Introduction

Intel flexes their muscles and shows their technological dominance in the low-cost chipset arena. Up to date there have been a several attempts to design a fully integrated chipset. Unfortunately, this type of integration in the past went hand-in-hand with lack-luster 3D performance. Most of the integrated chipset solutions shipping now provide acceptable performance for productivity software (e.g. word-processing, home finance, and Internet browsing). But when the user would slap their favorite 3D game title in to the CDROM drive instead of entering a cartoon like 3D world with full motion video it was more like a watching a slide-show. The reason for horrible 3D performance was due to the video implementation in the chipset. Most of these integrated chipset solutions use UMA (Unified Memory Architecture) where the integrated video allocates the required frame buffer from the system memory. By sharing the system memory the integrated video is limited to slow 66 MHz-memory access. This slow memory access along with rudimentary 3D features integrated into most of these chipsets equated to HORRIBLE 3D gaming. Finally, Intel has provided the 810 Chipset solution to meet the low price demands of consumers without completely ignoring the performance requirements of 3D gaming.

No 'North' and 'South' Anymore, Only Hubs!