Page 3

Those are some nice specs for an integrated solution huh? Bare one thing in mind though, the GMA900 integrated graphics solution does not offer any hardware vertex shader or transform and lighting capability.  The vertex shader is actually nothing more then a software feature. Intel's driver catches vertex shader or hardware geometry calls and then makes your already busy CPU do all the work, this itself is a huge strain on performance. Still for your all-round Internet and desktop PC this stuff can save you a bundle of money when you have something integrated. If you are not a hardcore gamer at all then you simply do not have to buy a graphics card, which easily starts at 100 USD these days. Since we are talking desktop; mind you that the GMA900 has a 400MHz DAC that will allow high resolutions, so any monitor can handle this.

We did some testing with the MG900 yet it's suffice to say that for real gaming you need an actual graphics card. Okay so performance  was a little extreme ... in a bad gaming way. 

• Far Cry for example needed to switch down to 640x460 to be able to play it. Yes, yes... some of you haven't even heard of that resolution right? If you set quality to minimum you'll get 21 FPS out of it though, that's with a 3.6 GHz processor people :)
• Quake III Arena however will get you 60 FPS in 1024x768. So you can play some older games in respectable resolution there but ehm... I'm not even discussing AA and AF here ;)
• Return to Castle Wolvenstein... quite playable! 1024x768 resulted in 72 frames per second.
• Splinter Cell... *cough* 8 FPS in 800x600
• Unreal Tournament 2004 - yes yes... 17 Frames per second in 800x600!

2D applications, thus normal desktop usage... hey it's a fine little bugger for that. But even if you buy the cheapest PCI-Express graphics card to date, this integrated solution cannot keep up with it. The MG900 is for business, home servers and low-cost solutions, and is perfect for just that. If you love gaming... then just stay far away from it.

Small sidenote, last week we also received the PX915P/G-AGPe, that has the exact same specification as the board we are testing today yet has both an AGP and PCI-Express x16 interface, great stuff for future upgrading. We'll add an update to this article soon with more information on that. It is however to be believed that AGP performance is 25 to 60% lower on such a configuration as manufacturers have gotten a little creative with their AGP interfaces and are actually running the slot off of the PCI bus, stemming from the South Bridge.

You need to understand that the AGP interface is only 32-bits wide, which is the same width as as the PCI bus and if you looked at your graphics card drivers closely you'll notice that you can actually run an AGP card in PCI mode, which will drop all the AGP benefits.

Let me show you that with some numbers to make it more understandable, the normal PCI bus runs at 33MHz, offering only 133MB/s of bandwidth.

Now then, AGP 8X's offers 2.1GB/s of bandwidth to the card. So it's not very likely a good solution, then again... it might be a nice option of you plan to upgrade and do not have a heavy duty graphics card. Anyway, more on that one later.

BundleThe one thing you can never hold against Albatron are their bundles, stuff that is included in the box. Really you will feel like some kid opening a present. The Mars PX915P/G Pro comes with the manual and driver disk as well as a RAID manual and a large, fold-out quick installation guide. The cables include three IDE cables, two of which are for the RAID slots, one FDD cable, one SATA cable and a 4-pin Molex to SATA drive adapter.

Oh and of course IDE/Floppy and Serial ATA cables are also included.

We also have the rear I/O plate and a four port rear USB bracket. Even though most cases today have the front USB ports, it's nice of Albatron to include the rear bracket for those who are using an older case. A very nice package if you ask me.

• Northbridge: Intel 915 Grantsdale chipset
• Southbridge: Intel ICH6
• LGA775 Prescott CPU
• Dual onboard LAN: Marvell MV8001 Gb LAN Controller/VIA VT6105 Mb LAN Controller
• Realtek 8-channel Onboard Audio
• S/PDIF Interface
• ITE IT8212F RAID Controller
• Dual Channel DDR400 (up to 4 GB)
• (1) PCI Express x16
• (2) PCI Express x1
• (3) PCI
• (8) USB 2.0 ports
• Two RAID IDE slots for RAID 0, 1 and 1+0
• (4) SATA ports
• Hardware Monitor
• Phoenix Award BIOS
• Watch Dog Timer
• Support for Infrared Data Transmission