Gigabyte GA-8TRS300M Radeon 9100 IGP Review
Following in the footsteps of nVIDIA, ATi are
focusing on providing core logic that system integrators can use in white
box PCs for the masses, and if successful, garner a slice of the lucrative
Pentium 4 chipset market share.
It's no
secret that the vast majority of PCs sold on the market are highly integrated,
and consumers really don't know the difference in the end. The usual folly of
those integrated computers are that they tend to have underpowered on board graphics. The benefit of the using the
Radeon 9100 IGP chipset
is that it includes a Radeon 9200 class VPU within. This allows system integrators to effectively sell a motherboard sans
videocard to the consumer, at very economical price points.
Gigabyte
have been producing ATi based videocards
for the last few years so it was a natural step for them to adopt the new
ATi Radeon 9100 IGP for the Gigabyte GA-8TRS300M motherboard. Compared to an i865G based motherboard, the GA-8TRS300M should perform on par, but if we take an apples
to oranges comparison and consider the nVIDIA nForce2 chipset, the 9100 IGP isn't going
to be entirely Earth shattering.
The
GA-8TRS300M board is compatible with all Northwood Pentium 4 processors. The four DDR DIMM slots support
a maximum of 4GB of memory. In terms of on board features other than
the Radeon 9200 class VPU the GA-8TS300M sports essentially nothing more then 10/100
LAN and 5.1 audio. It's just perfect for a basic home or
office system.