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Overall, performance is strong from i845G on the DFI. Remember, we are using a plug in graphics card in the form of the NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4400 from MSI for the numbers and they are consistently close to the SiS645, either slightly ahead or slightly behind and in all cases identical in real world usage.
The chipset benefits from official support of the new processors from Intel and while the CPU is happy to use up to 4GB of memory bandwidth in 133Mhz configuration with the memory controller only able to offer half that, performance is still strong.
Overall, performance wise, no complaints from the DFI and a worthy example of current Pentium 4 performance on a DDR platform.
So what about the onboard graphics performance and why didn't I include numbers for it. Well to be blunt, to show performance, there has to be some. Despite repeated reconfiguration of the available graphics settings in the BIOS and with absolutely no driver level adjustment at all, extracting performance from the onboard graphics is painful.
How does less 10% of the performance of the test Ti4400 sound in 3DMark 2001 sound? Yes, I saw less than 1500 3DMarks. As I noted at the start of the review, the core is more of a nod towards the business sector and the system integrator. Good job they include an AGP port in the specification. For the Hexus target audience, the performance is going to be pretty much identical to i845E and you can ignore the onboard graphics unless you are massively desperate and need a stop gap while you upgrade cards or something similar. Otherwise, leave it alone.
Manufacturers have been keen to push i845G to us over i845E and while I'll be covering a few more i845 boards soon at Hexus, don't expect to see more than a cursory glance towards the onboard graphics core.
In terms of 2D performance, like nForce before it, the crispness of the picture deteriorates rapidly and I wasn't comfortable at 1280x1024 using it on the DFI. Overclocking also seemed to be out of the question while using it, I had to run at 1.8GHz and DDR266 to get usable 3D. Poor.
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