New NVIDIA GeForce Motherboard GPUs

It was about time for NVIDIA to deliver integrated graphics solutions for the Intel LGA775 platform. After all, NVIDIA had been providing the GeForce 7050 and 7025 GPUs for the AMD AM2 platform for quite some time.

That changes today when NVIDIA announces three new motherboard GPUs for the Intel LGA775 platform. With the release of these three GPUs, NVIDIA finally has a "top-to-bottom" GPU line-up for the Intel platform.

The new series of GPUs will be led by the NVIDIA GeForce 7150, which is designed to replace the need for an entry-level graphics card. The way NVIDIA sees it, why buy an entry-level Intel motherboard and a separate entry-level graphics card like the NVIDIA GeForce 7100 or the ATI Radeon X1050 when you can buy an NVIDIA nForce 630i motherboard with integrated GeForce 7150 graphics? Not only will it save you money and space, you also get better 3D graphics performance.

Cheaper Vista Solution

The new nForce 630i is not designed to be the ultimate gaming machine. Rather, NVIDIA is aiming to make it a cheaper and/or easier solution for system integrators. Having an integrated graphics solution may not only be cheaper, it may help certain vendors (like Dell) streamline their products and reduce the number of components in their inventory.

NVIDIA even recommends pairing the nForce 630i motherboard with a single 1GB DIMM, instead of two 512MB DIMMs. This not only simplifies supply and inventory for vendors, it also helps them reduce cost. Of course, the system won't benefit from dual-channel memory access if it uses a single DIMM. But NVIDIA claims the nForce 630i will outperform comparable Intel chipsets when used with a single DIMM. Well, at least in WinSAT. We wished they could have given us some real numbers on memory bandwidth. But all we have are WinSAT scores.

They argue that this is a better solution for users as well. If systems come with a single 1GB DIMM (instead of two 512MB DIMMs) users can add in another DIMM when they need memory. Otherwise, they would need to discard at least one 512MB DIMM. Well, we half-agree with that. Frankly, if you want to run Windows Vista, it's highly advisable to get 2GB of RAM. You won't really enjoy it with just 1GB of RAM.