Performance with the Integrated Graphics Core

Overall System Performance

We first wanted to check the performance of the integrated chipsets in ordinary desktop applications. Generally speaking, a UMA graphics core may negatively affect the performance of the entire system since it shares the same memory with the CPU and thus decreases the memory bandwidth available to the central processor.

The results of SYSMark 2004 SE clearly show that the UMA technology is better implemented in NVIDIA’s new chipsets than in ATI’s one: the system with the NVIDIA GeForce 6100 is about 5-7% faster than the system with the ATI Radeon Xpress 200.

The difference between the GeForce 6150 and GeForce 6100 systems is negligible. The frequency of the integrated graphics core seems to have a very little effect on the speed of 2D applications.

NVIDIA’s integrated chipsets are faster than ATI’s even in simple computational tasks. We should not put all the blame on the chipset maker, though. It is possible that the BIOS of the ECS RS480-M mainboard (on the ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipset) is not properly optimized.

The synthetic PCMark05 test assigns a higher score to the NVIDIA chipsets than to the ATI one. It is partially due to the fact that this benchmark includes tests of the graphics core in 2D mode and a pixel shader performance test.