Most machines with integrated graphics are intended for use with business applications, like Ziff-Davis' Content Creation 2001. Functioning as a system-level, application-based benchmark, Content Creation 2001 will expose any fundamental architectural weaknesses in the chipset, since this is our primary variable. Applications in this test suite include Photoshop 5.5, Adobe Premiere 5.1, Macromedia Director 8.0, Dreamweaver 3.0, Netscape Navigator 4.73, and Sonic Foundry Sound Forge 4.5.

The difference between our three test setups is pretty small. The penalty for utilizing integrated graphics is certainly not as large as we had originally suspected, and both KM133 configurations perform on par with the KT133A.

Windows 2000 numbers are a bit less encouraging. Whereas most content-based applications gain significantly from the move to Windows 2000, the integrated video of the KM133 starts to lag behind the other two configurations.

Like Content Creation 2001, Business Winstone focuses on business applications that are most often used in the workplace, and runs them through a series of scripts. Since several applications are kept open simultaneously, there is quite a bit of task switching that occurs.

As we just saw, Windows 98 numbers remain fairly tight, with the integrated solution lagging slightly. Windows 2000, on the other hand, demonstrates an increasing gap between the system utilizing integrated video and the other two machines. Since this trend only appears in Windows 2000, it would be logical to conclude that the ProSavage Windows 2000 drivers are still immature. Anyone who has ever owned an S3-based card is aware of S3's reputation for driver development, and the Savage 2000 was receiving a similar treatment before it was discontinued. We'd like to say the situation will be remedied given time, but that probably is not the case.