- #IS NVIDIA GEFORCE 6150SE NFORCE 430 A GOOD GRAPHICS CARD 1080P#
- #IS NVIDIA GEFORCE 6150SE NFORCE 430 A GOOD GRAPHICS CARD MAC#
Interestingly, the competing solution (Radeon Xpress 1150) demonstrates a different approach to building a graphics core, there are 4 pixel pipelines (support for vertex shaders is emulated by the driver, but it's up to a CPU), operating at 333 MHz. The integrated core and an external card can work together to build a multi-monitor configuration (up to 4 monitors, if a motherboard is based on GeForce 6150 and has two video outs).
#IS NVIDIA GEFORCE 6150SE NFORCE 430 A GOOD GRAPHICS CARD 1080P#
It supports DirectX 9.0, PureVideo technology (hardware acceleration of decoding H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2 video, post processing of HD video in up to 1080p resolution), it has 2 pixel and 1 vertex pipelines, and operates at 425 MHz (GeForce 6100) and 475 MHz (GeForce 6150). We should say a few words about GPU characteristics. All popular integrated solutions for AMD64 were based on two chips, which had a negative effect on PCB design (more complex layout) and did not allow to reduce prices. On the whole, we should admit that this solution has almost no direct competitors.
Perhaps NVIDIA should have given them more logical names - GeForce 6000/6050, for example, as these chipsets do not have southbridges and PCI Express was supported by Northbridge even in earlier revisions. These hybrids look good both in terms of their cost and economy (according to our tests of the first motherboards, based on the top single-chip model, heat dissipation is even lower than in a separate Northbridge in GeForce 6100 it must be the effect of removing some PCI Express lanes). As a result, nForce 405 supports PCI Express x8 for a video card, while nForce 400 does not support a graphics port at all. GPU frequency remains the same, TV-Out is removed, and there are fewer PCI Express lanes. Functions of nForce 410 were transferred to Northbridge with minimum reductions in functionality (one PATA channel instead of two).
This family was supplemented last Autumn with a single-chip version of GeForce 6100. But following the common trend, the updated revision of nForce 430 has only one channel. PATA support has been initially standard (two channels for four devices). That's good, because manufacturers of cheap motherboards don't have a chance to save on the audio codec. They initially supported AC’97 as well, but nForce 430 Southbridges (provided since August)support only HD Audio.
#IS NVIDIA GEFORCE 6150SE NFORCE 430 A GOOD GRAPHICS CARD MAC#
nForce 430 has a MAC Gigabit Ethernet with widely known NVIDIA Active Armour (a firewall that can process TCP/IP traffic on the chipset level), nForce 410 offers Fast Ethernet without additional functions. nForce 410 supports only two ports, hence only RAID 0 and 1. nForce 430 Southbridge supports four SATA-II, which can form RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and 5. Southbridge is connected via the standard bus - 16 bit HT bus operating at up to 1 GHz (maximum frequency is used as a rule, but as this bandwidth is excessive, it can be limited in BIOS by a motherboard manufacturer you can often reduce the frequency and capacity manually). The intriguing name NVIDIA Quadro NVS 210S is given to a complete copy of the GeForce 6150, which frequency is reduced to the level of GeForce 6100, certified according to AMD Commercial Stable Image Platform requirements. GeForce 6100 lacks these features, it got a simple TV-Out only in August 2006 in its new revision. GeForce 6150 also supports DVI output, hardware acceleration of HD Video decoding. GPU of the top model operates at 475 MHz, the cheapest model works at 425 MHz. Other differences are provided by the graphics core. Northbridge is responsible for PCI-Express bus - there is one graphical PCI Express x16 slot and one (GeForce 6100) or two (GeForce 6150) PCIEx1 slots. The chipset scheme hardly needs to be explained here, motherboards based on this chipset are already well known to users.
Another reason for writing this article is the new cut-down models, implemented in a single chip, that appeared last autumn (such motherboards have just started to appear in stores).
Better late than never! We decided to bring to a conclusion (this very article) our tests of integrated chipsets from NVIDIA.