PERFORMANCE UPDATE: NVIDIA GeForce 6100 vs. ATI RS482

Our Take

Re-benching the ATI RS482 did not suddenly move the ATI chipset to the front in performance, but it does demonstrate that the ATI RS482 and the NVIDIA GeForce 6100 perform about the same in most benchmarks. The performance is certainly close enough that OEM's will have no overriding reason to choose one or the other chipsets based on a performance advantage. The good news is that buyers can choose either solution based on price or features and get pretty comparable results. NVIDIA has closed the integrated graphics performance gap, but they haven't surged ahead as many expected.

Either the ATI Radeon Xpress 200, with the new RS482 core, or the NVIDIA GeForce 6100 will provide business users, internet browsers, and casual computer users with competent graphics. Both chipsets do a decent job in most of the things for which we use our computers. Where both chipsets fail is with recent gaming. They can provide playable frame rates on all but the most demanding games at low resolutions with "eye-candy" turned off, but they will disappoint any serious gamer.

Sometimes we as reviewers make too much of that fact. Not everyone's dream is to run Fear on an Apple 30" Cinema with two 7800GTX or a Crossfire X1800 setup. Most users will find the graphics capabilities on both these chipsets pretty decent compared to the other choices in today's integrated graphics market. That is not to say that AnandTech readers will be happy, because they won't. But parents, grandparents, children, and siblings will find these integrated graphics just fine for web-browsing and e-mail.  If they start buying more recent games, however, they will likely need a new graphics card.

It should also be pointed out that NVIDIA is just introducing AMD integrated graphics for the Athlon 64, while ATI has had competent integrated graphics solutions for both AMD Athlon 64 and Intel Socket 775 platforms for over a year. The great majority of integrated graphics boards are now based on the Intel platform, where NVIDIA does not yet offer an integrated graphics solution. That fact alone will keep ATI as a bigger player in the integrated graphics market.

While we are happy with the higher performance of both NVIDIA and ATI, this is not to say that integrated graphics have arrived. Who would really want to play Doom 3 at 24FPS at 800x600 - and that's with no eye candy? However, by lowering detail and resolution, you should be able to find a playable 640x480 or 800x600 with either the ATI or NVIDIA chipsets in most games. Nonetheless, if you want better detail or higher resolution, you will need to use a discrete video card with better performance.