PERFORMANCE UPDATE: NVIDIA GeForce 6100 vs. ATI RS482

The web ether had barely dried on our first test results of the GeForce 6100 when ATI contacted AnandTech to question our test results. We had run the ATI RS480/482 benchmarks on an ATI Grouper Reference Board with integrated ATI graphics. ATI's own internal test results were quite different with Radeon Xpress 200 boards from those that we had published. They showed the RS480/482 outperforming the new GeForce 6100 chipset in most of the same benchmarks. Since we are always interested in bringing you the facts regarding component performance, we agreed to work with ATI to try to find what was wrong.

After quite a bit of sleuthing, ATI discovered that the BIOS of the Grouper Reference Board, which was designed for Enthusiast and Overclocking qualification, did not completely implement or optimize the features of the on-board RS482 Graphics. There were also issues with integrated 480/482 graphics switches in BIOS. After further testing in their lab to verify performance comparable to shipping ATI RS480/482 boards, ATI sent an updated BIOS and asked if we could retest performance with a new Radeon Xpress 200 BIOS that fully implemented integrated graphics.

We reran all benchmarks on the ATI Grouper Integrated Graphics and updated the comparisons to the NVIDIA GeForce 6100/nForce 410 on the Biostar TForce 6100 motherboard.