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Integrated Graphics from NVIDIA Back In Style
Hack Jandy writes "After a couple year of silence, AnandTech has confirmed that NVIDIA will be bringing back Integrated Graphics Processors this year. NVIDIA's last IGP chipset was based on nForce2 and received much praise all around. The new IGP, 'C51,' will be based on a stripped down version of nForce4 and includes PCI-Express. The article also goes into some detail about ATI's new IGP chipsets RS482 and RS410."
IGPs are nice when you throw together a server or for the average home user that checks their email or browses the web. I just put together an AMD machine and had to drop $50 to get a GEForce card because the motherboard I wanted didn't have AGP.
The main problem with IGP for me, is that motherboard technology doesn't expand nearly as fast as graphics card technology. For any kind of gamer, they will have their motherboard way longer than any video card. I usually replace my PC around every 2-3 years. In video card years, like is like 10 decades. I probably replace the video card once or twice in that time, depending on the new games coming out. WoW and Doom 3 forced me into my last video card purchase. Mostly because I don't ever buy the bleeding edge one, so I am already a year behind while I wait for the price to fall a little.
IGP get nVidia into the lucrative market of OEM machines though. If they strike a deal to toss that chip on Dell motherboards, they can sit back and watch the money pour in. Or if they can make a contract with ASUS or something. Then they don't even have to worry about marketing and sales. The other products sell themselves, and they just get a piece of the pie.
/. ++
A second front for Nvidia to fight on... hmmm.
I wonder how well Nvidia can keep up with trying to innovate in the high-end market against ATI if they are busy trying to corner a new subdivision of the graphics market. Considering how revolutionary NVIDIA and ATI chipsets have been to high-end gaming in the past few years, it would be a shame if high-end innovation was slowed or delayed due to all the exciting changes of the recent past, present, and projected future.
Just a thought...
The Crimson Dragon
This is awesome news.
one thing good about igp's is that you don't need to upgrade all your shit at one time. buy a mobo now, and use the igp until you find the video card you want at a nice price. Also if your video card screws up you can use the igp as a backup. Even for troubleshooting the igp back in the nforce2 days saved me more than a couple of times.
And of course, sometimes the igp can cause conflicts or/and waste resources if not used so rememeber to disable it in the bios if you're not using it.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/metricmusic
Imagine that - two integrated video chips running side-by-side with enough power to run the best of games.... would be nice, if possible.
Anonymous Coward
I wonder if they will release proper specs for it this time.....
Last time they pretended their integrated ethernet controller had some super-secret part in it that had to be protected....
For graphic controllers you might get away with such an argument (although I personally don't think it holds even there) but for a simple ehternet controller it just made them look stupid.
Jeroen
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take the MSI K7N2G-L. top quality nforce2 board, came in IGP, no integrated graphics and "deluxe variants" - the IGP version cost approx 6UKP more than the non-integrated graphics one, and still had an AGP slot. for a user who's not sure if they need killer graphics, this was great: the onboard Geforce4MX was more than adequate for most stuff, and if they wanted a hot card, they could add one.
I can't belive it as taken them so long. The talk may be about nVidia and ATI fighting for the graphics market, but what people is forget is Intel are trouncing nVidea at the moment! Gamers and graphic workstations are a tiny fraction of the PC market, the integrated marked dwarfes that of the £500+ hot-rod cards.
I don't understand why they even bother with this. If you play games, just buy a used separate card, even very cheap ones are probably faster than the integrated stuff. If you don't play games, there is little difference between the existing stuff from Intel, ATI, VIA, etc.
wow, this would be a pretty good chipset for a media center box. espcially for playing back dvds and recording tv shows. however I dont think the IGP chipsets will have enough power to play games. anyone who really wants to play games unless its like starcraft or something will probaly need a higher end vid card. hopefully these will also make it into the blade servers and such.
Is not quick enough for games :)
Why is it that on my Dell D800, I've got a 1600x1200 mode under XP, and only 1200x1068 under Gentoo?
Is there some additional configuration magic buried somewhere?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
What I miss in the onboard graphic solutions is the lack of a tv-out. Without that, you must buy a card anyways..
It would be nice to see more modern integrated graphics from someone like nVIDIA. I've been running into one too many of Intel's "EXTREME" integrated graphics chipsets (which are without a doubt the total opposite of extreme in regards to 3D.) It would be nice to get some real quality out there especially for people who unwittingly buy a computer with an integrated graphics and then later decide "hm I would like to play game x now." With decent graphics hardware they could put off buying an actual graphics upgrade until they get a computer with a free PCI-X/AGP slot. This happened to my friend recently, and unforutnately for him, he was stuck with one of Intel's clunkers.
Both the nForce and nForce two with IGP (GeForce2MX, and GeForce4MX respectively) had an AGP Slot, and you could simply slot in a new AGP Video Card and the IGP automatically disabled itself.
This is great. I've been using nforce 2 IGP for awhile now with great results. Every computer I've built since its release that wasn't going to be playing games got a Micro ATX mobo with nforce IGP. Now that it's getting an upgrade I think I might hold off on buying new machines until it's available. As far as I'm concerned anyone not playing the latest and greatest games shoudl get an IGP mobo with built in sound and ethernet, MSI makes some pretty good ones. I mean, for the price of just a motherboard you get a soundcard, NIC and video card for free. You just can't beat that price.
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The latest low-budget GeForce 6xxx cards are using just a little "real" graphics memory that caches system memory (where most of the data is residing).
I wonder if a new IGP will be based on this design. IMO it is the only way to get even half-decent performance out of a system-memory-based solution. It does mean that there have to be at least 16-32MB of additional memory coupled tightly to the chipset. The best solution would probably be to include this memory in the chipset itself (?).
Good when you want a computer for chatting, mail, programming, web, listen music, watch movies, etc.
But dont need to run the latest high-end games.
The wife's GF 4200TI croaked so I gave her my FX5900 and went back to the IGP (nForce2 IGP). The nice thing about the IGP is that it's there if you need it, you don't have to stuff it in a drawer when you don't need it and if you ever retire the machine from gaming, your power consumption goes way down without the 1337 g4m1ng card.
Now if nVidia would release drivers so my GF6200 AGP would work, I'd be back in business gaming under Linux again.
I own an NVIDIA graphics card and I use it to play games amoung other things. I have Linux installed on my machine. I was pleasantly surprised when I visited Nvidia website and found that they have excellent support for the linux platform. After downloading and instaling the drivers, I was able to play such classic games like ChromiumBSU and Doom.
- linux-to-use-nvidia.html
Nvidia has gained a permanent supporter in me. I think more and more hardware vendors need to emulate what Nvidia has done and release drivers for multiple OS platforms and not just stick to windows.
You can read all about my experiences in using NVIDIA graphics card at
http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2005/05/configuring
--
Linux Help
for all things on Linux
I must say all these closed graphics architectures are getting quite tedious. But my question is more generic, as I have never owned an Nvidia board or computer with Nvidia integrated graphics chipset and therefore I've never familized myself with their policy regarding Linux. But having dealt with Intel, which requires an NDA before a person can get any information about their integrated graphics chipset, I suppose I have become a wee bit frustrated, and this posting is a manifestation of that. I need a graphics company that will "put out" so to speak.
I guess nVidia was silent, not the AnandTech, right?
"I wonder if NVidia can continue to innovate if they start doing new things in addition to the things they've been doing for years."
tokin up, silencing the opposition i see.
System RAM is a about 1/10th the speed of a modern Graphic card's QDR RAM... modern games DO choke on IGPs... wow, your igp can run 3 year old games with the settings turned down esp texture settings...
So let's mod the dude 'offtopic' for pointing that out... WTG censorship commity of crack mods.
I have an ATI IGP in my emachine Laptop. I don't mind integrated video cards, I just wish the DRI/OpenGL stuff would work. I used to have a Via TwisterK that was the same way. You have to search all over the place and find a patch, build you own XServer modules, etc, and then you can finally have 3D support. To me, just provide basic 3D support for these IGP cards so I can play the awesomely fabulous TuxRacer!!!!! (p.s., I fragged a snowball once...)
Some settling may occur during posting.
This should never have left style. Integrated graphics chips, even if they are three-four generations behind the latest and greatest should be incorporated. There are many people (especially businesses) who prefer the default onboard chip...no hassle of trying to install a card - it just comes on there and it works. Now if someone wants to upgrade, great, if not they have the default. With the exception of some professions (i.e. designers) and gamers - most people are just happy and fine with the onboard chip. At the very least it should be updated.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
I assume ATI's RS482 and RS410 are upgrades to my RS232 port?
Another informed AC post.
It said "nForce2" not GF2. The integrated chip on the nForce2 was indeed the GF4MX.
The IGP on my small form factor PC was one of the reasons I made the purchase. It was one less thing to worry about. I use my PC mainly for work, development, browsing and the like, with the occasional games and LAN party.
I had hoped to make good use of the IGP, but unfortunately, the manufacturer went cheap on the analog portion of the output. The screen was very blurry, and caused eyestrain trying to read text. I had to buy a cheap MX440 (a small upgrade, too, ok) to get rid of the bluriness. The output on the upgraded video card is very clear.
Attention manufacturers! Don't screw it up this time! If you're going to give us decent integrated graphics and use it as a selling point, don't skimp on the outputs, play it off, and force us to upgrade anyways!
(BTW, the SFF system is a Shuttle SN41G2 from a couple of years ago; Shuttle support did not acknowledge me when I asked about the poor video output/bluriness.)
...except that the GF4MX is not really more powerful for most games than my trusty Geforce2 GTS... From an old article at http://techreport.com/reviews/2002q4/gf4-8x/index. x?pg=1:
"The GeForce4 MX 440 is more like a GeForce2 hopped up on a cocktail of steroids, Xanax, caffeine, Metabolife, and some sort of fish paralyzer."
I built a number of low budget systems for friends using the nForce2. A fantastic chipset!
The other reason nForce2 rocked was the astounding sound processor. It could decode 5.1 dolby digital, mix in additional streams, and then re encode the whole shebang out to 5.1 again. To this date I know of no moderately priced much less "free" systems which can do this. The sound quality was excellent if you looked for decent A/D, the board had headers so you could run a 5.1 analog system while doing mic/line in. It was perfection.
It really boils my blood that nvidia axed the most amazing novel product they had. I went out and bought a couple extra motherboards just for sound processing. They're about the same price as sound cards anyway.
I don't care, I just want SoundStorm back!!! Give it to me!!
I think Nvidia left a hole opened, they don't offer an integrated DX9 GPU.
Their competition, ATI, is leading that market(DX9 onboard GPU)
I buyed the much anticipated Nforce2 chipset mobo and was too sad to see that at the same time, ATI ofered a same priced mobo but with a DX9 GPU.
Way to go ATI
An Nvidia fan
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