Quite often the quietest chipset launches are those that are built with the inclusion of some kind of graphics engine. In other words IGPs (Integrated Graphics Platform) often go unnoticed. Recently two major 3D graphic card developers have moved into the motherboard chipset market, creating a lot more attention for IGP based solutions. These two manufacturers were obviously ATi and NVIDIA. The NVIDIA IGP solutions have unfortunately been quite weak performance wise, leaving much room for improvement. On the other hand ATi has done a fantastic job implementing their Radeon technology into the RS300 (9100 IGP) chipset. Of course the other major manufacturers have been offering similar IGP solutions for years. Unfortunately they have failed to land much interest in the enthusiast market for obvious reasons.

The worlds largest CPU manufacturer also plays a major roll in the chipset market. For quite some time now they have been developing IGP based chipsets. Although their solutions may not be all that powerful for the latest and greatest 3D games, this is by no means what they are designed for. Naturally Intel only designs these chipsets strictly for the use with their own processors such as the Pentium 4. Their previous IGP chipset featured what Intel called the Extreme Graphics 2 engine. Despite sounding like an extreme solution, the Extreme Graphics 2 engine was anything but. The solution really was obsolete before it became available, offering just a single pixel pipeline and two texture-mapping units.

Intel has just recently unleashed a new Pentium 4 platform featuring a new processor socket, DDR2 memory, PCI Express and a number of other impressive features. This new platform also brought three new Intel chipsets along for the ride. Already I have tested a number of motherboards utilizing these new chipsets. However, this will be the first review to analyze the performance of Intels 915G chipset. This is the IGP chipset of the new series and features the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 engine.

The new Graphics Media Accelerator 900 engine will feature four pixel pipelines and operate with an engine frequency of 333MHz. The engine also features eight texture-mapping units along with DirectX 9.0 and Shaders 2.0 support. While all these features are far inferior to those of todays 3D graphics cards, these IGP solutions are designed more for office based scenarios. Integrated graphics platforms have never been recommended for gaming use for as long as I can remember and wont be for quite some time to come I imagine.

Personally I find solutions such as the EPoX 5EGA+, reasonably valuable given what they have to offer. For just $150 US the board not only offers an in-built graphics solution, but it also boasts a number of up to date technologies such as Serial ATA, PCI Express and lets not forget, the LGA775 Pentium 4 processor support. Computer users that deal mainly with office based kind of work, or even areas such as web design, will certainly benefit from a solution such as the 5EGA+. Those that fall under the Power Users category, such as gamers and overclockers, will most likely not be suited to an integrated graphics solution as seen in the past.