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:

CPU Interface

• Up to 800 MHz CPU FSB for Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor
• Supports Intel® Hyper-Threading™ processors
• In-Order Queue (IOQ) depth of 12
• Supports Dynamic Bus Inversion (DBI)
• Supports system bus interrupt delivery

System Logic Features

• Integrated master clock generator with spread spectrum support
• AGP 3.0 compliant AGP 8X interface with Fast Write support
• 266MB/second point-to-point interface to ATI IXP in A-Link mode
• Unified Memory Architecture (UMA)
• Dual channel 128-bit DDR SDRAM memory interface
• DDR400 SDRAM support provides up to 6.4 GB/second bandwidth
• Up to 4 GB DRAM support with two unbuffered DIMMs
• 16 MB to 128 MB of main memory configurable as display memory
• Up to 6 USB2.0 ports
• Two independent IDE channels with support of mode 0 to 4, and ATA 100
• Supports LPC based Super I/O
• Integrated 3-COM™ Ethernet controller

3D Graphics Features

• HyperZ™ memory optimization technology
• Hardware with Pixel Shader 1.4 support
• Supports up to 2048x1536 @ 32bpp.
• Supports 3D textures and Microsoft® DirectX® texture compression
• Anisotropic texture filtering and Full Screen Anti-Aliasing (FSAA)

Video Features

• Video scaling and filtering with advanced 4-tap horizontal and vertical filter
• Integrated hardware motion compensation and iDCT
• Enhanced MPEG-2 hardware decode
• Hardware DVD sub-picture decode

2D Graphics Features

• Highly optimized 128-bit 2D Engine
• Hardware cursor up to 64x64x32 BPP
• Supports a maximum resolution of 2048x1536 @ 32bpp.
• Support for Microsoft® Windows® XP

Display Controller

• Dual CRT controllers provide independent dual display support
• Display rotation support
• Comprehensive DDC and hot plugging support
• Integrated high precision 300MHz triple 10-bit DAC supports resolutions up to 2048 x 1536

Flat Panel Monitor Support

• 12-bit digital output to support DVI, DFP and VESA P&D via external TMDS
• Supports up to 1600x1200 screen resolution for LCD panels
• Support for VESA defined reduced blanking modes

TV-Out Support

• Integrated TV encoder with composite, S-Video, and RGB interfaces
• Supports PAL/NTSC TV formats
• 10-bit DAC with 8-tap filter and ATI-exclusive enhancements
• Macrovision 7.02 copy protection standard
• Supports up to 1024x768 32bpp mode

Optimized Software Support

• Microsoft DirectX 8.1 and OpenGL® drivers
• Unified driver support for all RADEON discrete and integrated graphics products
• Support for Linux® via XFree86.org ATI driver and Microsoft Windows®

“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 [1] 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

[2]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

• P4 2.4 GHz/800 MHz FSB with HyperThreading
• Two PC3200 (DDR400) 256MB DIMMs. - Single Channel Mode
  
• Samsung – K4H560838D-TC4 (3-4-4) (SLOW)
  
• Maxtor 7200 RPM 15GB ATA100 Hard Drive
• ATI Radeon 7500 AGP
• LITE-ON CD-ROM Model LTN-323
• DYNEX 300 Watt Power Supply
• This power supply uses shared power rails which can cause problems when loading maximum number of devices into a system.
• Fedora Core 1 Linux Operating System (kernel 2.6.1-1.65)
  
• SpecView Performance 7.1.1
• Quake 3
• LMBENCH 3.0.A3

[3]
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 [4]. 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 [5] 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 [6] 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 [7]. 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.