X-bit labs

Contemporary Platforms with Integrated Graphics (page 2)

Category: Chipsets

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 12/08/2006 | 10:38 AM ]

Closer Look at Chipsets

Before we start discussing each of our today’s testing participants separately, I would like to say a few words about our selection of testing participants in general and what integrated chipsets are of most interest to the today’s users. Of course, the mainboards equipped with integrated graphics core that are intended for contemporary platforms should support the widely spread processor models and popular graphics technologies. So, we will focus primarily on the chipsets supporting Intel Core 2 Duo and AMD Athlon 64 X2 (in Socket AM2 form-factor) processors as well as DirectX 9 (and even better - Shader Model 3.0).

I have to admit that this criterion immediately eliminates a number of obsolete integrated solutions, including the chipsets from Taiwanese developers and the Canadian ATI. At the same time, we shouldn’t think that this manufacturer of popular graphics solutions is going to leave the promising integrated graphics market. Very soon the company is planning to announce new RS690 chipsets for AMD platform and RS600 chipsets for Intel platform that will acquire a graphics core of Radeon X700 class with 8 pixel pipelines. Of course, these solutions will be quite competitive integrated chipsets and we will certainly review them thoroughly as soon as the corresponding mainboards appear in the market.

And now that we have applied the above mentioned criterion, our article is going to include only four integrated core logic sets from Intel and Nvidia. Let’s take a closer look at each of them.

Intel 945G

i945G chipset is an integrated version of the popular i945P chipset for Intel Pentium 4, Pentium D and Celeron processor families. Although Intel is currently offering the users a more up-to-date replacement for the i945G – the iG965 chipset – the old solution is still enjoying quite a demand. To illustrate this fact I would like to point out that mainboard manufacturers have been quite successful in designing i945G based mainboards for the new LGA775 Intel Core 2 Duo processors. And the most important thing here is that the price of these solutions is about $30-$40 lower than that of the corresponding platforms on iG965.

Besides, the features of the i945G don’t look outdated at all. Compared with the newer solutions, this chipset doesn’t support DDR2-800 SDRAM (although it works just fine with DDR2-667 SDRAM), has four Serial ATA ports instead of six and supports only eight USB 2.0 ports. In other words, I don’t think these differences are that dramatic at all.

As for the most important part of the i945G chipset for us today, the integrated graphics core, we have to go in a little bit more details here. This core has its own name – Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 (GMA 950) and although it doesn’t fully support Shader Model 3.0, we decided that it should be included into our today’s test session thanks to its relatively high performance compared with the competitors.

So, GMA 950 is a second-generation integrated graphics core featuring Intel’s proprietary T&L (Transform & Lighting) functionality. However, when working on this core the developed paid most attention to video encoding having added all the necessary hardware functions. GMA 950 sped up to 400MHz, which ensures 1600Mpixels/s fillrate thanks to its four pixel pipelines. GMA 950 can also use up to 224MB of memory (shared RAM).

The implementation of T&L in GMA 950 implies that this graphics core supports one vertex pipeline compatible with Shader Model 3.0. As a result, the core complies with DirectX 9 specifications and, moreover, can work in the upcoming new-generation Windows Vista operating systems (even with Aero interface). However, GMA 950 doesn’t have a hardware T&L engine, its functionality is ensured in the drivers using the CPU for shaders emulation.

The integrated RAMDAC works at 400MHz frequency that allows GMA 950 to support up to 2048x1536 resolutions at 75Hz vertical synchronization rate. The core also features DVI interface support, although you will need a special daughter board to go into the PCI Express x16 slot on the mainboard if you want this DVI to work in your system.