There are 2 versions of X3100

You cannot see it on most advertisements. You may see that they are both X3100. But there are two versions, two chipsets.

GM965:
-Performance integrated graphics
-500MHz core
-Supports up to Dual Channel DDR2-667
-800MHz FSB

GL960:
-IGP for Value
-Meant for Celeron
-400MHz core
-Supports up to Dual Channel DDR2-533
-533MHz FSB

The biggest difference here in terms of graphics is the core clock speed and the memory speed(not FSB, that matters mostly for CPU performance). When the chipsets are made for certain specs of memory, adding a faster one won't benefit it. On a GL960 system, having DDR2-667 does nothing for you.

One GL960 system is the Gateway M-6309. The chipset is shown on this page: http://support.gateway.com/s/Mobile/2008/Avalon/1015231R/1015231Rmv.shtml

Some of you with X3100 has the cheaper but slower, GL960 chipset. This adds further confusion and performance variations. The X3100 is quite memory bandwidth sensitive, which makes the combination of low core clock, and lower memory bandwidth hurt. The X3100 on the GM965 with DDR2-667 will be 30-40% faster than the X3100 on the GL960.

 

I just bought the 6309.. awesome. lol

 

i got the GM965 with DDR2-667

 

Does the lower memory speed bring much of a speed penalty? 533MHz RAM usually has lower latency (CL=4) so the physical time to do most memory transactions is similar. The lower frequency does, however, slightly reduce the power requirement.

Are there some 3DMark scores for the GL960 to compare with some results for otherwise similar hardware with the GM965?

John

 

i just found out i got 533 ddr2 ram but says i got the 965 not 960, strange

 

There was a user report from VR-Zone forums and from his report, bandwidth mattered more than latency. There's also chipset performance benchmark from Digit-Life that shows that with latest versions of Intel chipsets, they tend to optimize toward bandwidth rather than latency, so there would be performance benefit going from DDR2-667 4-4-4-12 to say DDR2-800 5-5-5-15. Since graphics are much more sensitive to memory bandwidth, it would be more likely.

100% increase in memory bandwidth brought about 60% increase in performance(6% for 10%). Benchmarks for dedicated graphics cards only showed about half the increase for same doubling bandwidth. The X3x00 is very memory bandwidth constrained I'd say.

For a simple benchmark, I have once set my memory to DDR2-667 once, compared to the default DDR2-800. The Quake 3 Arena on 1024x768 Highest was around 11% higher. There was also a 3DMark comparison between DDR2-667 and DDR2-800. The same bandwidth increase also resulted in 11-12% increase in performance. It's from an really old Chinese site that was even linked by The Inquirer. You can try to find it, a bit hard to find it since I think its too old.

I get around ~1050 on 3DMark05. People with faster memory can get 1250.

It could be just that Quake 3 and 3DMark is more sensitive to memory bandwidth. But you'd know from looking at CPU benchmarks that faster, higher latency memory still benefits performance, which would be even more so for graphics.

 

Interesting, I had actually seen the GL960 specified in some laptops and was confused!

 

The HP dv6700t appears to optionally offer the second one as well for budget Pentium Dual Core users. Why anyone would choose it on purpose is another story, unless the 960 offers more battery savings....

I'll hazard a guess that the Compaq C700T is also utilizing the 960, since no C2Ds are offered anyway.