NVIDIA GeForce 6100

In September of 2005, NVIDIA had unveiled the GeForce 6100 series integrated graphics, in conjunction with the nForce 410 and 430 for a two-chip design. This was the first time since the nForce and nForce2 days that a NVIDIA-powered motherboard could utilize integrated graphics. Some of the key features for the GeForce 6100 include NVIDIA PureVideo, Shader Model 3.0, 425MHz graphics clock, MPEG-2/WMV9 standard-definition video playback, and NVIDIA MediaShield. Some of the other options for NVIDIA integrated graphics with AMD Athlon 64 solutions consist of the higher-end GeForce 6100/nForce 410 and the GeForce 6150/nForce 430. The GeForce 6100/nForce 410 combination is designed to compete in the home and SOHO PC market, while the more competitive IGP/MCPs are geared for media-centers and likewise HTPC setups.

Other features for the GeForce 6100/nForce 410 series include TSMC 90nm manufacturing, support for PCI Express x16 graphics cards, and Unified Memory Architecture. The GeForce 6100 also boasts one vertex processor and two pixel pipelines. While these NVIDIA parts have been available for months now to the public sector, the Linux support has still been questionable. Today at Phoronix, we are examining the performance of the GeForce 6100 IGP under Linux with a slew of gaming benchmarks.

The motherboard used for testing was the recently reviewed ASRock 939NF4G-SATA2. Compared against the GeForce 6100 was a GeForce 6600GT 128MB. The ATI Radeon X800XL 256MB, Radeon X1300PRO 256MB, and Radeon X1800XL 256MB faced issues with the Linux fglrx driver failing to initialize when installed on the nForce 410 system. The benchmarks used for this short Linux write-up were Enemy Territory, Doom 3, Quake 4, and Unreal Tournament 2004.