FIRST LOOK: NVIDIA GeForce 6100 Performance
by Wesley Fink on September 22, 2005 1:29 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Just two days ago, NVIDIA launched the GeForce 6100 Family of Integrated Graphics solutions with the promise that shipping boards would be available in early October. We can now say that early October is a very reasonable estimate, since we just received the Biostar TForce 6100-939, based on the 6100 chipset.
We've been burning the midnight oil to bring you a First Look at the real performance of the new NVIDIA integrated chipset, as we do a head-to-head comparison with the best integrated graphics solution on the current market - the ATI RS480.
There are several combinations of 6100 North bridges with nForce South bridges. The retail Tforce 6100-939 is the GeForce 6100/nForce 410.
This Biostar TForce 6100 combination is one of the more mainstream solutions, and it does not feature the High-Definition Azalia audio. In the graphics arena, the difference between the top 6150 and the 6100 appears to be just clock speed and features. The 6150 is clocked at 475MHZ, while the 6100 is clocked at 425MHz. This means that the 6100 will perform a bit slower than the 6150, with the performance difference being solely the difference in the 425 to 475 clock speed. The 6150 also uniquely features WMV9 High Definition playback with the TV encoder, but this will not affect graphics performance benchmarking.
While it would have been even nicer to be testing the top-of-the-line 6150/430, we should be able to glean some very nice comparisons to the ATI RS480 chipset. Our sincere thanks to Biostar for getting a 6100 board in our hands so quickly!
We've been burning the midnight oil to bring you a First Look at the real performance of the new NVIDIA integrated chipset, as we do a head-to-head comparison with the best integrated graphics solution on the current market - the ATI RS480.
There are several combinations of 6100 North bridges with nForce South bridges. The retail Tforce 6100-939 is the GeForce 6100/nForce 410.
| Specifications: | NVIDIA GeForce 6150 NVIDIA nForce 430 |
NVIDIA GeForce 6100 NVIDIA nForce 430 |
NVIDIA GeForce 6100 NVIDIA nForce 410 |
| CPU | Athlon 64 or Sempron | Athlon 64 or Sempron | Athlon 64 or Sempron |
| PureVideo (High Definition) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| DirectX® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 Support | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| TV Encoder | Yes | No | No |
| TMDS/DVI | Yes | No | No |
| Graphics Clock | 475 MHz | 425 MHz | 425 MHz |
| PCI-Express | 1x16 2x1 |
1x16 1x1 |
1x16 1x1 |
| MPEG-2/WMV9 Playback | HD(1080p/1080i) | SD | SD |
| Video Scaling | High Quality(5x4) | Basic (2x2) | Basic (2x2) |
| SATA/PATA drives | 4/4 | 4/4 | 2/4 |
| SATA speed | 3Gb/s | 3Gb/s | 3Gb/s |
| RAID | 0,1,0+1,5 | 0,1,0+1,5 | 0,1 |
| NVIDIA MediaShield | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| NVIDIA ActiveArmorTM Firewall | Yes | Yes | - |
| Ethernet | 10/100/1000 | 10/100/1000 | 10/100 |
| USB ports | 8 | 8 | 8 |
| NVIDIA nTuneTM Utility | Yes | Yes | Yes |
This Biostar TForce 6100 combination is one of the more mainstream solutions, and it does not feature the High-Definition Azalia audio. In the graphics arena, the difference between the top 6150 and the 6100 appears to be just clock speed and features. The 6150 is clocked at 475MHZ, while the 6100 is clocked at 425MHz. This means that the 6100 will perform a bit slower than the 6150, with the performance difference being solely the difference in the 425 to 475 clock speed. The 6150 also uniquely features WMV9 High Definition playback with the TV encoder, but this will not affect graphics performance benchmarking.
While it would have been even nicer to be testing the top-of-the-line 6150/430, we should be able to glean some very nice comparisons to the ATI RS480 chipset. Our sincere thanks to Biostar for getting a 6100 board in our hands so quickly!
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Josh7289 - Thursday, September 22, 2005 - link
ATI is losing...badly.Their last hope is R520 and its variants. I can't wait for "real" benchmarks. I really want to see how these new cards compare to Nvidia's...and at what prices.
ST - Thursday, September 22, 2005 - link
Can you get power consumption #'s for the system? These new generation of nvidia integrated graphics seems to make an ideal htpc setup. Speaking of which, CPU utilization with video playback (wmv9,h.264, etc.) would be nice too! :)Sunbird - Thursday, September 22, 2005 - link
"There is even good news here as NVIDIA mirrors ATI in now giving the user the option to run integrated graphics and a PCIe video card at the same time."That makes my heart happy :) What about you guys?
formulav8 - Thursday, September 22, 2005 - link
Looks like the board comes with about all overclocking features. I was wondering why there was no overclocking done with the board or even the gpu if its even possible?Or are the overclocking pages there and I just overlooked it??
Jason
Wesley Fink - Thursday, September 22, 2005 - link
We will do Overclocking tests on a future 6150/430 board in the future. We did try to use Coolbits to push the 6100 clock of 425 to the 6150's 475. The utility shows the correct GPU clock and a Memory Clock on the shared memory of 0. It appears Coolbits is working, but every frequency setting we tried above 425 failed. Apparently a new GPU OC utility is needed for the integrated graphics.coutch - Thursday, September 22, 2005 - link
...that the Northbridge and Southbridge are passively cooled. I hope some manufacturers see the potential for these in Home Theatre PCs and create some models with decent TV-out & SPDIF audio output in a small MicroATX format.MercenaryForHire - Thursday, September 22, 2005 - link
From the article: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">NVIDIA Announces AMD Integrated GraphicsYour wish should be in the process of being granted. :)
- M4H
neogodless - Thursday, September 22, 2005 - link
How do these integrated chips compare to the budget add-in boards? A lot of Dell desktop systems default to the Radeon X300SE, so that is one such card I'd like to see compared.MercenaryForHire - Thursday, September 22, 2005 - link
Excellent question.Wesley, any chance of spinning some numbers from the http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2427">Xpress 200 vs. GMA 950 article to give some comparasion numbers? I'm sure many people are interested to see where the 6100 stands with respect to the 6200TC lineup.
- M4H
Wesley Fink - Thursday, September 22, 2005 - link
There are useful benchmarks for the GMA950, ATI X200, and 6200 at the same 800x600 resolution in our review at http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2427">http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2427. While we agree comparison to the X300 would be useful, we thought you'd appreciate access to the first benchmarks from a retail GeForce 6100 board. We got the board yesterday afternoon and had a review up this morning.We will be doing further testing and comparisons as we receive 6100/6150 boards and systems based on these chipsets.