µATX Part 1: ATI Radeon Xpress 1250 Performance Review
by Gary Key on August 28, 2007 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
abit Fatality F-I90HD: Feature Set
The abit Fatal1ty F-I90HD motherboard has been a well received board in the labs as we think it has a very good blend of performance, options, and price for a micro-ATX board designed for HTPC usage. However, abit had some initial quality issues with the board that marred the launch and they have not kept up with BIOS updates. Unfortunately, this is not a good pattern and we have to wonder how committed abit is to this board. ASRock has already updated their BIOS to provide full compatibility with the newer Blu-ray drives as the SB600 firmware needed an update along with the ability to set PCI and PCI Express bus speeds.
The BIOS offers a fair amount of options for overclocking and tuning the board. The notable items that are missing include the inability to set PCI and PCI Express bus speeds along with the inability to overclock the memory. These are not major items of concern for us considering the audience the board is targeted at, but additional memory sub-timing options would have been appreciated as the performance of the board is below that of the ASRock due to memory performance. The only other item we feel is missing from this board is a Firewire 400 port, considering this board was designed with the media centric user in mind.
abit includes their EQ program for hardware monitoring and smart control over the CPU and System fan headers. This program proved to be very useful when setting our system to operate in near silent mode during video and audio playback sessions.
| abit Fatality F-I90HD Specifications | |
| Market Segment | Entry Level HTPC - $114.99 |
| CPU Interface | Socket T (Socket 775) |
| CPU Support | LGA775-based Pentium 4, Pentium D, Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Extreme, Core 2 Quad, Support for 1333 CPUs limited to 266FSB |
| Chipset | ATI Radeon Express 1250 (RS600) Northbridge and SB600 Southbridge |
| Bus Speeds | Auto, 133 ~ 500 in 1MHz increments |
| Memory SpeedDDR2 | SPD, 533/667/800 async operation |
| PCIe Speeds | Not adjustable, locked |
| Core Voltage | Auto, 1.3250V (or base CPU) to 1.7000V in 0.0025V increments |
| CPU Clock Multiplier | Auto, 6x-12x in 1X increments if CPU is unlocked, downwards unlocked, Core 2 Duo |
| DRAM VoltageDDR2 | Auto, 1.75V ~ 2.50V in .05V or .10V increments |
| DRAM Timing Control | SPD, Manual - 5 DRAM Timing Options (tCL, tRCD, tRP, tRAS, tRFC) |
| NB Voltage | 1.80V, 1.836V, 1.872V, 1.944V, 2.016V, 2.088V |
| On-board Video | 1080p support with 7.8+ drivers (recommend E6420 or above), 480i, 480p, 576i, 576p, 720p, and 1080i support, HDCP 1.1 support on data stream with on-chip key storage, integrated DVI or HDMI 1.2 interface single-link support only for HDMI, 30-bit dual-link support for DVI, 1650 Mbps/channel with 165 MHz pixel clock rate per link, DX9.0 VS/PS 2.0, max 2048x1536 resolution, MPEG-2 hardware decode, MPEG-4 simple profile support, WMV9 Hardware Acceleration, MPEG-2 hardware decode acceleration. |
| GFX Memory Buffer | 32MB, 64MB, 128MB, 256MB |
| GFX link Width | 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x |
| Memory Slots | Four 240-pin DDR2 DIMM Slots Dual-Channel Configuration Regular Unbuffered Memory to 16GB Total |
| Expansion Slots | 1 - PCIe X16 2 - PCIe x1 1 - PCI Slot 2.2 |
| Onboard SATA/RAID | 4 SATA 3Gbps Ports - SB600 (RAID 0, 1, 0+1) |
| Onboard IDE | 1 ATA133/100/66 Port (2 drives) - SB600 |
| Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394 | 10 USB 2.0 Ports - 4 I/O Panel - 6 via Headers Firewire 400 not supported |
| Onboard LAN | Realtek RTL8111B - PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller |
| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC888 - 8-channel HD audio codec, X1250 embedded HDMI |
| Power Connectors | ATX 24-pin, 4-pin ATX 12V |
| I/O Panel | 1 x PS/2 Keyboard 1 x PS/2 Mouse 1 x HDMI, 1 x D-Sub (HDMI to DVI connector included) 1 x S/PDIF Optical - Out 1 x Audio Panel 1 x RJ45 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 |
| Fan Headers | 4 - CPU/SYS/AUX1/AUX2 |
| Fan Control | CPU/SYS Fan Control via BIOS or Software CPU - Target Temp 40C~70C, Temp Tolerance 3C~15C, Fan Start - 60%~100%, Stop - 30%~60% SYS - Target Temp 30C~50C, Temp Tolerance 3C~15C, Fan Start - 70%~100%, Stop - 50%~70% |
| BIOS Revision | v1.4 |
| Board Revision | v1.00F |
The abit Fatal1ty F-I90HD motherboard has been a well received board in the labs as we think it has a very good blend of performance, options, and price for a micro-ATX board designed for HTPC usage. However, abit had some initial quality issues with the board that marred the launch and they have not kept up with BIOS updates. Unfortunately, this is not a good pattern and we have to wonder how committed abit is to this board. ASRock has already updated their BIOS to provide full compatibility with the newer Blu-ray drives as the SB600 firmware needed an update along with the ability to set PCI and PCI Express bus speeds.
The BIOS offers a fair amount of options for overclocking and tuning the board. The notable items that are missing include the inability to set PCI and PCI Express bus speeds along with the inability to overclock the memory. These are not major items of concern for us considering the audience the board is targeted at, but additional memory sub-timing options would have been appreciated as the performance of the board is below that of the ASRock due to memory performance. The only other item we feel is missing from this board is a Firewire 400 port, considering this board was designed with the media centric user in mind.
abit includes their EQ program for hardware monitoring and smart control over the CPU and System fan headers. This program proved to be very useful when setting our system to operate in near silent mode during video and audio playback sessions.
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Sargo - Tuesday, August 28, 2007 - link
Nice review but there's no X3100 on Intel G33. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA#GMA_3100">GMA 3100 is based on much older arhitechture. Thus even the new drivers won't help that much.ltcommanderdata - Tuesday, August 28, 2007 - link
Exactly. The G33 was never intended to replace the G965 chipset, it replaces the 945G chipset and the GMA 950. The G33's IGP is not the GMA X3100 but the GMA 3100 (no "X") and the IGP is virtually identical to the GMA 950 but with higher clock speeds and better video support. The GMA 950, GMA 3000, and GMA 3100 all only have SM2.0 pixel shaders with no vertex shaders and no hardware T&L engine. The G965 and the GMA X3000 remains the top Intel IGP until the launch of the G35 and GMA X3500. I can't believe Anandtech made such an obvious mistake, but I have to admit Intel isn't helping matters with there ever expanding portfolio of IGPs.Here's Intel's nice PR chart explaining the different IGPs:
http://download.intel.com/products/graphics/intel_...">http://download.intel.com/products/graphics/intel_...
Could you please run a review with the G965 chipset and the GMA X3100 using XP and the latest 14.31 drivers? They are now out of beta and Intel claims full DX9.0c SM3.0 hardware acceleration. I would love to see the GMA X3000 compared with the common GMA 950 (also supported in the 14.31 drivers although it has no VS to activate), the Xpress X1250, the GeForce 6150 or 7050, and some low-end GPUs like the X1300 or HD 2400. A comparison between the 14.31 and previous 14.29 drivers that had no hardware support would also show how much things have increased.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, August 28, 2007 - link
I did look at gaming performance under Vista with a 965GM chipset in the http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=306...">PC Club ENP660 review. However, that was also tested under Vista. I would assume that with drivers working in all respects, GMA X3100 performance would probably come close to that of the Radeon Xpress 1250, but when will the drivers truly reach that point? In the end, IGP is still only sufficient for playing with all the details turned down at 1280x800 or lower resolutions, at least in recent titles. Often it can't even do that, and 800x600 might be required. Want to play games at all? Just spend the $120 on something like an 8600 GT.IntelUser2000 - Wednesday, August 29, 2007 - link
It has the drivers at XP.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, August 29, 2007 - link
Unless the XP drivers are somehow 100% faster (or more) than the last Vista drivers I tried, it still doesn't matter. Minimum details in Battlefield 2 at 800x600 got around 20 FPS. It was sort of playable, but nothing to write home about. Half-Life 2 engine stuff is still totally messed up on the chipset; it runs DX9 mode, but it gets <10 FPS regardless of resolution.IntelUser2000 - Wednesday, August 29, 2007 - link
I get 35-45 fps on the demo Single Player for the first 5 mins at 800x600 min. Didn't check more as its limited.E6600
DG965WH
14.31 production driver
2x1GB DDR2-800
WD360GD Raptor 36GB
WinXP SP2
IntelUser2000 - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link
Jarred, PLEASE PROVIDE THE DETAILS OF THE BENCHMARK/SETTINGS/PATCHES used for BF2 so I can provide equal testing as you have done on the Pt.1 article.Like:
-What version of BF2 used
-What demos are supposed to be used
-How do I load up the demos
-etc
R101 - Tuesday, August 28, 2007 - link
Just for the fun of it, for us to see what can X3100 do with these new betas. I've been looking for that test since those drivers came out, and still nothing.erwos - Tuesday, August 28, 2007 - link
I'm looking forward to seeing the benchmarks on the G35 motherboards (which I'm sure won't be in this series). The X3500 really does seem to have a promising feature set, at least on paper.Lonyo - Tuesday, August 28, 2007 - link
Bioshock requires SM3.0.