ATi has done an very good job with the Radeon 9100 IGP
considering it's their first foray outside the 3D realm. It's not quite as
powerful overall as say the i865PE/i875P core logic, but the Radeon 9100 IGP
definitely has a large edge over Intel's i865G! I wouldn't be surprised if OEM's
en masse started adopting Radeon 9100 IGP based motherboards for their
integrated systems!
For those of you who are tight on budget, the Asus
P4R800-V DLX is a very good integrated motherboard for you to consider. The
video solution is good enough for casual gamers, or even gamers on a budget as
well.
The Asus P4R800-V DLX is as well equipped as most other
motherboards on the market; with IEEE 1394, GigabitLAN, 5.1 audio and two
channels of Serial ATA. One little extra that I love about the board is that it
by default already supports S-Video and composite out, so it's perfect for those
HTPC's if you decide to build one.
Probably the coolest features of the Asus P4R800-V DLX is its support
for Surround View. If you were to install a Radeon 9000 and up AGP videocard,
you could still use the onboard Radeon 9100 IGP and up to three monitors
simultaneously! Currently it's more of a 2D feature, but we do expect future
versions of Surround View to support games as well.
The Asus P4R800-V Deluxe was slowest of all the boards
we tested, but it wasn't far behind. In fact I doubt most users would notice the difference between this board and an i875P mobo when
running office applications. In respect to overclocking, we were able to reach
216 MHz FSB while keeping 100% stability - much better than the 202 MHz we got
out of the Gigabyte GA-8TRS300M.
With a retail price of $160 CDN ($119 US) the Asus P4R800-V DLX
is a fairly well priced integrated solution, it's not cheap but it's not overly
expensive either. If you're building PC's for general office related work loads,
the Asus P4R800-V DLX will surely keep you happy as the board is pretty
flexible.
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2. Gigabyte GA-8TRS300M Radeon 9100 IGP
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