X-bit labs

Roundup of 7 Contemporary Integrated Graphics Chipsets for Socket 478 and Socket A Platforms (page 8)

Category: Chipsets

by Tim Tscheblockov

[ 07/05/2004 | 11:09 AM ]

Performance in Gaming Tests

Unreal Tournament 2004 Demo

The chipsets from the respected GPU makers, ATI and NVIDIA, win the test at medium graphics quality settings. The RADEON 9000 IGP and the nForce2 IGP are far ahead of the others due to two factors: first, the integrated graphics cores of these chipsets are more advanced than their competitors and, second, these two chipsets have a dual-channel memory controller, which nearly doubles the speed of the integrated graphics.

Curiously, the advanced architecture shows itself advantageously even with single-channel memory access: the single-channel RADEON 9000 PRO IGP outperforms the dual-channel Intel 865G whose graphics core works in more favorable conditions.

The chipsets from VIA and SiS cannot compete with the leaders.

By switching to 16-bit color, reducing the texture quality, disabling special effects and so on, we reduce the load on the memory bus, the most vulnerable spot of integrated chipsets. The “speedy” settings provide higher results – nearly twice the performance of the first mode with ATI’s and NVIDIA’s chipsets. The products from Intel, VIA and SiS enjoy a triple of quadruple performance growth!

At the medium settings the single-channel RADEON 9000 PRO IGP had twice lower results compared to the RADEON 9100 IGP, but this gap diminishes as we switch to the second test mode: the insufficient memory bus bandwidth affects the performance less.

So, judging from the test results, only the RADEON 9100 IGP and the nForce2 can give you playability at speedy settings in Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo.