Doh! GMA 3100 != X3100

Well thanks to an anonymous poster I just realized that my GA-G33M-S2H mobo has a GMA 3100 not a GMA X3100 - well in fact more to the point that I didn't realize there was any difference between the two, i.e. that they are one in the same. However as the poster pointed out that is not true and the X3100 is a mobile only graphics solution and more importantly much more powerful than the GMA-3100 for 3D. Which is a real bummer because I thought in getting the G33 I was getting the most powerful onboard Intel graphics short of those that come with the G35 which wasn't ready at the time I bought it.

Taking a second look at the capabilities chart on Wikipedia it turns out that even the G965 chipset's graphics solution, the GMA-X3000, has better 3D capabilities than the GMA-3100. The only area in which the GMA-3100 does better than the X3000 or X3100 is peak memory bandwidth. So now my chances of ever doing any decent onboard gaming of the Orange Box kind are pretty slim - I'll have to add on a graphics card which kind of defeats the point of getting onboard graphics in the first place. Like I said, I wasn't really expecting to do a lot of gaming and I was fully expecting inferior performance. But I had hoped for something acceptable - good enough for some light game play and I hadn't bargained on missing out on hardware T&L etc. that would rulle out a whole raft of games that depend it like HL2 and its derivatives. Doh!

It turns out that the GMA 3100 is even inferior to the X3000 in terms of HD video since it lacks some MP2 and VLC-1 features down in the latter. However I don't feel too bad since when I started looking at all the micro-ATX G965 boards I'd previously ignored I found none of them have DVI outputs and that was definitely a must have for my system. Also I had to realize that in selecting the GA-G33M-S2H it was a compromise since my old machine was giving up the ghost and I knew there would be micro-ATX G35 solutions available soon, but not yet. But really, I'm feeling pretty dumb for having missed the GMA 3100 and GMA X3100 distinction, I guess Intel thought every knew "X" stands for "eXtreme".

Now, as of writing it seems that G35 boards are finally starting to trickle out - one of the first seems to be the Asus P5E-VM HDMI which looks to be a good solution except for the hot running chipset cooler (something I found to be the case with my Gigabyte board too). I know there are simple screw on coolers you can add use to solve that problem, probably a wise idea since micro-ATX cases tend to be toastier than your average desktop case. I'm not ready to throw in the towel and rush out for the Asus - not least because it seems no one is selling in the US yet, and also because I had less that stellar experiences with my previous Asus board which never lived up to its advertised memory bus speeds.

I think I'll wait for more G35 boards and more reviews which probably takes me past Christmas and into next year by which time the new 45nm (non-extreme) lower power quad core chips will be readily available - which is what I wanted all along. Of course by then I'll probably be lusting after a new G45 "Eaglelake" based system with the GMA-X4500 giving three times the performance of the GMA 3100. Is there really any hope for me and hardware happiness? Perhaps I should just go back to buying discrete graphics card solutions.

In the mean time I guess my Orange box will be sitting in the corner collecting dust and turning gray...