The GeForce 6100 Family

There are two Northbridges, the 6100 and the 6150, and 2 Southbridges, the 430 and 410, that can be mixed and matched to cover a wide range of Integrated Video Solutions.

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

While nVidia did not include this specification in their release, there is one large potential negative with GeForce 6100. 6100 uses only 2 pixel pipelines, the same number of pixel pipelines used in ATI's Radeon Express 200. Since the gaming performance of the ATI was barely acceptable, even for the low end, the performance of the 6100 is not likely to be very exciting.

On the positive side, GeForce 6100 does NOT automatically disable on-board graphics when a PCIe Graphics Card is inserted. That means the integrated graphics plus graphics card can drive up to 4 monitors if the motherboard supports both integrated video outputs. This is also a feature on the ATI Radeon Xpress200 chipset.

The most feature-laden combination is the GeForce 6150 with the nForce430, including unique features like TV Encoder, High Definition (1080ip/1080i) playback, and Gigabit LAN.

More basic configurations are available for use in applications where the top features are not needed, or price is a big concern. NVIDIA has no plans to provide SLI capabilities on the GeForce 6100 boards. The boards are ATX and aimed more at the mainstream market served by system builders, system integrators, and OEMs.
Index GeForce 6100 Chipset
Comments Locked

44 Comments

View All Comments

  • 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! :D
  • xsilver - 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 r520

    Or 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.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now