[mkk]

I've been looking around and it seems that the MSI RS480 is still the only one using the ATI X200 chipset, and it has no overclocking settings. A fine chipset but almost no boards.

I'm not up to date on nForce based motherboards, so I'm asking if there are any with useable DX8 or DX9 graphics integrated and is having at least some lesser overclocking potential? I would just need something useful until I could afford some good PCIe graphics.

[Lowfat]

I dont think there are any Nforce IGP on out there yet. I am in the same boat, however i am just going to wait a bit longer till a few more boards come out with the xpress 200.

[mkk]

I read that ASUS should soon be coming out with a regular size ATX board based on ATI Xpress200, but that they also went with no overclocking features. Looks like there may be a good opportunity for whatever company that gets a full featured enthusiast board out. Unfortunately for me I may not be able to wait much longer due to recent hardware failure.

[DutchShadow]

Iīve got the board and there were no problems with regards to delivery. Itīs a great board with good IGP performance... Plays Battlefield Vietnam without any problems.

[Tipstaff]

If you can wait Sapphire is gonna release a new 939 soon based on ATIs new RS480/SB450 chipsets. You can check out the article from Inquirer HERE . If you look at the specs it will have exactly what you need (PCI-E 16x slot, and an onboard vga).

As for the release date, Sapphire is supposed to be unveiling the board at Cebit 2005 this week in Germany, and it would be available for purchasing sometime at the end of March, or beginning of April.

- Tip

[mkk]

Nice. I did see something about that Cebit unveiling, but didn't have a clue about when the Cebit show was coming up. Sapphire aren't likely to dodge overclocking oportunities so it sounds promising.

[mkk]

The Sapphire ATI Xpress 200 might come sooner than I could have hoped for, as it has just began to appear listed here in Sweden. No dates on when they'll be in stock and without much detail in the specs, but the listed price is in range with the MSI or even a few bucks less. If only there were at least some pictures to go by then I would probably preorder one.

*jumps up and down in anticipation* *takes the oportunity to keep jumping on a failed graphics card*

[Lowfat]

that Sapphire board looks promising.

[Matth]

The ultimate question, unless you are actually averse to fitting cards at all, is:

1. Are the onboard graphics usable and worth having, or "only there so you don't have to buy a cheap card to make an office PC ?
2. Is the result any cheaper than a non-integrated solution with a similar level of graphics card?

I'm not sure about this "rehabilitation" of onboard graphics - unless there is some dedicated frame buffer ram, it still steals a lot of memory cycles from the CPU, though tha actual quantity of memory lost is not as significant as it used to be, the lost memory cycles are more important now than they ever were.

When they glued a Cirrus 5428 and a couple of Mb ram on the old 486 boards, you basically had a complete local bus video card on the board.

Then when the Pentium and AMD systems started using "Unified memory architecture", we saw that it was EVIL - you actually lost general purpose CPU workload performance, and regained it if you fitted a proper card.

Mind you, on a 939 with a dual DDR400 memory bus, maybe there is a bit more leeway to give away some memory performance to the graphics - but it still seems like buying a greyhound and feeding it tripe.

[mkk]

I share your sceptisism about integrated graphics in general and prior experiences. But tests have shown that this time it really could do well enough for lighter gaming both performance-wise and thanks to not having to rely on crappy Intel graphics drivers or something similar. The possibility of using the Xpress200 chip as a stepping stone over to PCIe also makes it interesting for more people than otherwise. The real clincher is that yes the price is oh so right. By looking at the prices thus far there really isn't any extra cost involved with this perticular type of integrated graphics. That it's all inside the northbridge and that there is no need for a memory controller probably helps keeping the price down on this Socket 939 solution.

[Lowfat]

With the xpress 200 chipset it will allow me to do 3 monitors What i would really like it for so that i could leave on of my monitors on while gaming to show temps,voltages etc.