IGP Gaming Performance

Nvidia was clear to stress that despite now being branded a full "GeForce" chip it's not at all designed for gaming. Instead the branding signifies the fact it now offers a full set of features comparable to its graphics card range. The IGP is actually the same engine used in its 6150 chipset, but now sports an updated TV out and HDMI with HDCP capabilities. We are testing these graphics chipsets with low details and minimal settings just to give you an idea of expected performance.

The great (but untold) thing about the Nvidia 7050 chipset is that you install the southbridge 630a drivers separately from the graphics, so while the chipset is a single physical item, it requires two sets of drivers. This means you can independently update the graphics drivers for better performance and support without having to wait for "IGP" drivers to filter through. This does go against what you expect, however, and unless you know this it makes finding the driver on the Nvidia website really very frustrating as you expect to look for "7050 IGP", when in actual fact the normal Nvidia 7-series do the job.

The Intel G965 chipset just recently received an update, in beta, for hardware transform and lighting. However, this only adds support for nine games and of these, Call of Duty 2 is the only one we test with.

Call of Duty 2

At the lowest of the low settings the Biostar is the actually quite playable in Call of Duty 2, with an advantage of a few FPS over the other boards. However, at 1024x768 the G965 chipset performs marginally better than any of the others, but it's not smooth or playable for that matter.

Half-Life 2: Episode One

F.E.A.R. 1.08

Despite being able to use the latest Nvidia graphics driver, the MSI 690G is faster on all accounts. Even in Half-Life 2: Episode One it's barely playable and that's not a really heavy engine. It just goes to show how much Valve has updated the game, because a few years ago I tested the Nvidia 6100 IGP and it played Half-Life 2 deathmatch online at 640x480 low detail without any problems at all. F.E.A.R. is certainly playable though, even if it does look like the rear end of a moulting camel with all the detail turned way down to minimum and only the world detail on medium.