abit I-N73HD GeForce 7100 Motherboard Merrill WI

Introduction

AMD and NVIDIA are now pushing towards a more power conscious chipset market with integrated features in order to boost their value. This can only mean good things for end users who not only get a more power friendly based PC (and in todays green market, this is big brownie points), but also features that weren't previously added.

AMD has already shown its hand for their own chipsets in the form of the 780G. This chipset not only performed beautifully on its own, but its integrated graphics were able to do a little above just basic 3D applications thanks to its DX10 compatibility; and the ability to team it up with another graphics card for Hybrid Crossfire made it a winner in our books as it allows one to increase the value and performance of the lower end desktops.

Not to be outdone, NVIDIA has its own designs in mind; Hybrid SLI is the NVIDIA option and it's available on certain chipsets (soon to be on all NVIDIA chipsets released). It works in the same way as Hybrid Crossfire, only for NVIDIA chipsets.

Unfortunately NVIDIA has omitted Intel processors on the Hybrid SLI and Hybrid power option. We are hoping to see this come to light in the next generation of chipset from NVIDIA to support Intel processors. Today we are testing out the mid-range value option from NVIDIA; the GeForce 7100/630i board from abit. How does it perform? Let's push forward and begin with a look at the specifications.

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