VR Features
Nvidia Geforce 8200 MCP78 Mainboard - DX10 IGP Revolution
Conclusion
Written by floppy and filed under Reviews > Chipsets & Motherboards
Published on February 21, 2008, 8:08 am
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Conclusion
During the course of the review, random BSODs, crashes and wierd occurances plagued us. Once we nailed the Performance Memory as the culprit, the testing started to move on at a much greater pace. Aside from that, enabling Geforce Boost switched the display from the 8400GS to the integrated graphics and caused our LCD to blank out. However, this is an early engineering sample showcasing what is to come and so we cannot pin the blame entirely on Palit. Certainly, Palit has been bold enough to take on this challenge. Perhaps the only gripe we had was the inability to overclock the IGP and see if we could overcome its lack lustre performance, particularly in DirectX 10 games. The BIOS would definitely see some tweaking before the board reaches production and so we hope that these issues would be ironed out by then. Afterall, with the prices of memory crashing in the past few months, Performance DDR2 memory has become very affordable and it would be a shame if the board remains incompatible with them when used with a Phenom.
The Geforce 8200 proves to be an extremely interesting IGP. Bringing features like Hybrid Power and Geforce Boost, the Geforce 8200 certainly is a revolution in IGP technology. Should NVIDIA be able to render all future GPUs compatible with Hybrid Power, we can certainly foresee the mobile computing market being dominated by them. Afterall, which mobile user would mind more battery life? In addition, now that Triple-SLI is possible, enthusiasts who never power down their rigs would rejoice when their monsters rigs churn out less heat whilst they're dozing away. The only issue that remains would be that the technology is limited to one single-link DVI output and hardcore gamers with 30 inch LCDs or multi-screen configurations would be left out.
On the other hand, Geforce Boost has not lived up to the hype generated. Sure, the performance is improved in some games and benchmarks but leaving the IGP activated also caused enough of a performance hit to the system that the losses outweighed the gains sometimes. Due to the method with which Geforce Boost works, it is only useful with the lowest-end of graphics cards and that is where it doesn't make sense. Making an upgrade should never entail a similarly weak solution. Hence, we are unable to see a point in Geforce Boost. Perhaps NVIDIA has a stockpile of mobile Geforce MXM cards to liquidate but we may never know.
As this article is based on an early prototype from Palit rather than a production sample, we will not be awarding any VR marks for the board. Afterall, what's the point of recommending a product that end-users can't buy? However, we would like to take the opportunity to thank Palit for sending us the board.
