AMD's 690G/V Series Chipset Preview And Performance Testing

Test System Specifications AMD vs NVIDIA

Before we start the benchmarking segment, we wanted to make several notes about our setup and testing methodology.  Currently, the closest hardware comparison we had available for this review were two nForce 430 boards, one with a GeForce 6100 integrated graphics controller, the other with a GeForce 6150.

To help interpret the results in each of our tests, we wanted to clarify the roles of the GeForce 6100 and 6150.  The GeForce 6150 is a two chip design that incorporates NVIDIA's PureVideo engine.  This is commonly found on system boards designed for media center applications.  The GeForce 6100 is a second generation processor that is a single chip design, manufactured on a smaller process than its predecessor.  NVIDIA also incorporated hardware z-cull for improved 3D performance with the 6100 while omitting an integrated PureVideo engine.  This positions the 6100 more for reasonable game play rather than video quality. So when reviewing these results, we expect the 6100 series to top the 6150 in gaming tests, while we should see the inverse when in comes to our HQV video testing.  In all integrated tests, each board was set to share 256MB of system memory, the maximum setting for the nForce 430 boards tested, providing an equal playing field.  Virtually all tests were also run with discrete graphics as well to demonstrate the impact of sharing 256MB of main memory with the IGPs might have on performance.

You might also note that all testing was done in Windows XP Professional SP-2.  While AMD is pushing the 690 series as offering a Premium Windows Vista Experience, we've opted to perform all testing on XP as Vista is still quite new and drivers for various hardware vendors need to mature a bit.