    Motherboard + video card + sound card >= 400
    Integrated motherboard >= 185
    • True, you might not find 5.1 sound or AGP8x/GeForce4 4400 performance,

      Okay I have no clue what I'm talking about here but my guess is that an integrated GPU would have pretty fast communications with the rest of the motherboard, afterall I think they share the system RAM, this could well be faster than AGP8x, which currently does next to nothing according to Tom's Hardware Guide [tomshardware.com] is basically a marketing feature anyhow.
    • but that is not what the post says. It says the in the past integrated video cards where never good enough for HARDCORE games. Not average games, not joe public who wants to play a game every now and then, HARDCORE gamers.

      The only way HARDCORE gamers would buy this if they where on a limited budget. When I was still on a limited budget like that 4 color display was posh so I can't really tell if this is a better deal or not. (I give away my old hardware maybe a kid could ask older relatives for their old card?)

      The fault is not yours, and I presume not the fault of the article (it is down) but rather the usual poor posting on slashdot.

  • mirror (Score:2, Informative)

    by bhsx ( 458600 )
    http://cyclonite.stanford.edu/~eswierk/mirrors/40x _burner_roundup/index_1.shtml
  • It would be nice if future motherboards can take advantage of these integrated video cards by using their additional power and memory for performing other, lower-priority operations while leaving those that need higher processing power to those who opt to buy a separate graphics accelerator.
    • That reminds me of a call I took when I was working the phones for Origin Systems.

      This dude calls me up because he can't get Privateer to work on his computer, which he called "The Switcher". Now, Privateer was a DOS game, and a pretty well-behaved one at that. If you had DOS drivers for your sound card, you were pretty much OK, so I figured this would be no problem. However, this swiftly turned into a nightmare call, as the guy on the other end of the line told me about the MONSTROSITY he had sitting under his desk.

      He had three motherboards in the box. OK, fine, says I...he's built three computers into a custom case. Which one are we using, Chief? Well, he wants to use them all. Simultaneously. He says that he's got Windows set up to have the 286 processor on one mobo run the "low level" instructions, and the AMD386 run the "high level" instructions. He wants me to help him make Privateer do the same thing.

      Uh, right. You implemented asymmetrical multiprocessing across two processor families, two motherboards, under WINDOWS 3.1? Right. If you can do THAT, you can figure out how to work the damn game yourself. Dude, get off my phone. You're wasting my time.

  • Integrated GFX with DVI? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by stew77 ( 412272 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @11:50AM (#4397069)
    Does anyone know of motherboards that have an DVI output for their integrated graphics? As a fan of low-noise low-cost computers I am interested in motherboards with integrated graphics, but I need a DVI connector.
    • I believe MSI makes a DVI AGP dummy card for their Nforce boards. It takes up the AGP slot and gives you DVI and S-Video. It's probably $20 or so if you can find it.


      I would assume others make the same thing, or that the MSI card would work with any other Nforce board.

  • .. but in my experience, boards with integrated video cards don't have an onboard AGP slot. Which means if you ever wanted to upgrade your graphics card, you'll be forced to get an PCI card. Now, that is bad!

    Site is /. so oh well. Man, when is /. going to develop mirror.slashdot.com ?

    if ($site is down) {
    $link = "mirror.slashdot.com";
    }
  • I can speak from personal experience on this one here. This mobo isn't for your hardcore gamer, its for your average computer user who still wants to play video games at a reasonable price. I went the cheap way out and bought a barebones amd athlon 1700+ system. The motherboard that came with it is total crap. It had integrated *everything*, and all of it sucked. The vga capabilities were a joke (SiS), the audio was crappy, and it didn't even have an unused AGP slot to plug in a decent video card. So I'm left with two options: Go out and buy a new, feature rich motherboard, along with a new graphics card, and ethernet card, and sound card... Or I can just buy one of these nice nForce motherboards. They have one on newegg for $80. It has built in 5.1 dolby audio, and the integrated nForce chipset. Plus it has an additional AGP Slot, should I want to upgrade in the future. So this GeForce4 mx- ish vga pared with the athlon 1700+ proc and the 512 mb of 2100 DDR ram is actually QUITE sufficient to play pretty much any game I would want right now, including UT2k3. Sure I can't run it maxed out with all settings on their highest level but it still looks nice and fast. And for only $80 its definitly worth the price. And if at some point down the road I want to play Doom3, then I can just go get a faster video card and that will be that. So stop knocking these integrated motherboards -- they do what they are supposed to do, and they do it pretty damn well. And if I had to guess, there is actually a pretty big market for these type of things.
    • I can speak from personal experience on this one here. This mobo isn't for your hardcore gamer, its for your average computer user who still wants to play video games at a reasonable price.

      You're right. The hardcore gamer these days doesn't mess with PC video cards, but owns a PS2, Xbox, and/or Game Cube. If you don't, then you're missing out on lots and lots of really great games. Compare the number of incredible console games released in the last two years with the number of PC games that actually make good use out of high-end video card features like vertex and pixel shaders. It's almost as if the PC 3D card market exists entirely to support first person shooters.

      Before modding me down, realize I'm a game developer. I love the hardware in cards like the GeForce 4. But I see those cards are being great for development platforms, not for commercial software. Heck, half of the machines that Dell sells ship with the Intel integrated 3D chipset, and we're talking 2+ GHz machines. The 3D game market on the PC, to a great, great extent, has become an marginally profitable niche.
  • http://216.239.35.100/search?q=cache:n9wnFpPcULcJ: www.techwarelabs.com/reviews/video/integratedvga/+ integrated+vga+roundup&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

  • Unfounded Arguments (Score:2, Insightful)

    by taloobie ( 537189 )
    There are many arguments in this thread about "gamers won't by this because of this and that and this..."

    Guess what? We all bought these integrated systems, it's called a ps2, gamecube, or xbox.

    So it's slightly different under the hood but the idea is the same. And you know what, as a gamer I appreciate the simplicity of consoles.

    There will always be hardcore enthusiasts who will buy the big, bad, best stuff. That's a certain market. However, as an electronics manufacturer with a payroll you've got to follow the bell curve and shoot for the group within the bell, right?

    I think the more products that speak to the whole range of computer users and gamers is a good thing.

    Oh yeah, better integrated chips mean I won't always get stuck with the sh*tty 11mb shared card in that crappy dell l800 when purchasing gets cheap on the next upgrade.
    • excellent point. i rememeber beginning in the 90's i vowed never to buy a console system because i wouldn't be able to upgrade it. now, i have a PS2, and i love it because i know that any game i buy for it will perform great without me having to upgrade something.

      sure, for hardcore gamers onboard video is not an option, but my wife's new computer will have onboard video, and my work PC at home will too, because there's just no need for me to spend $300 on a video card when the onboard will work just fine.
  • is a nForce (or better yet, nForce2) in a micro-ITX form factor. Is that too much to ask? I have this dream of a computer I can carry with my laptop, plug in to power and firewire networking when I need it, and use as a remote kernel for mathematica, when it begins to bog down... which means I need an absurdly small motherboard that can take modern processors.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • People actually use these things?!? I've had some of the worst experiences with computers on integrated motherboards. (PC-Chips, 748 (or something.) ("Highly Integrated" video, lan, modem, sound, atx-riser expansion, Socket 370 or slot 1, partridge-in-a-pear-tree-adaptor.) (The ram fell out of the socket if you tapped the case. Wouldn't boot the same way twice. Ran win2k for all of 30 minutes, then core dumped.)


    Are these really, "honestly" any good now?


    -=fshalor

  • that companies are promoting integrated video. Unwitting computer novices won't be able to upgrade easily. This will only confirm their misguided belief that computers are too complex, technical and expensive to make it worth their while.

    I know because ten years ago I felt that way myself, even though I was reasonably techno-savvy (writing my own autoexec.bat files, etc.). I swore never to open a computer! Nowadays I blithely swap parts in and out, thanks to good advice and a good, generic machine that was easily upgraded.

  • Id like to see... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by aliusblank ( 547153 )
    a board that will let you use integrated graphics and the agp slot at the same time. It would be great for a dual monitor setup, reducing both the number of cards in your pc and probably cost as well.
  • Integrated graphics chips reduce the up front cost of a PC, but they steal memory bandwidth from non-graphics tasks, as opposed to graphics cards which contain their own memory bus to minimize AGP use, so dedicated graphics cards may actually improve non-graphic performance. That's how MacOS 10.2 works, so I've read.

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