Integrated Video – How Does it Stack Up?

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Not Your Father’s Integrated Video

Integrated video is becoming more and more popular – not the "old" type some of you may think of, with a separate video chip and memory mounted on the motherboard, but the latest generation where it’s integrated into the chipset. I tested two different solutions – an Intel 815E based (Soyo 7ISA) and VIA PM133 based (Soyo 7VMA) motherboard. Both are FC-PGA Socket 370 Celeron / Pentium III Mainboards with similar features. VIA’s approach is more traditional, using the S3 Savage 4 graphics engine, which allows you to set the amount of main memory (4 to 32MB) dedicated to video. The Intel i815E dedicates only 1MB, and dynamically swaps more as needed. Both chipsets also support an optional AGP card and both motherboards have AGP slots… just insert an AGP card and the integrated video is disabled. The VIA PM133 chipset allows you to run the memory at FSB speed or FSB + or – 33MHz, the Intel 815E allows only 100MHz memory speed if using a 66 or 100MHz FSB, but at 133MHz FSB you can set to either 100 or 133MHz memory speed.

Although the performance is quite close, the 3D performance of the VIA is slightly better… but FSB speed makes a big difference, along with resolution on the spread between the two chipsets (faster FSB and lower resolution being better for the VIA). What I did find out is that the i815E puts very little load on the CPU when using the integrated video and that the display resolution makes no difference with it. But, the VIA PM133 integrated video does put a significant load on the CPU that also varies with resolution.

This is shown in the table below with results from ZDBOp CPU Mark 32 and a 133MHz FSB PIII 667EB CPU with128MB of memory running at 133MHz in both motherboards. As you can see the Intel 815E shows very little change with different resolutions and just a slight gain when using an AGP card over the integrated video. However, the VIA PM133 does show a significant change with different resolutions and when using an AGP card.

And the same benchmark, but using a 100MHz FSB PIII 650 – 128MB of memory set ASYNC to 133MHz on the VIA PM 133 (a feature not supported by the Intel) and 100MHz on the Intel 815E. Results are similar to those run using a 133MHz FSB.

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