AMD's 785G Chipset - Revolutionary or Evolutionary?
by Gary Key on August 4, 2009 5:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
We have come a long way lately in regards to the ability of modern integrated chipsets to perform a variety of tasks well. Not only do they handle current office and even specialized application software with aplomb, the capabilities now on-board allows the same system to be an HTPC powerhouse or even a casual gaming system for the family.
True, a gaming aficionado would never be caught
dead with one of these systems, but I bet one might just reside down the
hallway as a second system or depending on the motherboard, it might be the
central component in a SFF gaming setup.
That might sound crazy, but the latest IG based boards offer the same
level of BIOS options for overclocking, electrical components, and quality of
their more expensive non-IG counterparts, plus significant more options in the uATX form factor.
This brings us to our next subject. It's odd that the first tangible benefits of the ATI acquisition should come in the form of chipsets, but we'll take what we can get. Since AMD acquired ATI and started aggressively pursuing the chipset market, we have seen decreasingly fewer reasons to buy anything but an AMD chipset for an AMD system. Supporting 8-channel LPCM continues to be the only reason to opt for an NVIDIA chipset over AMD's offerings. The tweaks to the UVD engine are nice, particularly the ability to support acceleration of multiple video streams and detail enhancements on the fly.
No one looking to build a PC capable of light or casual gaming will be disappointed either. While we would still like to see better performance out of all integrated graphics chipsets, the 785G is competitive with the rest of the market. It will play games like Sims 3 or even Left 4 Dead at reduced quality settings, and it can do so better than its closest Intel IGP competitor. The only chipset that comes close in gaming performance is the NVIDIA GF9300/9400 series, but those boards are priced anywhere from $25 to $40 more.
Therefore, the comparison to Intel is an inevitable one. The direct price competitor to the 785G is Intel's G41, a horribly crippled and price reduced version of the G45 chipset. You lose PCIe 2.0 and any sort of H.264/VC1 video decoding abilities, all in exchange for a lower price. It just gets worse from a feature viewpoint when combining the ICH7 Southbridge with it. From this perspective, there's just no real reason to pick the G41 platform over a 785G configuration. Intel is resting on its ability to sell crappy chipsets with really good CPUs, and AMD is relying on a great chipset to sell a, well, pretty good CPU as well.
The AMD 785 is simply superior in our opinion and it receives our full endorsement. Now, which motherboard should you decide to purchase is the question we will answer next.
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Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, August 5, 2009 - link
Since when have intel integrated graphics been in the same ballpark as the 7xx? Before today, every benchmark I saw AMD beat Intel by about 50-200% (Without overclocking or sideport crap.) Now all the sudden many of these benchmarks are showing an edge of only 20%, and this is comparing the 785G vs the G41. What is going on here? I think you need to do a more detailed review and comparison vs Intel's topline model, GMA 4500MHD(?) and nvidia 9300 as well.TA152H - Tuesday, August 4, 2009 - link
This could have been summed up in a simple paragraph, instead of page after page of nothing. Still, I guess you have to prove the points.It's pretty disappointing, really. The chipset doesn't represent a clear advantage over the 790GX, despite the author's best effort to distort facts and compare a overclocked 785 with a nominally clocked 790GX. It's always annoying when an author already has an idea of what he wants to present, and then finds way to do it. Better to go with an open mind and let readers make up their own mind.
The same applies with the G41. Another lame attempt by the author to distort the article to make a preconceived point. Since you show the 790GX, shouldn't you show the G45? Guess not, it might make the pre-conceived purpose of the article less clear.
AMD makes a crappy processor compared to Intel, not a pretty good one. Everything is relative. It's really a zero sum game. So, we have GREAT (Nehalem), VERY GOOD (Penryn), and PRETTY GOOD (AMD). Where's the bad? What's pretty good compared to? What's it better than. It's the worst of the three lines, even compared to Intel's last gen. In other words, AMD has the bad. Someone has to do it. Not everyone can be 99 percentile. Someone's got to be 1 percentile for the 99 percentile folk to exist. Not that Nehalem is 99, and AMD is 1. Probably more like 80 and 20. AMD processors are still usable, for sure, and I still think make good packages because of their superlative chipsets, but the processor on it's own merit has no reason to exist, except within this context and that of competition. It's worse than Nehalem at everything, by a lot, and is the same size. That's not pretty good, it's pretty bad.
bruce24 - Friday, August 7, 2009 - link
re: "The same applies with the G41. Another lame attempt by the author to distort the article to make a preconceived point. Since you show the 790GX, shouldn't you show the G45? Guess not, it might make the pre-conceived purpose of the article less clear."I was also wondering why he would only show the G41. In the article he says "The direct price competitor", but if I go to newegg.com, I can find multiple G45 boards in the same price range as the 785G.
Spoelie - Tuesday, August 4, 2009 - link
Would just like to chime in on some test subjects that are left untouched*Is UVD decoding still limited to AVC profile L4.1 (the one used in bluray)? The competition (nvidia) fully supports profile L5.1, which ensures that they can accelerate *every* video. With ATi it's either hit or miss, there are videos out there that use it.
*ATi has serious issues with their SATA implementation, mainly AHCI mode.. are they fixed in SB710? I'm thinking not. Refer to your colleagues at techreport..
SB600: http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/13832/5">http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/13832/5
SB700: "We quite literally see more of the same in the SB700's Serial ATA controller. The port count here is up to six, but they're basically six of the same ports you get on the old SB600" -> http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14261/10">http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14261/10
SB750: "Unfortunately, AMD's longstanding issues with AHCI Serial ATA controller configurations persist in the SB750, all but forcing users to run the south bridge in plain old IDE mode. That's not the end of the world, but IDE mode doesn't support Serial ATA perks like hot swapping and Native Command Queuing." -> benchmarks in following link are IDE mode -> http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/15256/8">http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/15256/8
cghebert - Tuesday, August 4, 2009 - link
The comments in TR's 785g review can shed some light on your SB AHCI questions:Comment by Prototype:
"I think it's a non-issue. The out-of-box Windows 7 and Vista AHCI drivers work just fine with the southbridge, it's just the vendor drivers from AMD (and bundled by the motherboard vendors) that cause subpar performance.
Which you can avoid by, you know, just not installing them.
It's not like they add any functionality you don't already have by using Microsoft's excellent driver. In my experience Microsoft's generic drivers tend to be more stable and less buggy than vendor drivers anyway, a result of the fact that hardware vendors couldn't write decent software to save their lives, not even Intel.
The hidden issue is the CPU utilization of the USB drivers, really. Note how both SB710 boards use 4 times as much CPU time as the ICH7 USB driver.
As far as ICH7 AHCI is concerned, Intel doesn't have support for AHCI in their ICH7 "Base" driver, but if the motherboard manufacturer exposes AHCI in the BIOS, Windows Vista and 7's generic AHCI driver by Microsoft can be used for the device. (And for Windows XP, the Intel AHCI driver's .inf can be modified to add the PCI product ID and loaded during the installation process.)"
There is more information in the comments if you want to check into it further.
mmaenpaa - Tuesday, August 4, 2009 - link
It seems that this feature is mostly forgotten. Even AMD/ATI is not talking too much about it. I do remember testing it maybe a year ago with X1250 chipset and there were too much problems (yeah, I did try to find a solution, but it propably would have taken more than 10 minutes, so I gave up :-).Now, just last week I tested with Gigabyte 780G mb and HD 4670 PCIE card and it simply worked. I had three monitors connected (XP PRO).
I do believe this is quite a nice feature and if you are using ATI cards it is practically free.
Markku
HollyDOL - Tuesday, August 4, 2009 - link
Hmm, no clue why, but despite what author says, both movie screenshots for Intel/AMD solutions look almost exactly same (difference being they are not the same frame). Is it just due to JPEG picture quality loss or the difference between AMD/Intel playback is practicaly uncomparable?Viewed on Eizo FlexScan panel, so there shouldn't be any quality reductions on my screen...
MrCommunistGen - Tuesday, August 4, 2009 - link
I would have liked to have seen some SB700 (on the 780G) vs SB710 (on the 785G) benches on the USB/HD benchmarks.Kibbles - Tuesday, August 4, 2009 - link
On page 6, the 4th graph is a duplicate of the 3rd.JarredWalton - Tuesday, August 4, 2009 - link
Fixed, thanks.