WHats the story with the Nvidia 6100 vs 6150? Any point?

Hi we have all seen the Geforce 6150 thats been around for a few months now, and is a pretty weak GPU.. So what was the point in Nvidia releasing the 6100?? What is the difference between the two and was there ANY point in it being produced?

 

wasnt 6100 released first?

 

The 6150 has an increased clock speed, 475MHz over 425MHz. The other aspects remain exactly the same. This is also true of the ATi xpress 1100/1150, with the 1100 being quoted as 300MHz clock and the 1150 at 400MHz.

This 50MHz increase in the 6150 over the 6100 hardly accounts for any increase in performance, maybe about 10 points on 3dmark05. The difference between the 1100 and 1150 might be a little more marked but dedicated gpus often ship with higher clocks than quoted by the manufacturer anyway.

 

I guess they are around to provide a cheap solution of course, but according to a Wikipedia Nvidia GPU article, the 6150 has a bit higher clock speed and it has built in HD playback capabilities, of which the 6100 doesn't I guess.

 

The 6100/6150 ate integrated graphics processors and as a result will be near the bottom of what's available in laptops power-wise. Having said that GPUs are becoming more powerful by comparison to dedicated cards. The ATi 1100/1150 and Geforce 6100/6150 are now capable of some reasonable 3d gaming. They also have plenty of power for vista etc.

The point of integrated graphics is to reduce cost and power consumption in laptops that don't need to have the power to run games and require extended battery life. In this respect the 6100/6150 performs very well. It's a popular integrated graphics solution and Nvidia were certainly right to release it. Also don't forget that the 6100 is a chipset (I believe) on which a lot of Nvidia's other products can be used so it's more than just a gpu.