To assure our readers the highest performance standard, we compared the GA-M55plus-S3G to Foxconn's high-end C51XEM2AA-8EKRS2H motherboard, using a mid-priced GeForce 7900GS from the same company.

Because the GA-M55plus-S3G supports both integrated and discrete graphics, we chose both configurations to show how much, if any, system performance losses may occur by having it enabled. Foxconn's C51XEM2AA-8EKRS2H is compared using a single card.

Foxconn's nForce 590 Northbridge takes the lead in memory performance testing, even though the memory controller is no longer located on the chipset, but instead on the CPU. GA-M55plus-S3G loses a slight amount of memory bandwidth while sharing with the onboard 6100 graphics controller.

Sandra 2005's math test shows little if any difference between either motherboard in either configuration.

The GA-M55plus-S3G takes a slight lead in Sandra 2005 Multimedia extensions tests, with little system performance difference between integrated and discrete graphics.

DirectX performance variation between the nForce 590 and GeForce 6100 chipset is not notable using a 7900GS graphics card. Though onboard 6100 graphics offer only 10 percent of the performance of the discrete card, the tests at least show them capable of displaying 3D -- if downright slowly.

There's also very little difference between the nForce 590 and GeForce chipset in professional OpenGL rendering when the same card is used, but we do see a surprise: The integrated 6100 graphics controller borders on "acceptable" here! Onboard 6100 graphics are certainly powerful enough for an office system, probably even an office system at an engineering firm where one point-of-view may be occasionally displayed.