选购一款适合自己的显卡系列之4：The Chips

原链：http://www.computershopper.com/feature/the-right-gpu-for-you4

Three players dominate the motherboard-graphics-chipset market: AMD (thanks to its acquisition of ATI), Intel, and nVidia. The part of the chipset that controls the entire motherboard—disk drives, memory, expansion slots, and so on—is actually the same part that performs the graphical duties. Note that all of the chipsets covered here support DirectX 9.0c, the latest version of Microsoft's graphics API available for Windows XP. None of the chips supports DirectX 10 (DX10), which was introduced with (and only works under) Windows Vista, and which supports advanced special effects. Only a few of the newest games currently take advantage of DX10 features; the Windows desktop itself uses only DX9. If DX10 effects are important to you, an integrated chipset won't deliver the performance or features you're seeking.

The Intel G965 chipset includes the company's latest integrated graphics solution, the Graphics Media Accelerator X3000. Like the AMD and nVidia offerings, the G965 includes no dedicated graphics memory. Instead, it shares the computer's main memory with the CPU. The G965 works with Socket 775 Pentium and Core 2 processors—it's the only mainstream integrated solution for those CPUs.

Earlier integrated solutions from Intel had extremely limited 3D capabilities, lacking features such as hardware transform-and-lighting and pixel shaders. What this meant was that, if a 3D program did actually run, it would likely do so at an extremely slow speed. The good news is that the G965 chipset offers a full-blown 3D feature set.

The bad news is bigger, though. Despite Intel's attempt to reach technological parity with the graphics competition, the G965's performance falls behind its AMD and nVidia competitors in almost every arena. Also, the G965 has compatibility problems with some games. Intel's support Web site lists over 60 games that have difficulty running on the G965, ranging from graphics glitches to painfully slow frame rates. The problems afflict some of the most popular Windows game titles, including Civilization IV, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Lego Star Wars II, Madden NFL 2007, and World of Warcraft.

Coming from a company best known for its graphics cards, it's no surprise that the nVidia GeForce 6150 motherboard graphics chipset is adept at games and video. Included as part of the nVidia nForce 430 motherboard chipset, the GeForce 6150 is designed to support AMD's Athlon and Sempron processors; nVidia doesn't make a version for Intel CPUs.

Even though it's the oldest design we examined, the GeForce 6150 has the most complete 3D feature set of the chips covered here. Along with full DirectX 9.0c support, the chip supports Shader Model 3.0, which enables some additional effects in games such as Far Cry. The chipset has a full suite of high-definition video-playback capabilities, supporting nVidia's PureVideo processing technology. Motherboards that use the GeForce 6150 often support dual monitors, with one display using a DVI connection and the other using either VGA or component-video output. The GeForce 6150 falls slightly behind the AMD chipset in most tests; it's been around so long that we expect a replacement based on the GeForce 7000 series to arrive soon.

The newcomer to the party is the AMD 690. Actually designed by ATI before the two companies merged, this chipset comes in two varieties: the AMD 690G, which supports HDMI, DVI, and component-video output; and the lower-cost AMD 690V, which supports only VGA and TV output. One particularly slick feature is SurroundView: Add a dual-output Radeon graphics card to your system, and you can drive up to four displays simultaneously. The AMD 690G chipset we tested includes integrated ATI Radeon X1250 graphics. As you'd expect from an AMD chipset, the AMD 690 supports only Athlon and Sempron processors.

Like the GeForce 6150, the AMD 690 has excellent 3D capabilities. That said, it supports only Shader Model 2.0b, which may reduce special-effects quality in games that explicitly look for 3.0 support. The AMD 690 is equipped with the company's Avivo video-processing engine. Like nVidia's PureVideo, Avivo supports tasks such as video scaling, 3-to-2 pulldown on movie DVDs, and hardware video decoding. Unlike PureVideo, which requires the purchase of a separate software package from nVidia, the Avivo software is part of AMD's driver software. Also, the AMD 690 is the only chipset here that supports dual-link DVI, allowing you to run at full 2,560x1,600 resolution on large monitors.