ATI has been an extremely busy company this year, updating products for every market segment they are competing. In the desktop side with the Radeon 9800, the notebook segment with the Mobility Radeon 9600 and even the PDA market with the Imageon 3200. The only product left without a significant makeover has been ATI’s integrated core logic chipset.

The integrated market, though quite boring for enthusiasts, is very important for ATI to grow in as it represents nearly 50% of the market on the desktop side and 30% on the notebook. Dave Orton, ATI’s president and COO has stated in numerous conferences that competing in the integrated market was one of ATI’s key goals.

Last year ATI introduced their first integrated product in the IGP 340/320 line. Desktop motherboards based on ATI’s integrated chipset were pretty scarce as ATI really focused their new integrated chipset on the mobile market. In the mobile market, the first generation IGP has been a remarkable success, gaining over 30% of the integrated mobile market share within a year.

Now ATI is concentrating on the desktop market with the release of their new integrated chipset, the Radeon 9100 IGP. The Radeon 9100 IGP will be available in both the desktop and mobile market. The key feature of the Radeon 9100 IGP is integrated graphics processor. Taking the perspective of an average consumer who will probably end up with an integrated graphics chipset, the integrated Radeon 9000 chipset is a big step up from what’s available in the market from ATI and other integrated chipset makers. The biggest difference between other integrated graphics and the Radeon 9100 IGP is the 9100's hardware support for pixel shaders. Enthusiasts with their modern 3D graphics cards are already accustomed to the visual enhancements pixel shaders have to offer, but for the value driven consumers this is their opportunity to experience pixel shaded enhanced games. The difference between having pixel shading and not can be like night and day.

Let’s check out the specs of the Radeon 9100 IGP.