Nvidia GT200M and GT100M slides described in minute detail

To summarise... Nvidia renames old part as new part and attempts a marketing 'wool pulling escapade'. So, i just did Charlie's article in 14 words - can i get his job? I can't even bore myself, sorry bring myself to read it - we all know what it says.
And if anyone actually reads the full text, jesus, get a life - ATI fan or NV fan, it's just TOO long.

Will someone at teh TheInq with a brain please fire Charlie. He is nothing more than a viral dispensiing jerkoff that is ruining your site.

Thank you, I stopped reading after the 3rd paragraph. Its interesting to know that nvidia is doing this, I was going to buy a laptop with an nv card but now sense I know theirs no point in waiting for nvidia to come out with a new card.

But yes, thank you for summering that article.

RE: Summarise

the reason we all love charlie he can turn a 14 word story into a whole page

keep up the good work Charlie

Hmmm.... gets me to thinking. If Charlie were actually LYING about anything in his articles about the Green Goobers, then the NV legal team could have ALL sorts of fun now, couldn't they? And what lawyers, especially corporate type, wouldn't lust after an opportunity to demolish a member of the press?

So the failure of the green team to apply real legal pressure on Charlie.... Why, that must mean that Charlie is CORRECT!

Besides, reading Charlie's creative use of the Amer-English language to drop turd-bombs on corporate types is always entertaining. Now it's even factual!r

Good Job Charlie, got me entertained for a while. I always knew the lucky stream of NV will be over at some point.

c'mon......

Keep up the hard work Charlie, someone has to read between the lines, and I sure as heck don't want to read to much coming from a brain washed Nvidiot fanboy.

First off, - "Ouch." Charlie, must you insult all Nvidia customers? I appreciate that you help to pull back any veils that cover up what could be bad business practices, but by insulting some of your readers - I’m sure is mostly to entertain the audience who like your preferred brand, is kind of sad. Believe it or not, I think most of your readers are Nvidia customers. If I leaned more toward the ATI camp, I might be a little entertained by your articles, but in general they would not be of interest to me because I’d be looking for ATI news. Nevertheless, I enjoy reading your articles because they will never do lip service to my preferred brand. Also, I like the strange place your articles occupy; it is in essence and essentially birthed by your willingness to report on a company you seem to hate so much.

I do agree how wrong it is to compare what one GPU manufacturer calls a core to another. It is like comparing apples and oranges and then trying to figure who has the apple and who is now holding the pear. I actually do not believe either company is truly building “Cores” in the same sense that we have come to understand on the CPU side of things. Core/Processor in the GPU market has become a marketing buzzword that both ATI and Nvidia are ridding. Comparing them would be an exercise in lame because there are no standards for what constitutes a GPU core. The fact that neither company is able to coordinate the work efficiently enough to reach the theoretical double performance between two or more of their discrete GPUs supports that putting them on the same die in this present time should not magically change the situation from what they already are achieving with Crossfire and SLI implementations.

So, lighter up a bit on your audience Charlie, the ones that prefer Nvidia. Otherwise it is just going to be another abusive relationship. Your readers will just do what people do in such a relationship; some will leave you, some will play the same game, and worst yet, some will stay because you damaged them. I know, it is the drama you stir up that brings us in… oh that's right… besides that I am interested in Nvidia news and that you tend to report on it a lot so I’m just saying...

Some of you guys need to lay off.
Charlie is doing his job period.
Investigative reporting with some sarcasm and creative language. The combination of truth with entertainment.

What is wrong with that ?

The reason we all read INQ is to find out things like these that Charlie and the INQ crew writes about.

No ? Then go on to read CNET or PC Magazine.

I will quote Rich Wargo from previous post/reply:

So the failure of the green team to apply real legal pressure on Charlie.... Why, that must mean that Charlie is CORRECT!

Go Charlie, go !

Charlie is again telling some unpleasant truth about the liars from Castle Nvidiastein and the fanboys creep out of the woodwork and demand his head.

I loved both articles and laughed all the time. TheInq should give CD a pay rise. He is a major reason to come here daily.

Most of the fantools seem to forget that it's THIS kind of reporting that digs up problems in the industry. Like firmware bricking seagate drives. bad bumps which nV said went from "not a problem at all" to a $200m write-off (less body-building time for JHH.)

No, the fanboys should accept that their "blessed" card has problems too. Just covering your ears and screaming at Charlie is NOT a way to rebuke his statements. no .. in fact NONE of you fanboys have any answer against bad bumps, missing video acceleration or the lack of DP on these new "GT200" parts. no. Fanboys, it's time to wake up and rip that nvidia poster of your wall because the time of masturbating in front of "jensen's" poster is over.

... is that Charlie's venom-spewing diatrabes are just as boring if not more so than the Nvidia presentations that he's trying (way too hard) to decry.

This is of no interest to anyone except Charlie's tragic fanboys.

You're right. It's not just ATI afficionados that applaud Charlie, it's his fan club. So , i must be an Nvidiot (as i own an NV card) but they must be Charseholes!!
But again, i repeat my claim that if NV go tits up then two things happen, ATI (if they dont go tits up too because they too have massive problems with money)get a monopoly. This will destroy the need to progress technology and therefore be detrimental to the industry. Remember, the GTX 285 is still the fastest single GPU and the GTX 295 is the fastest dual GPU. ATI still need to develop their power solutions and noise issues - no NV means they wouldn't need to.
Second massive problem. NV has a large market share and their removal from the PC arena could cripple the PC gaming market. Dont wish too hard for NV to fail. Hope instead that they clean up their act and stop being dicks. We need ATI and NV to keep battling each other to gain the high ground - otherwise we're all screwed.

Which “Lucy” clip was it?

"Nvidia has a miniscule share of this market, and you can usually tell those notebooks by the vertical lines on the screen shortly before they turn black."

This made me laugh.

There also seemed to be a writeup from Charlie of the 8800GT showing up on Google, but I the link seemed to be broken on the site. Fortunately I found a cached version elsewere:

------------

Charlie Demerjian the inquirer Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:50:17 +0000

Spin undoctored More underhanded slides to bore you with

HOT ON THE heels of the silly G92 to GT200M renaming comes the slide-show of the GT 250 series. We told you about the flat-out unethical behaviour that Nvidia is doing with the launch, now prepare yourself for the agonizingly dull slides.

This set is only 18 slides long, not quite into bite-your-tongue-off-to-ease-the-pain territory, but close.

The card is YARGP (Yet Another Renamed G92 Product), and it brings absolutely nothing new to the table. Nvidia has a warehouse full of these, as do their partners, and they need to move them. People aren't buying, so it is time to rename and spin.

Spin they do, quite creatively, but not necessarily persuasively or convincingly as you will see. It is almost like they are embarrassed by their own actions. That said, here are the notes we took on the slides, one by one. Be still my beating heart.

First we have a splash screen called "Introducing the GeForce GTS 250". We won't quibble that they are introducing the card name, but the card itself has been with us since mid-2007. Nothing new here, really, and certainly nothing that warrants a new name.

If you don't believe me, slide two is titled "What is the GeForce GTS 250?". There are two bullet points here, "New 1GB board positioned at $149", and "New name to align with with the new nomenclature". Yup, that's it. They just admitted there is nothing at all new, it is just a price drop and a sticker. The next 16 slides are worthless, but that won't stop Nvidia.

Slide 3 makes my head hurt. It is a large marketing chart that shows one data point, the 9800GTX+/512M goes from $149 to become the GTS 250/512 and the GTS 250/1G is now $149. You can tell "teh awsumness" by a yellow 'new' symbol on the description. I am somewhat shocked that they didn't go a bit farther to point this out, it is after all, new. Or is that 'new'. 'New!' perhaps? In either case, you could have bought the same exact thing with an 8800GT badge before Christmas 2007, so 'new' hardly seems realistic, and 'New!' is right out.

The next one shows that the clocks are 738MHz graphics, 1836MHz processor, and 1100MHz for memory with 1G of DDR3 and a power draw of 150W. Dual-slot cooling is standard, but luckily there have been no problems with cooling the older ones.

Slide 5 is really desperate. It lists 'best in class performance' without listing what they mean by class, or the fact that ATI eats them alive in this 'class'. Then they tout the rather limp Cuda, Physx and SLI, along with the 3D glasses as card features. Yup, those 3D glasses sure sparkle with that name change; new stickers sure do make a worthless toy pop to life. They then point out that the G92 is somehow future proof with Windows 7, even though it won't do DX11. I would love to see the tortuous logic path that lead to that point, something about underpants gnomes and profit perhaps?

From there, it is on to graphs, four games comparing the GTS 250 to the Radeon 4850. Ironically, they chose games that Nvidia heavily invested in, FEAR 2, Dawn of War 2, Mirror's Edge and Hawx, all released in 2009. I wonder why they didn't include the usual list of games, and some that they didn't sink six or seven figures of loyalty money into? Could it be that they lose badly? Nah, that wouldn't be it.

They have somewhere between no advantage on FEAR and a large one on Mirror's Edge. From the disparity, they look to have turned on Physx on Mirror's Edge, giving them the advantage. The fine print says to see the appendix for the test configuration, but the press slide deck conveniently omits it. Curious that. In any case, none of these games runs at the requisite 120Hz needed for the 3D glasses they were touting in the last slide, but that is picking nits, isn't it?

Slide 8 goes back to hitting below the belt. It compares SLI vs Crossfire scaling on game release day. They show that Far Cry 2, Mirror's Edge, and FEAR 2 all gained from SLI and lost frames with Crossfire. This is likely true, and the missing appendix noted on the bottom of the slide might shed some light. But, as I said, it is missing.

Why it is below the belt takes us on to a little bit about the gaming industry that Nvidia doesn't want you to know about. You may know the Nvidia ads that are so annoying at the beginning of many games. They are there because Nvidia paid the devs a lot of money to put them in. This money - we hear more than a $1 million for AAA titles, especially if they are commonly benchmarked - isn't exactly given without strings.

If any company wants to display a game at a trade show, or publish numbers and benchmarks based on it, they need permission to do so. If Nvidia gave a company $1 million, and ATI calls up and says "Can we use your game at E3 to show off in our booth?" guess what the answer will be?

More to the point, guess which company will have engineers embedded with the devs to make sure that their flavour of scaling will work really well? Guess which side will not be extended this privilege, or at least get a lot less love and support?

Basically, what Nvidia did is to spend money to keep ATI out of several games, and then used them as examples of how good SLI is. It isn't hard to win a race when someone breaks your opponents knees, but is is sleazy to tout this as an athletic achievement on your part. Then again, Nvidia is like that.

Slide 8 is a bunch of throwaway lines by representatives of companies that received the aforementioned payouts. Given their profit margins, a $1 million cheque sure would make a new technology exciting, especially if layoffs were looming. Strangely, that is just what these people said and did.

The next one again shows off Mirror's Edge, and how a GTS 250 blows a 4850 and 4870 out of the water. Again the claimed appendix is missing, and the huge disparity suggests that reason for this is Physx. I am getting sick of using the words sleazy and unethical, but they do fit.

Getting into the double digit slides, we move firmly into the surreal with one entitled "Gamer's Reaction to PhysX". I must admit, I have never seen a PR department desperate enough to stoop this low before, but I have never seen a company need to rename a tired product four times before either.

This slide has three quotes from random people on three forums, Videogamer, Anandtech, and Gamepro. If three random people picked from message boards don't convince you that physx rox0rz, what will? What more do you need if that doesn't do it for you, bare minimum eye candy that whacks your frame rates in half on a much faster card? You do get that, honest. Real advances are 'coming soon', and by soon we mean when Intel and Havok release their next version.

Slide 11 shows TMPGenc going faster on a GTS 250 than an Intel E8200 CPU. The impressive numbers are not backed up by independent testing though. Nvidia doesn't mention this point for some reason.

12 is all about the 3D glasses that no one is buying, but that doesn't stop Nvidia from making slides about it. That said, I can't figure out what this has to do with renaming the G92, but they put it in anyway. Slide 13 is an analogue of slide 8, but replace physx with 3D glasses, and you get the idea. You get what you pay for.

That brings us to slide 14 which is all about Windows 7 and how it will use the GPU and CPU to accelerate things. The term for this is DX11, but Nvidia doesn't seem to mention that because the G92 can't do DX11. Ironically, this does tie in to card renaming, Win 7 is Vista SP1a, a renamed OS just like the cards. Sneaky one Nvidia, but it does hit the nail on the head.

Slide 15 goes more into this, but never mentions the G92, or the fact that it won't do the neato things that Win 7 supposedly brings. The G92 is fully DRM compliant, but that is not a point PR usually likes to make. On the next slide, Mike Nash of MS is quoted talking about NV and Win 7. Yay!

Slide 17 shows 7 benchmarks on Windows 7, all of which Nvidia leads. Two, Fallout 3 and Quake Wars, are listed as not running. Again, they refer to the appendix for details, and it is still missing. By now, I really do wonder how much they bent the rules if they are hiding it this much.

The last one is ironically the same slide as the last on on the GT200M deck, mostly because it is the same exact chip. Nvidia again claims leadership of the free world, that the G92 will make desserts taste better, and the fact that they own several trademarks that no one else uses.

So in closing, the GTS 250 is a new sticker on a G92 that is coupled with a $20 price drop. Big whoopty ding-dong, but they did take 18 slides to say it.

This is how it would feel if Charlie would post a comment, long and boring, e.g:
SINCE WE HAD to sit through the stomach-churning presentation of the latest Nvidia renamed product, we feel it is only right to make you do the same. With that in mind, we bring you the latest from Nvidia, the G92, this time renamed to the Geforce GTX 200M.

Yes, another two-year old card, this time renamed to GT200 class, but once again, there is nothing new here. It is the same old same old. Nvidia can't make a GT200 based laptop part, so it is pretend time, and let's hope no one will point this out in a public way.

Oops, sorry guys.

That said, they claim it is all new, but don't believe it, it is just a 9800 series with a coat of paint, which is an 8800GT with a coat of paint.

The press slide deck was 21 pages, and since we can't publish it, we will just share the notes we got on our unofficial briefing. Prepare to not be awed, it is hard to make recycled material interesting, especially on the fourth time around. That said, there are some hilarious moments in this deck, being vain and desperate does make a company do strange things, but we never thought they would stoop this low. Or make this many maths errors.

Slide 1 is a splash screen showing that the GT200M and GT100M parts are going to be discussed. Slide 2 is marketshare numbers showing that Nvidia has about two thirds of the market in notebooks with discrete GPUs, ATI the other third. They don't want you to know that discrete is about one third of the market, the two thirds without is utterly ruled by Intel and ATI. Nvidia has a miniscule share of this market, and you can usually tell those notebooks by the vertical lines on the screen shortly before they turn black.

Slide 3 is where the funny numbers show up, they claim that 55nm is the 'perfect process' for G92. Funny, we thought those were bad too. Nvidia claims 50 per cent higher performance and 80 per cent higher performance per sq mm. Given how semiconductors are made, and the roughly 30 per cent area change between a 65nm G92 and a 55nm G92, these are the exact same numbers, Nvidia just hopes you are dumb enough not to realise that fact. Sadly, this is a good bet.

They claim higher clocks, full shader (128) count, and the same power budget as before. This is the long way of saying they shrunk the die, and are using the power savings to increase performance. What a shock! This is followed by the claim that the G92 is a 'superior architecture for notebooks'. I guess that means that the newer GT200 architecture must blow for said notebooks, otherwise wouldn't they be touting that?

Slide 4 is a list of notebook segments, enthusiast, high performance, performance and mainstream. Enthusiast used to be 9800M GTX and 9800M GTS, but those have been replaced by the GTX 280M and GTX 260M respectively. Same die though, just a new name and much higher price tag. High performance sees the 9800M GS replaced by the GTS 160M, performance had the 9600M GT but is now GT130M.

In a sleazy PR move, they are trying to claim the 9300 integrated is a discrete part now, but thankfully they are not using the moronic name 'motherboard GPU' any more. In any case the integrated 9300M G for the mainstream segment is now called the G110M. It is still integrated, and still blows for gaming.

We then go on to Slide 5 where they claim that the GTX 280M is now the 'unambiguous performance leader' because it is up to 50 per cent faster than the 9800M GT in some tests that they refuse to specify. It also has SLI and Cuda, but since those are trademarked terms, what can you say besides 'duh'.

The next slide, 6 if you are paying attention, is a bunch of graphs comparing it to the ATI Radeon Mobility 4870, and claiming 'up to 30 per cent faster'. There are nine tests shown, one is 30 per cent faster, two are a hair over 20 per cent faster, and the rest cluster around 10 per cent faster. As usual, the graphs start out at 90 per cent so they look really impressive if your mathematical education ended at age nine.

In any case, they do not specify the notebook, don't even attempt to say that it is the same hardware, and is very likely a cooked benchmark set with very dissimilar hardware and hand-picked games.

Slide 7 shows more or less the same set of vague and cooked benchmarks for a 4870X2 vs 2 280Ms. This one is much worse for averages though, one 30 per cent, one 20 per cent, the rest in the teens or below. We would be interested in seeing the ATI version of this slide, it should utterly kill Nvidia. This is a weak showing.

Slide 8 does the same for the 260M vs the 4850M, but this time they proudly proclaim 20 per cent better, but the average looks to dip below 10 per cent, with many showing no lead over the ATI parts. It amazes me that this is the best they could do with a tame audience that won't question them, hand-picked benchmarks, and no specs given. Sad.

We then move back to hard specs, intermixed with marketing bullpoop. The hard specs on the 280M are 128 'cores', 585MHz, 1463Mhz and 950MHz for the graphics, processor and memory clocks. The memory is 1G of GDDR3 at 256 bits wide. Save some power, gain a bottleneck. The 260M has 112 'cores', 550MHz, 1375MHz and 950MHz, the rest is the same.

Slide 10 moves off into the realm of 'I can't believe they are this dumb', but look out for Web sites that tout this one. They actually have the temerity to compare 'efficiency' per core, saying that ATI with 800 cores is somehow less efficient that Nvidia with 128. The actual comparison they use is 800 air rifles to 128 Uzis, and then laughably claim this means they are 8x more efficient.

I keep saying that Nvidia PR couldn't find their way out of a paper bag with a flashlight, map, guide dog and GPS unit, but up until this point, I did credit them with basic math skills. 800 divided by 128 is 6.25, it doesn't even round to 7. Come on guys, there is a calculator included in Windows, it is under accessories somewhere, but since I am typing this on Ubuntu, it is under Applications – Accessories, top program. Try it, you just might learn something.

Then again, with the 800 air rifles to 128 Uzis crack, one has to wonder does Intel have four Howitzers with the Core i7? That must kick Nvidia's butt, 32 times more efficient, and it doesn't even die in the field for reasons they won't tell you about. If you check these numbers, you will see that I am not joking, the i7 ties the much faster GT260, and uses far less power.

Nvidia proudly manages to score an own goal in a public way. Brilliant. Talk about battles of wits with unarmed opponents. *SIGH*. This one left me speechless. At least this time they claim it is on the same hardware which more or less proves in their own words that they cooked the previous three or four graphs.

Slide 11 is rather incomprehensible, but seems to be an attack on GDDR5. It is entitled 'Lessons on Memory Bandwidth' with a subtitle of 'Performance requires balance between Memory interface and GPU engine', and they show an I Love Lucy clip to prove the point, but it makes no sense. At least they used a good clip, so they are capable of humour, but it could be a coincidence. I will take this as progress.

Slide 12 is again a bit of a head-scratcher. It is supposed to show that 'Physx and Cuda' somehow make things better, and there are a lot more programs in 1H/2009 than there were in all of 2008. In 2008, they show four programs, with 14 added in 1H/2009, and yet unspecified 'more' in 2H/2009, quite the upward trend if you don't look too closely. The problem? We looked closely.

Of the 14 'Physx and Cuda' programs in 1H/2009, at least seven of them were out in 2008. No really, Unreal Tournament III is not a brand new program, and Cyberlink, Arcsoft, MotionDSP, Seti and TPMGenc were actively touted by Nvidia last year. By my count, the list is heavily weighted on 2008, and has a downward trend for 2009, mirroring what I see in the market. Second own goal in as many slides.

The next few slides move on to the 1xx series, and the first claims that it is the fastest GPU for sleek notebooks. All I can say is that, if this is true, why didn't Apple use it? Maybe the next one down, the 9600M melts and dies prematurely in such close confines. This one is going to be much better, just ask Nvidia, the last three or four weren't, but this time is different. Someone has to believe it one of these days.

Slide 14 shows that the 160M is 'up to 50 per cent' faster than the ATI 4670M. Again, there is one 50 per cent, and the rest are much closer to 10 per cent, with many at zero. Once again, they don't disclose the hardware, almost like they only do that when it is in their advantage. If it were true, it would be really dishonest, right?

From there, we go back to the magical land where people don't know maths. There are three graphs that show a 9800M GTX vs a GTX 280M, a 9800M GTS vs a GTX 260M and a 9700M GT vs a GTS 160M. Let's put aside the little problem that on slide 4 they were comparing the 160M to the 9800M GS and know that those two would not make a favorable comparison, so they switch things up. I wonder why?

In any case, this one is hilarious for a completely different reason. The first comparison shows that the 280M is 20 per cent more efficient than it's predecessor, the 260M is 30 per cent better, and the 160M is 40 per cent better than the 9700M, not the 9800M GS. The hilarity? There is a big label pointing to the graph showing 40 per cent gains and it is labeled, "~30 per cent Better!". The arrow does not point to the one showing a 30 per cent gain, it clearly points to the 40 per cent. Words fail me, they can't count. When people publish these slides in a few days, check this out... it goes well past typo.

Slide 16 is actually dead on, it quotes Anandtech on the sorry state of notebook drivers. Nvidia did a good thing with quarterly releases of drivers, and they deserve credit for it. Hopefully ATI will follow suit shortly.

From there they claim that the 280M switches '10x faster' from integrated to discrete graphics with hybrid power, from seven seconds to less than one in the new chips. Shall I be the first to point out that this likely means they fixed the broken-ass state of the 9300 in the B2 steppings like we told you about earlier, because this functionality is quite distinctly missing in the Apple Macbooks? It could be that apple didn't need the awesome power of hybridnameoftheweek, or it could be that the chips were as buggy as Apple was claiming they were. You decide.

Slide 18 touts Blu-ray playback. YAWN, if you don't do this, it is a problem. It is 2009 now guys, everyone can do this, most better than you. Let it die, no one cares any more, discs are dead.

The next one claims to be the first to have the first DX11 drivers, supposedly released in November, which Nvidia claims means they are Windows 7 ready. A little honesty creeps into the presentation here, it say that they have DX11 drivers on DX10 hardware. How useful, especially considering how well DX11 maps to the 4870 vs the GT200 cores.

Then again, this presentation is about the G92 which is far worse than the GT200 cores in that regard. I am not sure which claim is dumber, but there is no Nvidia DX11 hardware, and given their track record lately, it may not happen this year. Or next. If they survive that long.

Moving onto slide 20, the claim here is that Nvidia has 'graphics +' while ATI only has 'graphics'. All of the Nvidia boxes are higher than the corresponding ATI boxes, with downward arrows. Buy 12 kiddies, Nvidia has a +, which we assume to mean aggravation when the vendor denies your bad bumps warranty claim. In any case, it is well worth the price premium for that + symbol.

The closing slide is a wrap-up where Nvidia claims performance leadership, drivers, and proprietary languages that have the industry uptake of three-day-old fish.

Luckily they don't claim basic counting skills... that might clue in even the most tame reviewer. µ

I hate marketing bullshit, I like straight facts. Anyone who can wipe the bullshit off the wall and show the facts underneath, and do it publicly, is doing the right thing.

I actually bought a 9800GTX+ recently, mobo is SLI only and the 9800GTX+ was at an ok price of £125. It's dropped to £115 with a new game at Novatech right now.

I don't like anyone ripping me off, Nvidia, Intel or even AMD. In fact I'm still pissed that I can't get a newer, faster dual-core cpu for my socket 939 mobo's (I've got 2 of them)!

I'm sorry, I don't like being screwed in the @ss and going back for more. My XfX 7900 died on me last year. Thank GOD it was XFX (lifetime guarantee) and they gave me a free upgrade to a new card. But I'm not going back to NV for a second ass raping. No thank you.

If you sell a sh*tty product, you deserve to go belly up. People that like getting abused, then hell... stand up in line. NV will gladly slap you around.

Don't forget, intel is making their own video card soon. There's more competition out there. If NV goes 'tits' up, there will be some company to buy up their assets and continue the video card game.

Don't cry too hard. May I call you Rihanna?

I love when a charlie comes up with his articles, makes a lot of people mad and I can't stop my operatic laughter.

ATI's video cards are pieces of ART of the engineering.

While I don't particulary dislike Nvidia in any way, ATI is still the better (smarter?) choice. But I have to be honest, Nvidia still got the best chipsets around. I own an Nforce 8200 motherboard and compared to ATI 700 series, the Nforce chipset is faster in EVERYTHING except integrated graphics performance.