NVIDIA Announces AMD Integrated Graphics
by Wesley Fink on September 20, 2005 1:08 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Our Take
NVIDIA C51 has been expected for quite a while. Without a real integrated graphics solution for the AMD market, NVIDIA had allowed that market segment to be controlled by ATI on the higher end and SiS on the lower end. Now that NVIDIA is introducing its own AMD Integrated Graphics solution, you can expect this market segment to heat up even more.
NVIDIA tells us that boards will be available in early October, but we have already seen at least one motherboard available online. Priced at just $80, the Biostar Tforce-6100 is a value oriented board. If you're interested in the more feature-rich 6150+430 configuration you will have to wait a bit longer. We should see more products hit the retail market in the near future.
Some of the options on NVIDIA's new chipsets are unique and promising, like the support for high definition Azalia audio and HDTV output in 1080i format. These features look very promising for multimedia PCs, a market also targeted by ATI with their Integrated Graphics.
There are also some disappointments in the 6100. No one expects the GeForce 6100 to be the choice of a gamer, but there was hope that nVidia would improve performance by using 4 pixel pipelines in the 6100. Instead, the shipping 6100 is only 2 pixel pipelines, the same as the ATI Radeon Xpress200. NVIDIA passed on the opportunity to bring 6200 level Graphics to integrated video. They have promised that most "mainstream" games will be playable on the 6100 series, but we are skeptical with just 2 pipelines.
We will be talking more about the GeForce 6100 when we get our hands on actual motherboards and systems. At this point, it looks as if the 6100 is stiff competition for ATI. In the end, competition brings value and even more innovation. It looks as if AMD Integrated Graphics will now be a hotly contested market, and that's good news for buyers of mainstream Athlon64 systems.
NVIDIA C51 has been expected for quite a while. Without a real integrated graphics solution for the AMD market, NVIDIA had allowed that market segment to be controlled by ATI on the higher end and SiS on the lower end. Now that NVIDIA is introducing its own AMD Integrated Graphics solution, you can expect this market segment to heat up even more.
NVIDIA tells us that boards will be available in early October, but we have already seen at least one motherboard available online. Priced at just $80, the Biostar Tforce-6100 is a value oriented board. If you're interested in the more feature-rich 6150+430 configuration you will have to wait a bit longer. We should see more products hit the retail market in the near future.
Some of the options on NVIDIA's new chipsets are unique and promising, like the support for high definition Azalia audio and HDTV output in 1080i format. These features look very promising for multimedia PCs, a market also targeted by ATI with their Integrated Graphics.
There are also some disappointments in the 6100. No one expects the GeForce 6100 to be the choice of a gamer, but there was hope that nVidia would improve performance by using 4 pixel pipelines in the 6100. Instead, the shipping 6100 is only 2 pixel pipelines, the same as the ATI Radeon Xpress200. NVIDIA passed on the opportunity to bring 6200 level Graphics to integrated video. They have promised that most "mainstream" games will be playable on the 6100 series, but we are skeptical with just 2 pipelines.
We will be talking more about the GeForce 6100 when we get our hands on actual motherboards and systems. At this point, it looks as if the 6100 is stiff competition for ATI. In the end, competition brings value and even more innovation. It looks as if AMD Integrated Graphics will now be a hotly contested market, and that's good news for buyers of mainstream Athlon64 systems.
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Johnmcl7 - Wednesday, September 21, 2005 - link
That was exactly what I was thinking, as far as I'm aware the Xpress200 integrated graphics card is only a two pipeline solution.John
toyota - Wednesday, September 21, 2005 - link
are we the only ones that noticed?? i wish they would correct this then. anandtech made the 2 pipeline nvidia sound inferior to the ati. everthing that i have seen says 2 pipelines for the ati too. i would like a correction or explanation.Johnmcl7 - Wednesday, September 21, 2005 - link
Looks like it, even though we seem to be stuck in bold now!It's a fairly large mistake, as it means the nvidia chip is likely to offer similar performance or better, rather significantly inferior.
John
TrogdorJW - Wednesday, September 21, 2005 - link
Wow... we need to add editing to posts. At least for some of the admins/writers....Here, let's try to kill the bold.
Did it work? (I think there were two stray bold tags.)
TrogdorJW - Wednesday, September 21, 2005 - link
Hooray! :Dxsilver - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link
To those naysayers thinking that nvidia is going to stumble under the 90nm process, it doesnt look good. Granted this chip is much simpler than the r520Or could it be the reason it is only 2 pixel pipelines due to yield issues with the low nm? interesting....
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link
I think there's about 50 to 100 million transistors in the typical chipset already, so adding ~25 million for a two pixel pipeline GPU isn't insignificant. (Just guessing on numbers - I could be off.) Certainly, we're not talking 300 million transistors like G70 or R520, but chipsets have a lot of other stuff without adding a GPU core. 475 MHz on the GPU sounds at least somewhat promising.tfranzese - Wednesday, September 21, 2005 - link
But, don't forget they split it into a two chip solution now. This isn't simply adding the transistor counts of the GPU to the previous chipset's.JarredWalton - Thursday, September 22, 2005 - link
True. Of course, GPU manufacturers want to protect their discrete graphics markets. You also won't get discrete GPU performance without adding on-board (or on-chip) RAM, as the shared memory doesn't offer nearly enough bandwidth for a high-powered GPU. If ATI or NVIDIA could develop a board with high-powered IGP - like say 8 pipelines or more - but that chipset cost $100 instead of $50, board manufacturers and end users wouldn't buy it. They try to add as much power to the IGP as possible without increasing costs much, which leads to things like shared RAM and 2 pipelines. At least, that's my take.Doormat - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link
NEXT. No HDMI out = no hi-def video replay under windows Vista. Good thinkin' nVidia.