Re: Even though the card is based on very old chip, from one of the cheapest suppliers, it is an older design that Intel's design, it still beats Intel 815
Kind of sums it up, nicely.
Thanks.
PS - drivers for video cards can make a huge difference, so the final word is definitely not in, but:
Intel's answer to the mainstream market will be their new i845G chipset. The highly integrated i845G will support the Pentium 4 and DDR SDRAM like the i845D boards first mentioned here at World Tribune back in October. Intel expects to officially release this product in April 2002, but I have seen a couple of pre-production models. The Intel 845G board I was privileged enough to play with was using experimental pre-alpha drivers, but it was actually very stable in Windows XP Professional. Like the nForce, the i845G uses DDR SDRAM, has built-in sound, video and network interface connections.
That's where the similarities end. Nvidia's nForce has much better video than the i845G. The nForce video has 32MB of dedicated video RAM on a GeForce2 MX-style graphic core compared to a few measly megabytes of shared system memory on the Intel 845G's integrated graphics. In video benchmark comparisons, the nForce has severely beaten the i845G. Home users in the market for a mainstream PC would probably prefer an nForce-based system.
OTOH, it's plenty good enough for a business system or general home use.
However, the i845G is mainstream but also geared primarily for businesses. I'm not all that sure I want my employees playing video games at a smooth 30+ frames per second while on the job. There's also the fact that the drivers I saw were pre-alpha from Intel and in no way optimized. Even then, the 3D intensive game "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon" was playable at 1024 X 768.
The Nvidia nForce boards have Dolby Digital sound compared to fairly standard (yet multichannel stereo) sound on the i845G board. Again, for a home user the nForce is going to win out in the sound department, but business users won't see much of a difference. Both the nForce and Intel boards' network interfaces were comparable to a standard 10/100 card you can get at any CompUSA or Fry's, but the i845G's network interface was able to be remotely "managed" by network administrators. Score a slight advantage for businesses using the i845G.
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