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FIRST LOOK: NVIDIA GeForce 6100 Performance

 by Wesley Fink on September 22, 2005 1:29 PM EST
43 Comments | Add A Comment
43 Comments
Basic Features: Biostar TForce 6100-939

It is worth mentioning that Biostar is shipping TForce 6100 micro ATX boards in both Socket 754 and Socket 939 versions. The Socket 754 version, called the TForce 6100, is the same chipset combination and features 2 DIMM slots. The board that we are testing is the TForce 6100-939, obviously supporting Socket 939, and featuring four DIMMs in dual-channel mode. Older A64's, Revision E, and x2 are all supported on this Socket 939 board.

 Biostar TForce 6100-939
CPU Interface Socket 939 Athlon 64
Chipset NVIDIA GeForce6100 Northbridge - NVIDIA nForce 4100 Southbridge
Bus Speeds 200 to 300MHz in 1MHz Increments
PCIe Speeds 100 to 125MHz in 1MHz Increments
PCI Fixed at 33
OnBoard GPU Auto, Always Enable
Frame Buffer (UMA) 16M, 32M, 64M, 128M, Disabled (64M Default)
Core Voltage Startup, 0.80V to 1.70V in 0.025V increments
CPU Clock Multiplier Startup, 4x-25x in 1X increments
HyperTransport Frequency 1000MHz (1GHz)
Supports AMD Cool'n'Quiet
HyperTransport Multiplier Auto, 1X, 2X, 3X, 4X, 5X
DRAM Voltage 2.66V, 2.72V, 2.82V, 2.93V
Memory Slots Four 184-pin DDR DIMM Slots
Dual-Channel Configuration
Regular Unbuffered Memory to 4GB Total
Expansion Slots 1 PCIe x16
1 PCIe x1
2 PCI Slots
Onboard SATA/RAID 2 SATA II Drives by nForce 410 (RAID 0, 1, JBOD)
Onboard IDE/IDE RAID Two Standard ATA133/100/66 (4 drives)
Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394 8 USB 2.0 ports supported by nF410
No Firewire (Optional)
Onboard LAN 10/100 Ethernet by Realtek 8201 PNY
Onboard Audio AC '97 2.3 6-Channel by Realtek ALC655
BIOS Phoenix Award

Frankly, Biostar even includes an overclock quick guide in the TForce kit - a real surprise for a Micro ATX board with integrated graphics. What's more, the available options in BIOS are a lot more than what many will expect for a Micro ATX/Integrated Graphics board, and even include an Integrated Flashing option so that you don't have to load DOS or Windows to flash the BIOS.

There is even an auto-overclocking option in BIOS, called ONE (Overclocking Navigator Engine) and a CMOS Reloaded feature to allow saving and quick restore of favorite BIOS setups. The only other place that we have seen CMOS reloaded is DFI.

The layout is clean and the TForce 6100 even supports 24-pin power supplies. 20-pin connectors from older power supplies will also work. An even bigger surprise was momentary power and reset switches on the board - and detailed in the manual.

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  • wharris1 - Friday, September 23, 2005 - link

    Great article for a chipset with a lot of potential. I was wondering if we'd get southbridge (410/430) performance testing that's been found on most recent motherboard reviews (USB, SATA, audio, etc).

  • blinky2004 - Friday, September 23, 2005 - link

    Bright yellow slots and retention brackets and CMOS Reloaded hmmm.... Just like the DFI's...
    I wonder if DFI lent a hand on the design.

  • xsilver - Thursday, September 22, 2005 - link

    quote: "The only other place that we have seen CMOS reloaded is DFI."

    abit also has a "reloaded" cmos feature
    but then again -- AT is pro dfi right ;)

  • JarredWalton - Thursday, September 22, 2005 - link

    Sure, we're "pro DFI" - because DFI is making some very impressive boards. We're basically pro-enthusiast. :p

    I'm a little curious about the "CMOS Reloaded", though, as I would have that the name was trademarked.

  • xsilver - Thursday, September 22, 2005 - link

    abit dont call it cmos reloaded probably because it is trademarked
    they call it uguru -- but it performs pretty much the same i think
    eg. profiles in bios -- even if you reset the bios, you can load from a number of profiles that have been saved

    abit also has the guru software which can load a different set of profiles (on the fly overclocking) while in windows --- not sure if dfi /others have that

  • MattH - Thursday, September 22, 2005 - link

    The big question for me is whether the 6100/6150 will run Aero Glass.

    Hopefully there will be some boards out there with the full range of I/O options, including DVI, SPDIF, and 1394a. Put good overclocking options on one of those puppies, keep the price under $90, and it would be a killer board for anyone other than the SLI nuts.

  • Rza79 - Thursday, September 22, 2005 - link

    On which frequency is the RS480 GPU running?
    Because on the MSI RS480 board you can set the mhz from 200Mhz up to 350Mhz.
    On the MSI it is set to 200Mhz by default. So this is an important factor.

    Also, it would be nice to see how the Geforce 6100 stacks up against a full fledged RS480 board like the Gigabyte K8A480M-9 with on board 32MB framebuffer.
    The Gigabyte K8S760M also has on board framebuffer.

  • eRacer - Sunday, September 25, 2005 - link

    Looks like http://www.hkepc.com/hwdb/c51-firstlook-test.htm">this HKEPC review uses an ATI chipset with the 32MB dedicated graphics memory. The ATI board (presumably with 32MB memory) is quite a bit faster than the 6100 chipset in the 3D benchmarks tested.

  • Vol2005 - Monday, September 26, 2005 - link

    it was a R482 based mobo

  • Wesley Fink - Thursday, September 22, 2005 - link

    The ATI RS480 GPU clock is 300MHz.
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