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LinuxElectrons reviews GIGABYTE's integrated AGP graphics motherbard based on the ATI 9100IGP using the Linux OS.
GIGABYTE
ATI 9100 IGP
MotherBoard Review
ATI
released the 9100 IGP in the second half of last year in response to
its competitor NVidia. Everyone knows that NVidia has been playing
very hard in the AMD north bridge arena. NVidia probably would like
to play in the Pentium arena as well, except that would be a major
threat to Intel's chipset business. A while back the press was saying
that the license fee Intel was going to charge NVidia was rather high
and NVidia shelved the plans. Hmm, I wonder why the fee was too much
for NVidia? Oh yeah, back to ATI. ATI is aiming for the value segment
of the market with the 9100IGP. IGP is the acronym for integrated
graphics port.
I must say that I'm impressed that ATI has reached the market with this product. Designing a north bridge is serious business if you wish to be competitive with Intel and NVidia, let alone adding a modern AGP Video Controller. The specifications speak for themselves and are listed here:
“Great
spec's, but can it run Linux?” you ask. Thats the question I'm
going to answer in this review. So I finally got my hands on a
GIGABYTE
motherboard from their P4 Titan Series. GIGABYTE spec's are
as follows:
|
Model |
GA- 8TRS300M |
|---|---|
|
CPU TYPE |
Socket 478 with HT |
|
CPU FSB |
800 / 533 / 400 MHz |
|
Chipset |
ATI 9100IGP |
|
Memory Type |
Dual Channel DDR400/333/266 |
|
Memory Socket |
DDR*2 (4 DIMM SKTs) |
|
Max Memory |
4 GB |
|
AGP Slot |
AGP 8X/4X*1 |
|
PCI Slots |
3 |
|
VGA |
Integrated |
|
LAN |
Realtek 8100C |
|
Audio |
AC97 (Realtek ALC655) |
|
Codec Channels |
6 |
|
IDE ATA |
100/66/33 |
|
USB 1.1 |
Same as USB 2.0 |
|
USB 2.0 |
6 (4 by cable) |
|
PCB Size |
24.5 X 24.4 CM |
|
Form Factor |
Micro ATX |
First
Glance
The board sports color coding for all the major interconnects. An end user armed with a manual should have no problems connecting the board into their case. Intel has really done some solid mechanical engineering on the P4 socket. Its a breeze to install the P4 into its final resting place.
The PCB stackup is four layers. The component silkscreen is easy to read also. There are lots of electrolytic caps sprinkled all over the board, which is a good thing. These caps provide the noise immunity on the power supply rails. Looking at the CPU power supply , GIGABYTE has the proper range of bypass caps there also. Another plus are the bypass caps on the backside of the board under the major IC's. The DDR channels are length matched as I can see the serpentine traces. The clock generators are ICS. At first glance this board seems to be well designed with a good placement and route. No blue wires either. The only nuisance that I have seen is that the AGP slot is too close to the DDR DIMMs. When an AGP adapter is inserted, it will interfere with the installation and removal of memory DIMMs.
Test Configuration
Unfortunately
the memory I had available was not able to be operated in dual
channel mode. The system was locking up during test and I suspected
my memory DIMMs to be the culprit. So I headed to GIGABYTE's website
to search for the recommended or “validated” memory list, to my
dismay, I could not find a list for this motherboard. However, I did
track down a list at ATI's website here.
Sure enough, my memory was
not on the list. It was close, the approved list called out a Samsung
– K4H560838D-TCC (2.5-3-3). HyperThreading worked out of the box.
Two CPUs were detected during install and the SMP Kernel was installed.
Fedora
Core 1
Installation
of FC1 was a snap on this hardware platform. Several things jumped
out immediately, no audio, no accelerated video. After performing
some snooping of the log files I noticed that the AGPGART was not
turned on and the Realtek ALC655 audio device was not recognized. I
downloaded and compiled the 2.6.1-1.65
kernel in hopes of rectifying
these problems. The AGPGART was the only problem solved. Still no
audio or accelerated video (DRI). For the last grasp I downloaded the
2.6.3 kernel from kernel.org and installed it. Still same problems.
Boo Hoo. I finally found that the XFree86 as shipped in Fedora does
not enable DRI for ATI. Hey! Still some hope. Now I went and
retrieved XFree86.4.3.99.902
compiled and installed. At last,
accelerated video! So I thought, my hopes were dashed after running
GLXGEARS and got the dreaded “Cannot find DRI” message, no
accelerated video after all. XFree86 does not support DRI for the
9100IGP yet. But hey, at least its recognized. The driver was buggy
anyway, I was getting some lockups when using this beta version of
XFree. The audio drivers were downloaded from Realtek.
So for the
benchmarking I used an ATI Radeon 7500 AGP adapter.
Benchmarks
Wrap Up
This
GIGABYTE motherboard is solid. Once the XFree drivers are fixed, this
would be a perfect solution for the SOHO user. No heavy 3D gaming,
but snappy with the graphics for desktop applications or that
occasional Frozen Bubble game. This platform would also be useful for
those dabbling in Linux and dual booting with Windows.
To turn this motherboard into a 3D gaming platform or workstation, all one has to do is add a 3D Video adapter into the provided AGP slot, a real sound card, a HyperThreading CPU and dual channel DDR400 ram.
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