by Anna Filatova
06/01/2002 | 04:37 AM
Despite the fact that integrated chipsets from ATI Technologies were announced at CeBIT in March, there are no products based on these solutions yet. The Inquirer reports that according to ATI, the boards for AMD CPUs based on RADEON IGP320 will start shipping in June, while Pentium 4 solutions – a bit later. The launch partner for RADEON IGP will be First International Computer (FIC). Moreover, such companies as ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte technology, Lite-On Technology, Wistron, CP Technology and Sapphire Technology are also going to announce their solutions on ATI’s chipsets very soon.
The first product from FIC to come will be AT31 Fusion and it should start shipping in mid June after Computex. The mainboard will be based on RADEON IGP320. The South Bridge will at first supposedly be a VIA chip, however, it might be replaced with ATI’s own solution a bit later.<%BANNER[article]%>
The performance of the integrated graphics adapter is expected to a bit higher than that of the nForce220 graphics core, although this is still a question to answer. The matter is that IGP320 is actually none other but RADEON VE without the built-in T&L unit and with fewer rendering pipelines than GeForce2 MX of the nForce solution has.
I also have to say that if you are looking for high gaming performance, you will not decided on an integrated chipset, but will prefer an add-on graphics card. If you are trying to get a cheaper system, then you usually have no need in fast 3D. This way, a mainboard like the one from FIC can become a very good choice offering rich features for relatively low price.