The IGP Chronicles Part 2: AMD 780G vs. Intel G45 vs. NVIDIA GeForce 8200
by Gary Key on October 14, 2008 12:40 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
AMD 780G: ASRock A780GXE/128M
The third board in today’s chipset overview is from ASRock. ASRock is typically associated with the low-end market and for offering products based on previous generation chipsets. ASRock has changed considerably over the past year and now offers current generation chipsets, premium features, unique designs, and they are starting to open up to overclocking.
While their marketing (visit the website link above) might be a little over the top for some, their product designs are starting to really impress us based on value/performance criteria. In fact, expect to see a slew of ASRock products reviewed over the coming weeks as we concentrate on the under $150 market space.
The board we are looking at today is the ASRock A780GXE/128M that features the AMD 780G chipset, SB700 Southbridge, and is paired with 128MB of DDR2 Sideport memory. Offered in an ATX format, the A780GXE/128M provides 2 physical x16 PCIe slots (x8 in dual-slot configuration or single x16 operation only), three PCI slots, and a single x1 PCIe connector. Due to the configuration, you can run x8 CF or Hybrid CF on the board. In fact, up the mGPU core clock to 700MHz and you have a 790GX board for $85.
The board also features the Realtek 8111C for Gigabit LAN, Realtek ALC888 for HD audio, TI based IEEE 1394a support, and RAID 0, 1, 10, and JBOD operation. An eSATA port is offered but it means sharing with another SATA port off the SB700. Two video selections are available, VGA or DVI-D output (with HDMI coming via a dongle).
The overclocking options in the BIOS are extensive for a 780G board and nearly match those of the Gigabyte MA780PM-D2SH. We had no problems overclocking a variety of processors on this board and the results matched those of more expensive boards as we will see shortly. The AMD 780G chipset also topped out around 250HTT when utilizing the IGP unit.
The board features an excellent 5-phase power system along with quality capacitors. We clocked our 9950BE up to 236HTT, 8750 at 243HTT, and the 4850e at 245HTT with base memory clock set to DDR2-800 with 5-4-4-15 settings. The mGPU clock reached 750 MHz before we noticed graphical corruption in several game titles. In addition, when overclocking via HTT, we dropped our Sideport memory clock to 400MHz to ensure stability. We had some luck setting Sideport voltage to high and leaving the SP memory speed at 533MHz (1066) up to 225 HTT.
CrossFire operation worked perfectly with two of our Sapphire HD4670 cards and matched the performance of the 790GX boards. We did not need to utilize the additional Molex power connector until we connected two HD4850 cards. Hybrid CF worked fine with an HD3450 card.
Pros/Cons
This is a unique board from ASRock as the features and options place it in direct competition with the 790GX boards for a budget level price of $85. We are still completing overclock testing with the 9950BE and HD4850 setup, but so far the board has held up for over a 100-hour period without a problem. Performance is equal to most of the 790GX boards with a discrete GPU and the same for the IGP unit when it is clocked to 700 MHz.
We did find a couple of drawbacks on this board. The color scheme is just not for us and it eerily reminds of a Gigabyte board. However, color does not equate to performance pitfalls. The PCIe x1 slot only works with half-length cards. A native HDMI port is missing although the DVI-D port fully supports HDCP. We had hoped that ASRock would have utilized their ALC890 HD audio chipset, but that and a DVI-HDMI converter is what basically separates this board and their upper market 790GX product. Finally, only two fan headers on an ATX board designed for the home market is unacceptable today.
Overall, the A780GXE/128M is a unique product offering in the 780G market and an excellent value at $85. This is a board that is a little quirky at times and might not be perfect, but maybe that is the reason why we like it so much. As such, we highly recommend this board for those looking for 790GX performance at a 780G price.
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sergev - Monday, January 12, 2009 - link
A fair comparison? Don't think so! A AMD processor with a 140 Watt TDP and a Intel processor with a 95 Watt TDP?? I wonder why the intel chipsets seem more power efficient? If you are testing the performance, ok seems fair, but power efficiency should be measured with two processors with the same TDP. I am convinced that if you did the same test with a AMD 4850E the AMD would beat the crap out the intel versions on power consumption. But yet again, that would not be fair. So keep in mind that this review is not to be taken al to seriously!axiomhk - Tuesday, October 28, 2008 - link
Hi, what amazes me is that it seems no reviewers of the AMD IGP chipsets have caught the serious 2D issues referred to here:http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=2...">http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview....9&th...
However, the only channel that we consumers / mere mortals have to put pressure on AMD is to send feedback to the Catalyst team. Nothing seems to get done and there is not even any acknowledgement that this issue exists across the HD3200/HD3300 IGPs no matter which manufacturer.
The 3D performance is hyped up and that's all very well when the chipset has shown that it can deliver, but in fact many users will spend a lot of time on 2D activities which truly suck. This makes a lot of users regret their purchase.
What the renowned sites such as anandtech and tomshardware can do is try to reproduce the issues, then use their direct contacts to try to see if this issue is being addressed and update the parent article accordingly. Is it possible? Many thanks. GM - Hong Kong.
Zap - Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - link
"The keyboard is not available after drive recognition until the Windows startup routine"Try a different keyboard, or a PS/2 keyboard. I had the same problem with two MSI 750a boards and some Razer USB keyboards. No keyboard until Windows. I had to fix a BIOS problem and had to borrow a keyboard - Logitech G15 USB keyboard worked fine.
arjunp2085 - Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - link
Is this not a bit ODD to Compare a $260 to a Lowly Under performing [B}$173 CPU... Geezs This is Grossly inaccurateThink about the BOOST to Post Processing and It differs a Whole Lot to the Post processing capability
Strid - Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - link
Yeah, it would have made more sense, IMO, to use lower end processors like AMD 4850E or Intel E5200/7200 which is what most people would use in a HTPC.But if you want to do encoding on your HTPC also, I can see the need for a quad core. But not for your average "movie box".
Staples - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link
Really, this thing came out like 6 months ago it seems and finally we get some video benchmarks on anandtech. I know it has been commented that it did not work right for months because the video drivers were terrible but I can not believe it really took that long. When I had to get a HTPC, I just bought an Athlon BE and a 780G board. Much cheaper and adequate. Which in hindsight the P45 may have performed better, an Intel CPU and a Core 2 CPU would have driven the price up quite a bit.Kreed - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link
Gary, what are you hinting at with the following statement?"That leaves the Intel G45. If you are an Intel fan, this is your only real IGP choice... for the next few days at least."
Are you suggesting that Intel might be releasing a new IGP over the
Kreed - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link
Oops, i didn't get to finish the comment. Here's the comment in full:Gary, what are you hinting at with the following statement?
"That leaves the Intel G45. If you are an Intel fan, this is your only real IGP choice... for the next few days at least."
Are you suggesting that Intel might be releasing a new IGP over the next few days?
Strid - Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - link
The NVIDIA MCP7A (GeForce 9300/9400 IGP) boards supposedly launches today. They're sockey 775 boards. I'm pretty sure AnandTech will have a review up soon.http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php...">http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php...
GPGPUman - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link
AMD 780G and 790GX have 8 stream processors (5-way) for a total of 40 possible ops per clock... NOT 10