Our testing methods
The G965 Express' primary competition comes from integrated graphics chipsets from AMD and Nvidia, neither of which is compatible with Intel processors. That eliminates a strictly "apples-to-apples" chipset comparison, but we can still approach the issue from a platform perspective. Mmm... platformization.

You can get your hands on a motherboard based on AMD's 690G or Nvidia's GeForce 6150 SE and 6150 chipsets for between $80 and $100. Boards based on the G965 chipset cost a little more—starting at around $100—but they're close enough. Things get more interesting on the processor front, where the Core 2 Duo E6400 can be had for as little as $217. That's a little cheaper than what's listed on Intel's official processor price list, but only by $7. With an official price of $232, AMD's Athlon 64 X2 5200+ looks like the best match for the E6400. If you look around, you can also find the 5200+ for just a smidge over $200, making it an even better deal.

We've tried to get our test systems as close as possible on price, but the Intel platform is more expensive, in part thanks to some recent and selective processor discounting on AMD's part.

Integrated graphics are the raison d'etre for the platforms we'll be comparing today, so we've used their respective IGPs throughout our testing. In all cases, the IGPs were configured to use 256MB of system memory.

Since the GeForce 6150 SE is the newest member of the GeForce 6100 family, we've run it through our full suite of application and peripheral performance tests. Time constraints prevented us from giving our GeForce 6150 platform the same treatment. We've had to limit our GeForce 6150 testing to our application and graphics performance tests, but because it shares the same basic nForce 430 core logic as the single-chip GeForce 6150 SE, its I/O performance should be comparable.

Of course, we used the ForceWare 93.71 graphics drivers that magically transform the MCP61 from a GeForce 6100 to a GeForce 6150 SE. For the sake of brevity, we'll be referring to the GeForce 6150 SE/nForce 430 and GeForce 6150/nForce 430 chipset combos simply as the GeForce 6150 SE and GeForce 6150, respectively.

Unfortunately, MSI's AMD 690G-based K9AGM2 motherboard doesn't support memory voltage control, so we were unable to give our Corsair DIMMs the 1.9V they require to run at their usual 5-5-5-12-1T timings. Tweaking options are usually few and far between on budget Micro ATX boards, so this wasn't entirely surprising. The tightest timings we could wring from our DIMMs on the MSI board were 5-6-5-18-2T, which is a little loose by enthusiast standards, but quite reasonable for the budget memory typically found in systems with integrated graphics. We set the memory on our GeForce 6150 SE- and 6150-based Asus motherboards to match.

You'll notice that we've also done most of our testing in Windows XP. AMD, Intel, and Nvidia all offer Vista drivers for their respective integrated graphics platforms, each of which can handle the operating system's fancy Aero interface. However, a number of the applications in our chipset test suite aren't yet compatible with Microsoft's latest OS, so we'll be kicking it old-school with XP.

All tests were run at least twice, and their results were averaged, using the following test systems.

Processor Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz Athlon 64 X2 5200+ 2.6GHz
System bus 1066MHz (266MHz quad-pumped) HyperTransport 16-bit/1GHz
Motherboard Asus P5B-VM MSI K9AGM2 Asus M2N-MX Asus M2NPV-VM
Bios revision 0613 1.1B1 0302 0702
North bridge Intel G965 Express AMD RS690 Nvidia MCP61G Nvidia GeForce 6150
South bridge Intel ICH8 AMD SB600 Nvidia nForce 430
Chipset drivers 8.1.1.1010 Catalyst 7.2 ForceWare 11.09 ForceWare 9.35
Memory size 2GB (2 DIMMs) 2GB (2 DIMMs) 2GB (2 DIMMs) 2GB (2 DIMMs)
Memory type CorsairTWIN2X2048-6400PRO DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz CorsairTWIN2X2048-6400PRO DDR2 SDRAM at 742MHz
CAS latency (CL) 5 5 5 5
RAS to CAS delay (tRCD) 6 6 6 6
RAS precharge (tRP) 5 5 5 5
Cycle time (tRAS) 18 18 18 18
Command rate 2T 2T 2T 2T
Audio codec Integrated ICH8/AD1988 with 5.10.1.4530 drivers Integrated SB600/ALC888 with Realtek HD 1.59 drivers Integrated MCP61G/AD1986A with 5.10.1.4530 drivers Integrated nForce 430/AD1986A with 5.10.1.4530 drivers
Graphics Integrated GMA X3000 with 14.27 drivers Integrated Radeon X1250 with Catalyst 7.2 drivers Integrated GeForce 6150 SE with ForceWare 93.71 drivers Integrated GeForce 6150 with ForceWare 93.71 drivers
Hard drive Western Digital Caviar RE2 400GB
OS Windows XP Professional
OS updates Service Pack 2

A special thanks goes out to NCIX for hooking us up with the Core 2 Duo E6400 we used for testing. I've been shopping at NCIX for years, and have always found them to have great prices and excellent service, especially when compared with other Canadian retailers.

Thanks to Corsair for providing us with memory for our testing. 2GB of RAM seems to be the new standard for most folks, and Corsair hooked us up with some of its 1GB DIMMs for testing.

Also, all of our test systems were powered by OCZ GameXStream 700W power supply units. Thanks to OCZ for providing these units for our use in testing.

We used the following versions of our test applications:

The test systems' Windows desktops were set at 1280x1024 in 32-bit color at an 85Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests.

All the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.