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Intel

Integrated Intel Chipset Lineup 28

Posted by Hemos from the what-makes-the-most-sense-to-use dept.
Mr.Tweak writes: "TweakTown have posted an 11-page article concerning "value" Integrated Intel chipsets, included chipsets in the lineup is the SiS 630E, VIA PM133 and the Intel 815E. The article includes information about how integration works, with lots of benchmarks testing FPU, ALU, Memory bandwidth, D3D, OpenGL and so on. They used the following motherboards for testing each chipset Jetway 630CF (SiS 630E), VIA VT5278F PM133 Reference Board (VIA PM133) and EPOX 3S25A (Intel 815E)."
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Integrated Intel Chipset Lineup More

Integrated Intel Chipset Lineup

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  • They've been working on their embedded dram technology, which as an offshoot allowed them to make that demonstration athlon northbridge with 8megs of l3 cache. One of their athlon DDR chipsets coming out this year is supposed to have their integrated video, with the video ram being integrated as well, which should blow away the bandwidth available to these UMA systems. The video is based on the Rendition technology Micron got when they bought out rendition years ago. They haven't released anything since their 2200 chipset way back when, but their visual quality and feature support were top notch back then, and the 3300 and 4400 chipset while never commercially released, did allow them to keep pace somewhat with the advance of technology. If they can execute properly, we may finally see an integrated chipset that can compete with seperate video cards for a reasonable price.
  • It totally was from an Ad, I didnt meant to make it sound like plagerism, but I guess it was... I was going to quote the link, but hit submit instead of preview (by accident)

    here is the link

    http://www.sacm.co.za/Feature.asp?NewsID=2381&Cont =News [sacm.co.za]

    my appologies...

  • the guy makes a big show of talking about how the integrated boards are underperforming value systems, but then doesn't supply a point of reference in his benchmarks. These leaves of lot of his statements unsupported unless I go and look up results for the exact same benchmarks on other types of hardware (not very likely).

    If you're going to state that hardware category X doesn't perform as well as hardware category Y in a review of hardware category Y then you should show at least one benchmark for both in order to put things in perspective. It tends to give the number a little more meaning.

  • From the post (Score:3)

    by Fervent ( 178271 ) on Wednesday January 17, 2001 @05:32AM (#501598)
    what-makes-the-most-sense-to-use dept.

    Not using an integrated chipset. :)

    -
    -Be a man. Insult me without using an AC.

  • While integrated chipsets provide manufacturers with a low price-point for their value machines, they have little worth if you actually need any of the integrated parts to be either high-performance or high-bandwidth.

    Can't argue from the point of view of cheap desktops for the office however.

  • What makes even more sense - using an Athlon without an integrated chipset! :) :) Patiently waiting for the 760MP!
  • and becoming more and more common even in quite expensive pc's. I have seen Ghz Athlons with integrated *framebuffer* graphics chips that use system ram. Integrated Vga sucks as do intehrated modem, network *cards*. Interated audio is acceptable simply because for most people a basic 16bit sound system is ample.

  • So hasn't something like this been around for quite some time? I've seen ATX cases with all sorts of wonderful port outs on the back where nothing but the old DIN keyboard used to plug in a couple of years ago...

    Aren't these aimed at proffessional workstation markets where cutting edge graphics and surround sound don't matter as much as the raw CPU speed and RAM/Hard drive space? Not everything that's not a hot-rod gaming rig is a low end system... Some just have a different purpose.

  • Integrated chipset is a chipset with at least one peripheral integrated into it. I.e. chipset with built-in 3D graphics, or audio, or a network card, or any combination of these.

    The main advantage is the cost -- manufacturing an extra bit of silicon for a network card is practically free, yet it's an important feature in today's PC. It's a big space/energy-saver, as well, which is very important in mobile industry.

    Finally, you could even achieve some performance gains, since you're bypassing PCI/AGP busses and talking to integrated components directly. Since PCI/AGP are not much of a bottlneck at the moment, this is not an important point. It could come into play in the future, though.

    Disadvantages? Integrated 3D shares the memory bandwidth with the CPU, often making significant performance impact. Audio cards don't have dedicated ram, so integrated audio shouldn't be any worse than a stand-alone card.

    Another disadvantage is that you can't pop a piece of silicon out of the chip and plop a new one in, upgrading your integrated 3D :).

    The biggest disadvantage to the geek community is that, because the main goal is low cost, the components that get integrated are usually far from top-of-the-line, and we just don't want to use those! :)

  • On the nitpicking technical side, integrated network controllers ARE PCI devices. They are connected directly to the PCI bus and use a local PCI assignment. They communicate to the processor through the same PCI bridge as a PCI-Card. They *are* PCI devices. Thus, there is no performance advantage in having an integrated network controller.

    A similar situation goes for integrated video. Either you have a third-party video subsystem soldered on the board (best circumstance), which uses the PCI or AGP bus directly, or you have an on-chipset implmentation of onboard video. The on-chipset implementations tie into the PCI or AGP bus as well, but to keep costs down, the chipset manufacturers build a truly inferior video system. Either they build it with some stupid blocking-mode so you can't hit the PCI bus while updating video (This includes the Intel i8xx chipsets w/ integrated video) or it has no hardware-acceleration at all for line-drawing, let alone mpeg video at anything above 16-bit color.

    The reason I dislike integrated features is because they are repeatedly implemented poorly, unless you spend two to three times as much for a superior motherboard with superior parts. Even still, your flexibility and ability to choose is limited. Personally, I'd spend twice as much for a machine with NO integrated 3com network controller, because I don't want to use a 3com controller.

    Frankly, integrated video solutions still suck. I'm typing this on an i815-based system with integrated video (thankfully it was disable-able and there's an AGP slot) and integrated sound, both of which use fully-blocking I/O and literally HALT the system if I try to use them to any degree. Can't play an MP3 and edit text files with the onboard sound, because the file I/O screws with the sound's precious I/O stream, which thus screws up the video's I/O, causing me to have what appears to be bad video RAM due to a shitty chipset.

    If you have the choice of buying integrated, don't. period. I don't give a damn if it's for an appliance, a toaster, or a damn chicken coop. There's a reason this CuMine 533EB i'm on is not even HALF the speed of my PII-350 at home - integrated features and flat-out inefficiency.

    (I was a production manager for a computer manufacturer, so don't flame me unless you've got some real-world experience with this stuff. thanks.)
  • A chipset that integrates video, modem, networking, and sound into the motherboard. Generally aimed towards the lower end of the price spectrum.
  • After seeing a half dozen postings lambasting integrated chipsets, its important to remember just who the intended audience is for these things.

    Computers based on an integrated chipset are for those consumers who are willing to sacrifice upgradability and performance for low cost. Most of the time, these consumers don't even know that's the tradeoff they're making but they're making it just the same.

    They aren't targetted at power users, gamers, or nearly anyone who reads /.

    For many business applications, integrated chipsets make real sense. At my last job, most computers were used for really only about 4 things: Web browsing, Email (MS Outlook), word processing, and Powerpoint. Rarely were computers ever upgraded except for adding RAM. They were used until they reached the end of their lifecycle and then discarded or sold off in bulk.

    Especially today, when even low-end PC's are outstripping many average users demand for CPU cycles, integrated chipsets make more sense.

    I wouldn't buy one but that really is beside the point. I'm not the intended audience.
  • ... an integrated chipset exactly?

    Is it just a chipset built into the motherboard? If so, hasn't this been done for a while now?


  • Aren't these aimed at proffessional workstation markets where cutting edge graphics and surround sound don't matter as much as the raw CPU speed and RAM/Hard drive space?

    If you actually do mean Professional Workstations, then these are the machines where an integrated system will not cut it. Most workstation class machines imply they are used by powerusers for graphic design / modelling / CAD, etc. and are usually based on the best-of-breed components when they are sold, like multi-thousand pound graphics cards with high-end scsi drives.

    If on the other hand you meant office-class machines for people like myself to use office/outlook/visio (which I think you did!) then you are spot on with your observations.

  • After reading that article, I can honestly say that it almost seems like apples to apples when comparing the Intel and VIA chipset...until you get to the integrated video which VIA did better in easily. That and the SIS chipset sucks was pretty much it.

    But even with all the benchmarks in the world..we all know that the Intel chipset will sell twice as much as VIA...for, as much as I like and I would buy VIA chipsets, Intel is well...Intel. And my girlfriend and mother and father still have no clue who VIA is.
  • A few notes, I've been using an 815E motherboard (Gigabyte GA-6OXM7E) for 4 months now. My board came with an AGP slot and the built-in video can be disabled in favour of an AGP card. I'm currently using an nVidia TNT2 Pro. The integrated sound uses an Creative CT5880 chip (SoundBlaster 128) easily detected by most Linux distros, although other boards may use different sound chipsets. Use of modem & network functions requires a "riser" card otherwise these features are inactive (I use a "real" NIC instead). Overall I've been quite pleased with the board, performance & reliability have been terrific and the ATA/100 support is bonus.
  • Well, a "chipset" in the usual sense is always built into the motherboard. With the "integrated" kind, there's more stuff on the mobo that would ordinarily be on expansion cards: video, audio, modem, ethernet and SCSI are some example. The customer gets a motherboard with a CPU and some RAM on it and nothing in the slots. And yes, that's been done for a while now.
    --
  • Here's a pretty well-known brand name for a PM 133 mobo: Asus. ASUS CUV4X-V [yahoo.com]. The reviewer probably got the PM133 eval. board straight from VIA.

    #include "disclaim.h"
    "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak

  • None of those are brands that I have messed with. Tom's Hardware [tomshardware.com] ran a piece about three months ago on mobos using the i815 chipset. The usual suspects (Asus, Abit, Gigabyte, etc...) all had high benchmarks and high subjective ratings of reliabilty from the testers.

    In the past, any attempt at integration on the chipset absolutely sucked. It's not much better now if you only consider the three boards reviewed in this article. Don't forget that it is entirely beneficial if the engineers have the time and resources to finish the job before the deadline imposed by the marketing assholes.

    Just think of the performance enhancements that can be had by moving the remainder of the video processing off of the cpu, or using an integrated LAN circuit rather than wasting PCI polls on a NIC that sits idle most of the time.

    Just because it's being done poorly now doesn't mean that the idea itself is bad.


    I'd rather be a unix freak than a freaky eunuch
  • My integrated "4-channel" VIA sound system was a pain in the ass. It refused to install the sound drivers because I didn't have Windows 98SE (wha? 98 isn't good enough for you?) and the link to download the audio drivers at VIA's page was broken

    So I wound up living without sound for a week or two because my Shuttle AK10 motherboard doesn't have any ISA slots (Thanks, Creative Labs for the AWE64!)

    Even worse, when I did get my sound card, I had to set a jumper to disable it, get rid of any references to it in the Windows Device Manager, AND tell the BIOS to disable the On-Board sound chip

    What the hell are people thinking when they decide to integrate crap that just drives up the cost of the motherboard?
  • In theory, you could use virtually any chips to build a motherboard with built-in components.

    An integrated chipset means you can do that with less chips, because basically what your multi-I/O, NI, modem, graphics adapter etc. would normally do with many chips is added onto a few chips that need to be there anyway (RAM hub, PCI-controller etc.), and these are also joined together in order for mainboard manufacturers to need less chips to put on their mainboards, making them cheaper to build.

    Yes, this has been done for a long time.
    Think of it as an ongoing process. Usually cheap systems are built with higher integration because at first, integrated chips tend to be inferior to specialist setups.
    Later they catch up - when the specialists have developed to a point where their development slows down to allow for that. Then they just become integrated parts (when did you last think about your serial I/O chips?).

    Kiwaiti

  • Intel has introduced a new mobile chipset with integrated graphics specifically designed for today's full-size and thin-and-light mobile Intel Pentium III and Celeron processor-based mobile PCs. According to Intel, this integrated mobile chipset offers great performance while lowering overall system cost.

    The Intel 815EM chipset integrates graphics functionality and options to utilise external AGP 4X or AGP 2X graphic controllers. This new chipset provides built in, support for Intel's SpeedStep technology featured in mobile Pentium III processors. By supporting Intel SpeedStep technology, notebook vendors using the new Intel 815EM chipset can lower manufacturing costs by eliminating external components.

    The Intel 815EM chipset is based on Intel's advanced Hub Architecture, featuring a new I/O Controller Hub (ICH2-M) for greater system performance and flexibility. The ICH2-M enables an additional Universal Serial Bus (USB) port, includes a Local Area Network (LAN) Connect Interface, dual Ultra ATA/100 controllers for faster hard drive performance and support for Dolby Digital full surround sound.

    The Intel 815EM chipset is designed with integrated graphics and external AGP 4X graphics thatcan be easily upgraded. The chipset's graphics and AGP Memory Controller Hub features Intel graphics technology to create vivid 2D and 3D effects and images. The chip also features integrated hardware-assisted motion compensation to improve DVD video quality and a digital video-out port to connect mobile PCs directly to televisions or flat panel displays.

  • Throw away systems (Score:3)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Wednesday January 17, 2001 @05:50AM (#501617) Journal
    whenever I put a system together for someone I avoid the integrated chipset motherboards unless I know it is going to be an appliance, a throw-away system. And I tell the person getting the machine that as well. The last thing I need is to be married to a machine

    typically, you see this in people who want to get high power performance out of something designed to be an office workstation.

    I saw this recently where someone (a lawyer) who had a stroke managed to get a half decent system donated so that he could continue working. Had to have speech recognition.

    but now all the family wants is all the games, which is not what it was donated for in the first place. and which it is not really set up for, not the fancy stuff. It doesn't have the high end performance.

    That is the problem you see. Someone gets the 500 dollar system, and then goes and buys the game that runs best on a system with 128meg video ram, etc etc etc

  • Grief is about all the integrated chipsets amount to. They're not good for the EU, plain and simple. The only one they're good for is PC manufacturers looking to make a quick buck off of unsuspecting computer buyers. Of course, the onboard video always has terribly slow performance... and the CODECs on the onboard audio are not compatible with anything. Especially games. Try running anything with DirectSound on one of those 'SB16 compatible' chips. Finally... 9 times out of 10, if one thing goes on those boards, it might as well be junked. I had an integrated HoustonTech board (SiS chipset) (Yes, I can hear you laughing, thank you), the AT connector shorted, the whole board died. However, on a non-integrated AOpen board (again, SiS chipset) the same thing happened, and the board still works fine... well, minus being able to connect an AT keyboard to it. So, overall, integrated is no good. Disposable machine, or not, it just doesn't cut it.
  • AnandTech has a look [anandtech.com] at integrated video. It includes comparisons of solutions from Intel, SiS, VIA, and ALi. I don't personally like integrated solutions, but if you need one this might be a good source of supplementary info.
  • Translation: "I work for Intel [probably in the Marketing dept.], and the 815EM is just soooo cool <schoolgirl giggle> that you simply must buy it."

    I have never heard this much marketing drivel on /. before, ever.

    Next time, at least reword the press release before you paste it.... *sigh*

    --
  • while i agree that Intel chipsets do have SOME advantages, its kind of questionable the way you phrased your post, considering that it reads exactly like an intel PR ad.
    The true benefits of intel chip[sets, are, in fact, the integration that they have.
    by throwing toguether really crappy on-board video and sound, and maybe a NIC too, they are able tomake really cheap motherboards, while cutting the cost of a video card out the door for the system builder..
    allowing them to either make more profits or pass the savings on to the consumer.
    That is the reason why the duron, even as cheap and superior as it is, hasnt found much of a home, since the motherboards available to suport it are still so expensive..
    and the one area where intel chipsets ruled above VIA for a LONG time, and still slightly do to this day, is memory bandwidth, which has tradtionally been somewhat of a strong point for intels chips..
    And as far as the hub architecture goes, there are 2 main diferences between that and the northbridge/southbridge concept:
    ONe: theres a special bus now connecting the 2 parts of the chipset toguether instead of the PCI bus
    two: Intel gave it a diferent name.
    the idea is still the same, however.
  • What the hell are people thinking when they decide to integrate crap that just drives up the cost of the motherboard?

    One word. Size. When you integrate the crap out of a mobo, you allow yourself to cram all those components into pretty tight space. About a week ago, I picked up one of those Book PCs and there would have been no way to do it without tight integration. Of course, performance on it is not the greatest, but it's not for doing high end gfx work, just something small enough that I can cram it in a duffel bag and play DVD's and maybe a game of Quake whilst on the road. Though I am 110% agreeing with you as far as integration on a desktop. It's caused nothing but problems the few times I've had the "privlidge" of working on such a machine.

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