ATI RADEON 9100 IGP Goes High-End

by Anton Shilov
01/28/2004 | 10:02 AM

ASUSTeK has started to sell its feature-packed P4R800-V mainboard series based on ATI RADEON 9100 IGP core-logic and equipped with massive array of additional controllers to provide truly ultimate set of features that include RAID, Serial ATA, Gigabit Ethernet and even WLAN.

Historically chipsets with integrated graphics were considered as cost-effective solutions for low-cost personal computers. However, the situation changed three years ago when NVIDIA released its original nForce chipset that shortly became a popular option for AMD Athlon XP processors, which eventually stimulated NVIDIA to offer discrete solutions. Despite of the fact that ATI’s core-logic have never been too speedy, the RADEON 9100 IGP has quite some bright sides and ATI’s management believes that the company needs to concentrate on higher-end solutions with integrated graphics. Given that ASUS’ new P4R800-V series is nothing more than a high-end offering, we may consider this as the first try to adopt ATI’s chipsets for relatively expensive computers.

The list of ASUS P4R800-V Deluxe features looks as follows:

• Supports Socket 478 Pentium 4/Celeron processors with 400/533/800MHz Quad Pumped Bus with up to 3.20GHz clock-speed and above;
• Can take advantage of the CPUs with the Hyper-Threading technology enabled;
• ATI RADEON 91000 IGP chipset with ATI IXP150 I/O controller;
• 4 DIMM slots for up to 4GB of PC2100, PC2700 or PC3200 DDR SDRAM memory. Dual-channel memory bus support: the memory modules should be identical and installed in pairs;
• 5 PCI slots and 1 AGP 8x slot;
• Integrated RADEON 9100 IGP graphics core with DirectX 8.1 support;
• D-Sub, TV-Out connectors;
• 2-channel Parallel ATA-33/66/100 integrated controller;
• 2-channel Parallel ATA-33/66/100/133 with RAID support controller from SiS;
• 2 Serial ATA-150 ports with RAID support;
• 6 USB 2.0 ports;
• 2 FireWire (IEEE1394) ports;
• 10/100/1000Mbit/s Ethernet adapter from Marvell;
• 6-channel audio solution;
• Wi-Fi card;
• Lots of additional tuning functions, including technologies found on all present mainboards from ASUS;
• ATX Form Factor.

The mainboard was initially supposed to be available in Fall 2003, but was delayed by about two or three months because of unknown reasons.

The main advantage of the P4R800-V and P4R800V Deluxe is not too high performance, but exceptional feature-set at relatively low price-point. According to Akiba PC Hotline, the Deluxe version with WLAN card costs $130 to $160 in Japan.