One of the best ways to measure the performance of a PC is through 3D games, since they usually pull the maximum power from the motherboard, memory, CPU, video card and hard disk drive. We chose five programs for measuring the 3D performance of the motherboard being reviewed: 3DMark2001 SE, 3DMark03, 3DMark05, Doom 3 and Quake III Arena.

The weakest point of motherboards with on-board video is their 3D performance, usually far behind the performance obtained by add-on video cards. In our tests we compared the Gigabyte GA-8I945GMH-RH on-board video performance with the performance of other motherboards using on-board video and also with the performance of entry-level VGAs like GeForce 6200 TurboCache with 64 MB and 64-bit memory interface, GeForce 6200 with 128 MB and 128-bit memory interface and GeForce FX 5200 with 128 MB and 128-bit memory interface (this one installed on an AGP motherboard, Foxconn 865G7MC-ES - Intel i865G).

3DMark2001 SE

3DMark2001 SE simulates DirectX 8.1 games. We used this program to see how the motherboard being reviewed acts running games from this generation. You can find the results below.

Motherboard	3DMark2001 SE (Build 3.3.0)	%
Gigabyte GA-8I945GMH-RH (Intel i945G) DDR2 + GeForce 6200 PCI-E	12686	+88.05
Gigabyte GA-8I945GMH-RH (Intel i945G) DDR2 + GeForce 6200 TC	9148	+35.61
Foxconn 865G7MC-ES (Intel i865G) DDR + GeForce FX 5200 AGP	7908	+7.23
Gigabyte GA-8I945GMH-RH (Intel i945G) DDR2 on-board	6746
Intel D915 GEVL (Intel i915G) DDR2 on-board	6408	-5.27
ASUS P5RD1-V (ATI Xpress 200) DDR on-board	6140	-9.87
PCChips M985G (Intel i915GV) DDR2 on-board	6031	-11.86
PCChips M985G (Intel i915GV) DDR on-board	5636	-19.69
Foxconn 865G7MC-ES (Intel i865G) DDR on-board	3174	-112.54

On 3DMark2001 SE Gigabyte GA-8I945GMH-RH achieved the best performance among motherboards with on-board video we have tested.

A GeForce FX 5200 with 128 MB and 128-bit memory interface installed on a motherboard with AGP slot (Foxconn 865G7MC-ES - Intel i865G) was 17.23% faster on 3DMark2001 SE than the on-board video from the reviewed motherboard.

A GeForce 6200 with 128 MB and 128-bit memory interface was 88.05% faster on 3DMark2001 SE than the on-board video from Gigabyte GA-8I945GMH-RH. A GeForce 6200 TurboCache with 64 MB and 64-bit interface was 35.61% faster than the on-board video from the reviewed motherboard.