PERFORMANCE UPDATE: NVIDIA GeForce 6100 vs. ATI RS482

RS482 versus RS480

The first question that many of you may have is why we are testing the ATI RS482, instead of the RS480, against the NVIDIA 6100? The RS480 and the RS482 are the same chipset, with the RS482 having undergone a die shrink. We believed that the Grouper was still equipped with the RS480 chipset, when in fact, the Reference Board had the .11 process RS482 when we checked under the heatsink.

Whether RS482 or RS480, the performance should be essentially the same according to ATI. The RS480 is built on a .13 micron process, and the RS482 is a die-shrink to .11 micron. The chipsets are otherwise identical, except that ATI did make the move to a flip chip design in RS482. Whether it is a RS480 core or RS482 core, ATI calls the chipset Radeon Xpress 200. You will never hear ATI refer to the RS482 or RS480 in official documents, but we find the internal names to be useful for explaining what has and hasn't changed in the chipsets.

The die-shrink theoretically reduces costs, which was a primary motivation for the move to .11. The RS482 is the currently-shipping ATI integrated Graphics solution for AMD, and has replaced the RS480 in AMD integrated graphics from ATI.

The RS482 is the current ATI mainstream integrated graphics chipset, which is officially called Radeon Xpress 200. This would make the new NVIDIA 6100 the comparable chipset to RS482. NVIDIA also announced the higher-clocked GeForce 6150 chipset, which will be released in coming weeks. As you have seen in our past roadmaps, ATI will also be releasing a higher-performing integrated graphics solution in the future called RS485. It appears that this may be a higher-clocked version of RS482, which would make it a logical competitor to the upcoming NVIDIA 6150.

The AMD Integrated Graphics market is the exact opposite of what we have recently seen in discrete graphics. Where NVIDIA had a several-month lead over ATI with the 7800 GTX, ATI introduced RS480 almost a year ago. In that market, it has taken NVIDIA almost a year to respond with the GeForce 6100 Integrated Graphics.