Verdict: A bare bones that's far from empty
If you're judging on first impressions, the new Shuttle ST61G4 Pentium 4-based XPC isn't all that inspiring. Like the Athlon 64 3200+ based SN85G4, the ST61G4 features the new 'G4' fascia, this time with a silver body and a reflective plastic front. It's more striking than charming.
Appearance may only be skin deep, but the ST61G4 is all about visuals, as its FT61 motherboard features on-board graphics from ATi. Intel's on-board graphics processor, the 'Extreme' Graphics 2, is as extreme as lukewarm tea and near useless for games, so the Radeon 9100 IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor) is a welcome entry to the market. It shares main system memory for its frame buffer, and you can allocate up to 128MB for it. The 9100 isn't as fast as the Mobility 9600 used in some notebooks but it's still a DirectX 8.1-compatible GPU, and so supports programmable pixel shaders and uses the same drivers as the grown-ups of the Radeon clan.
The FT61 motherboard also features the ATi RS300 Northbridge and ATi IXP150 Southbridge chips. These are the first motherboard chipsets from ATi ever. The RS300 supports all the usual high-speed technological magic, including an 800MHz FSB, dual-channel memory and, theoretically at least, Prescott processors. As this is an XPC, there are also the usual single AGP 8x and PCI slots, plenty of USB 2 ports and on-board 5.1 sound with an S/PDIF output. There's a six-in-one memory card reader instead of a floppy drive.
Taking on the 865G and 875P chipsets is a bold move, considering just how good the Intel chipsets are. The ST61G4 proved to be a pretty good performer in our 2D benchmarks although it never managed to overhaul the 875P-based SB75G2 Shuttle or the 865G-based Abit DigiDice. Still, it wasn't too far behind, and we were most interested in its 3D performance. Sadly, while the Radeon 9100 IGP is capable of effects like anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, the ST61G4 couldn't provide a smooth frame rate in the Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory test at 1,280 x 1,024 with 2x AA and 4x AF.
Initially, it would seem that even ATi couldn't salvage the poor reputation of on-board graphics. Turning off AA and AF provided some hope, as the ST61G4 posted a frame rate of 15.2fps at 1,280 x 1,024 with no effects enabled. This is still a demanding test, packed with high-detail textures, so by dropping the resolution to 1,024 x 768 and reducing the detail settings to medium, we were able to push the frame rate up to a playable level. Using a Radeon 9800 card pushed the Wolfenstein frame rate to 39.1fps, bang on the mark for a 2.6GHz Pentium 4 system. We tried to overclock the ST61G4 to boost its performance, but despite the actively cooled Northbridge, it proved to be a terrible overclocker. You can't lock the AGP or PCI speeds, and even small FSB increases cause graphical corruption.
CONCLUSION
Despite its high price, the ST61G4 has a lot to offer, and is the most complete small form factor PC yet. The Radeon 9100 graphics processor doesn't offer fairytale performance, but just as on-board sound is no longer laughed at, the 9100 could perhaps mark the beginning of the rehabilitation of on-board graphics.
