Onboard Video - Intel Media Accelerator 900

Since the Asus P5GDC-V utilizes the Intel 915G chipset, it’s worth examining the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 to see how it can fit your needs.

After running a few tests, it's clear that the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 is not powerful enough to play games. Even though it does boast DirectX 9 support, the onboard video did not run any of the DirectX 9 games well. However the Intel GMA900 performs decently in general purpose 2D applications.

	Intel GMA 900	Radeon X700 128MB
Half-Life 2 (1280x1024, High)	Avg - 4.667 FPS Low - 3 FPS High - 10 FPS	Avg - 61.01 FPS Low - 30 FPS High - 196 FPS
Half-Life 2 (800x600, Medium)	Avg - 12.263 FPS Low - 7 FPS High - 25 FPS
Doom 3	Avg - 9.361 FPS Low - 9 FPS High - 29 FPS	Avg - 42.93 FPS Low - 17 FPS High - 61 FPS
3DMark 2001SE	5809	19702
Maya 6.0 PLE	Overall - 1.33 CPU - 2.18 I/O - 2.41 GFX - 1.07	Overall - 3.01 CPU - 2.56 I/O - 2.27 GFX - 2.80
Sandra CPU	ALU - 10336 FPU - 4322 ISSE2 - 7451	ALU - 10466 FPU - 4316 ISSE2 - 7461
Sandra Mem	INT - 4405 Float - 4420	INT - 4422 Float - 4405
Business Winstone	20.5	20.9
Multimedia Content Creation Winstone	32.3	32

*Above table results are using DDR memory.

Running Half-Life 2 was a real chore. At 800x600 with medium details, the system turned out a disappointing 12 FPS average. In Doom 3, there was serious mouse lag and sound stutters and often video was out of synch with the sound effects. I wasn't able to run 3DMark 05 because the benchmark kept giving me â€œout of memoryâ€?errors.

On the flip side, the Intel Media Accelerator 2 on the P5GDC-V works well enough in non-gaming applications including web navigation, some image editing, and media playback. However, in comparison to ATI’s image quality, the text displayed by Media Accelerator 2 did not look as sharp.

Ai N.O.S.

Another unique feature of the Asus P5GDC-V Deluxe is what Asus calls "Ai N.O.S." (or "Non-delay Overclocking System"). When this feature is enabled in the BIOS, the P5GDC-V automatically throttles your bus speed up or down depending on your CPU load. This throttling is done dynamically while using the computer and does not require any rebooting.

While the CPU is under load, Ai N.O.S. overclocks the bus speed
for faster performance.

After the job is done, Ai N.O.S. drops the bus speed down to normal
(quieter and cooler).

In the BIOS, you can adjust how sensitive the throttling is and by how much the speed is increased. This feature is pretty handy if you don't want to overclock your computer all the time, but require extra power from time-to-time to complete certain tasks.