NVIDIA announced today the introduction of an Integrated Graphics chipset for the AMD Athlon 64 processor. The GeForce 6100, the new NVIDIA chipset, brings a number of firsts to the market. According to NVIDIA:
  • The GeForce 6100 series is the first 90nm GPU to hit the market.
  • The nForce 400 series Southbridges, which are combined with the 6100 Northbridge, are the first NVIDIA chips to support Azalia (HD Audio).
  • The GeForce 6100 is the first to support high-definition video while still providing customers the ability to offer component-out, composite-out and S-Video-out jacks right on the backplane.
  • First UMA (memory sharing) solution to support both DirectX 9.0 and Shader Model 3.
  • Optimized for digital media applications such as Daz Studio and Pinnacle Studio 10, along with mainstream games such as Sims2 and Lego Star Wars.
  • Boards are all micro-ATX, and many manufacturers plan living room/convergence boxes that look more like video/hifi components than computers.
Chipsets are now available to OEMs for board manufacturing and system building. Motherboards and Systems should be available for sale in early October.

The GeForce 6100 Family
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  • tanekaha - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link

    I`m glad some1 mentioned windows vista
    I`ll bet that this chipset all ya need for vista`s eye candy.
    In that case it`ll be good for business users.
    Maybe gateway will do well with this chipset ;)

    tanekaha
  • DeathByDuke - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link

    only two pipelines while the X300/9600 integrated in ATis boards retain the 4 pipelines of their namesakes?

    bleh.

    dont expect fantastic performance.. definitely worser than a Turbocache 4 pipeline card

    they had an opportunity to offer a good 4 pipelined, DX9 Shader 3 solution that would give a lot of people good performance for cheap. (475Mhz core 4 pipes would make a nice fast 6200)
  • JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link

    It depends on clockspeeds and features as well. 2x475 (for the 6150) may compare well with the 4x[whatever] of RS480. All I know for certain is that Xpress 200 is hardly capable of playing any 3D games, so I expect similar performance from 6100/6150. For the all-in-one boards, though, hopefully the 6100 series has better overclocking support than RS480. (If you can go stably above a 205 MHz FSB, that would beat the RS480 testing I've done. LOL!) Not that overclocking is required for the market, but the ability to OC often says something about the quality of the design.
  • bob661 - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link

    If a mobo with this chipset is around $80-90 US, I could use it a "cheap" machine.
  • mja28 - Thursday, September 22, 2005 - link

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...
  • bob661 - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link

    Wesley,
    Does Azalia support DDL encoding on this chipset?
  • Tanclearas - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link

    It would be nice for Nvidia to do one of two things.

    1) Acknowledge there is a problem with ActiveArmor and that they are working on it.
    2) Stop advertising a broken function as a selling feature.

    As I've said before, there are WAY too many people experiencing problems with NAM/AA for it to be coincidence. Even when it's working, it normally breaks once a driver upgrade is attempted, and the only option is a rollback.

    Wes, can you not get us any answers?
  • Myrandex - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link

    I have problems with my activearmor as well. Stupid 6.66 drivers don't let me download anything without corrupting the download, and it seems any version isnt' letting Norton Antivirus 2005 liveupdate to connect. If I disable activearmor, then it is all good, but I don't want to use a software firewall, due to the software implementation, so it definitely needs to be fixed.

    Another point, is that other websites are advertising 10 USB ports, but AT is saying 8 USB ports. Current nForce4 solutions offer 10USB ports, so with imagining Nvidia taking their current design and adding a graphics core, I would imagine the total should be 10 and not 8.
    Jason
  • Wesley Fink - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link

    Jason -

    nVidia specifications say EIGHT USB ports, not 10, on GeForce 6100 family. The chipset graphic in this review is a direct capture from Intel's release presentation and it also states EIGHT USB ports. Since no one received a board for review, the only info available is from nVidia, and I read my Press Release Kit.
  • Wesley Fink - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link

    I have had no problems with Active Armor in my testing on a clean install, but I have relayed comments from many users to nVidia. nVidia said they were not aware of any current issues with ActiveArmor, but they agreed to look into the issue further. If readers can email me links to Forum discussions of the ActiveArmor problems (any website) I will make sure they get to nVidia.

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