All Aboard: In Defense of Integrated Components
Nov 11 '00
In the history of personal computers, a handful of products and technologies have achieved legendary status as those detested more than any other. These are products that no self-respecting hardcore PC user would be caught dead using, or at least caught wasting their hard-earned money on. Or, in some cases, they are technologies we MUST use (however begrudgingly), in spite of how painfully obsolete they may be. The ISA bus. The iMac. Rambus memory. The floppy disk. Cyrix processors. And perhaps the single most maligned PC technology in history: integrated components.
Now admittedly all of these technologies have their supporters. A good case could be made for why each of these continue to exist, or even why they are still useful (even necessary?) in their own ways. But ironically enough, it is integrated components that may be the most unpopular of all, with very few outspoken proponents, and bashers seemingly around every corner. The irony lies in the possibility that, of all these maligned technologies, it is integrated components that are actually the most beneficial.
Now, when I speak of "integrated components", what I mean may not be what you THINK I mean. Although they they have changed so dramatically over the years, most people continue to think of them the way they were three, four, even five years ago, completely unaware of how fundamentally they have changed in recent years.
The Dark Ages of Integrated Components
When the first integrated components appeared on the market, their reputation as JUNK was pretty much justified. Motherboards had integrated video that was almost literally a low, low, low-end video card just soldered to the motherboard. Not only was the performance of these off the charts in the negative direction, but upgrading was a nightmare, if not impossible. And if the video "card" were to fail, you would need an entirely new motherboard (or new computer).
You may also remember those integrated "modem/sound-cards". I had one in my first PC, and whether it had anything to do with being an integrated part I'm not sure, but I do know that it was more trouble than all my other parts combined. I celebrated the day when I finally upgraded to a new 56k modem and a PCI 3D sound card, and literally tossed that modem/sound-card in the trash.
Contributing even further to the bad rep of these parts, the computer companies using them (e.g. Packard Bell and lots of generic "no-name" companies) were the worst of the worst in terms of quality and support. These were companies that tried to shave every penny off the total manufacturing costs, no matter how badly it would "bite them in the butt" later. To them, integrated parts were a godsend; not only were these the cheapest parts possible, but they didn't even have to waste money ASSEMBLING them! In a sense, these were really the "Dark Ages" of integrated components, at least as far as they average consumer could tell.
Behind the Scenes...
But at the same time these integrated parts were getting such a bad rep, lots of "component integration" was happening where people didn't even realize it. In a manner of speaking, computer parts have been getting more and more "integrated" since PC's were first invented. Used to be, you would need to pay $150 just to buy a FLOPPY CONTROLLER so you could hook up a floppy drive to your system. Want to connect the latest technology, the "hard drive"? Better have an extra $300 to buy an add-in hard drive controller. It was pretty much the same story for ports, slots, motherboard cache, just about all the things we take for granted now as being "part of the computer" today. And not only did all of these parts need to be purchased separately, but you also had to get them to all WORK together, which was often an ordeal in itself.
But there was another kind of integration going on. There was the much-criticized "solder two components together and sell them as one" approach, but there was also the 2nd approach: adding extra capabilities to existing products. For example, who would ever think of today's graphics cards as "integrated" parts? But today's 2D/3D graphics cards are really a perfect example of the 2nd approach, since 3D capabilities used to require an add-on 3D only card in addition to a 2D graphics card. Just four years ago, the state-of-the-art in 3D graphics was a Matrox Millenium 2D card paired with a 3dfx Voodoo. Today, that configuration is painfully obsolete.
The Modern Era
As of right now, you can buy a single Geforce 2 MX graphics card that's over ten times as powerful as those two cards combined, for about 1/5 the cost ($100), a perfect example of how integration through adding functionality is such a great thing. The cost of making a 2D-only graphics card and a 2D/3D card are pretty much the same, so why not provide both in the same part? And here's the kicker: although few people realize it, that's exactly what most "integrated motherboards" are today.
Take the highly popular Intel i815 motherboard, for example, which is designed for "Socket" Pentium III and Celeron processors. In stark contrast with those early "soldered-on" video chips, the i740 graphics and 3D audio chipset are actually integrated into the motherboard chipset itself. The video and sound have pretty much ceased to even exist as separate components, instead becoming additional "functions" of the motherboard. As a result, many of the issues that were previously liabilities of integrated video have actually become advantages:
Reliability
This has been one of the greatest fears of those who avoid integrated parts: "What if the integrated part dies, and I have to trash the whole thing?" It's a natural fear, but one that really no longer applies. When it comes to motherboards, how often are we afraid that the onboard IDE controller is going to "die" on us? Probably not often. And when it comes to modern motherboards, it's really not even possible anymore. You can't somehow just destroy the video of the motherboard, or just destroy the onboard audio. If you were to do something that would destroy those components, it would have destroyed the motherboard anyway.
Compatibility
Whenever you're selecting your parts, you really just never know how well they'll "cooperate" until they're installed in your system. I just recently ran into some obscure compatibility issues with my Aureal SQ2500 sound card and my VIA motherboard, and it's like, "who could have known?" But when it comes to integrated components, those components have already made it through strenuous QA testing, making resource conflicts, compatibility problems, etc. all but unheard of.
Efficiency
Another benefit of integrated parts is their efficiency, both in terms of physical materials and energy consumption. By replacing an entire video card (one of the hottest components in most computers) and an entire sound card with a little extra circuitry in the motherboard, that means less heat and a more stable, energy-efficient system. It also means less clutter inside your case, which means better airflow and improved cooling.
Upgradeability
Now this is surely a shocker. Integrated parts have typically been at the other extreme of the upgradeability continuum, being either impossible or highly problematic to upgrade. Or, in the case of most older motherboards with onboard video, you were limited in your upgrade options to PCI cards only, since they historically have lacked the more modern AGP slots. But not only do modern boards like the i815 have AGP slots, but they are, for the first time, actually EASIER to upgrade than non-integrated boards.
With most motherboards, upgrading to a new video card is usually a simple process. Uninstall your previous video card's drivers, swap out cards, reboot and install the new drivers. But forget that first step, as many do, and you're probably in for some major headaches. The i815 actually simplifies that, by automatically disabling the onboard video when it detects a card in the AGP slot. Then all you need is to install the new drivers, and you're set--plus you'll have the onboard video to fall-back on in case you run into problems with the new graphics
card.
Cost
This has always been the most visible benefit of integrated/onboard parts, and that continues to be true today. Take the Abit KT7-RAID motherboard, an Athlon/Duron board with an integrated RAID controller. Buying an add-in RAID controller would easily cost $80-150, but the RAID version of the KT7 is only about $30 more than the non-RAID version.
Looking at the i815 again, by not needing a sound card and video card, you're looking at a $60-100 savings on the total cost of the system. In fact, integrated boards like the i815 are the only reason the Celeron remains a viable CPU: by putting a Celeron in an i815 system, you're looking at the absolute cheapest system you can possibly put together while still maintaining respectable performance. Although AMD's Duron is both cheaper and more powerful than the Celeron, a fully-integrated Socket-A motherboard won't be available until next year, which makes the Celeron the primary option for the lowest of the low-end.
The Wild Card: Performance
In terms of raw graphics performance, integrated video has always paled in comparison to the latest "real" graphics cards on the market, and that's still the case today: even though today's integrated video chipsets are powerful enough to handle basic Windows tasks like web browsing, their 3D performance is still rather lacking.
To address that shortcoming, companies like SIS (Silicon Integrated Systems) and ALI (Acer Labs International) will soon be releasing integrated motherboards with much-improved 3D performance. SIS's 630S motherboard will actually have integrated support for features like DVD decoding and 3D stereo glasses, in addition to a powerful 3D graphics engine, while ALI's Aladdin TNT2 will incorporate (you guessed it) the Nvidia TNT2 chip, which was the most powerful 3D chip on the market just over a year ago.
Of course, in terms of overall performance, the i815 is no slouch either. In spite of Intel's attempts to market the i815 as "low-end" and the i820/i840 as "high-end", Intel's own benchmarks have shown that the i815 outperforms its more expensive brethren--even though the i815 uses standard SDRAM, while the i820/i840 use the much-more-expensive Rambus RDRAM. I wish I could provide the links to the benchmarks, but Intel removed them from their site shortly after they were "discovered" by the media, much to the embarassment of Intel. Nevertheless, independent tests have also confirmed that the i815 is the best overall performer of the current Intel chipsets, regardless of what Intel's marketing department would have you believe. Pair that i815 with a good Geforce 2 AGP graphics card and a fast PIII, and you'll have yourself the most powerful (and cost-effective) Intel platform available.
Thanks for reading,
-vicwang
NOTE: I originally wrote this article for the "Buying a Computer For Under $1000" category, but that category seems to have mysteriously disappeared. If and when it reappears, I'll ask Customer Service to move it there.
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Epinions.com ID:
vicwang
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Member: Vic Wang
Location: Texas
Reviews written: 45
Trusted by: 217 members
About Me:
Systems Analyst and all-around computer guru who's always keeping up with the latest technology.
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