SPCR

Last week Hexus had an informative article on Nvidia's upcoming IGP chipset for the Intel platform. The article was later removed but is still accessible through Google Cache.

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Unfortunately, the author confirms that Hybrid Power will not be supported on this platform.

The second page has photos of upcoming boards from Asus and Gigabyte which should cost less than $100.

ASUS P5N7A-VM:



Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H:



Meanwhile, Expreview, Fudzilla and DigiTimes report that the launch has been postponed to late September.

http://en.expreview.com/2008/09/08/mcp7 ... -shows-up/
http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?optio ... 2&Itemid=1
http://www.digitimes.com/mobos/a20080912PD212.html

Good to know they will be releasing atleast by end of this month. But not sure why all this info is kept secrete, may be because it has lot of issues?

I personally do not care if Hybrid power works or not, but I want full HD, BLuRay decode support with HDMI(along with 7.1 Audio) with least amount power consumption.

That is wicked. I've been looking at a G45 for some time now, but these beat G45 easily. Now, I just hope Ubuntu 8.10 will have out-of-the-box support for this.

I'm glad to see eSATA support as well. Let's just pray for no major bugs or further delays! Finally a decent IGP for us socket 775 users, but I wonder how much different it will be from current AMD solutions?

I wonder if one could succesfully feed an MCP7A build off a PicoPSU?

line wrote:Unfortunately, the author confirms that Hybrid Power will not be supported on this platform.

That’s a real shame; late to market with cut-down features.

The inq reports that the launch is delayed again to October 15th.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ ... 00-tuesday

Fudo confirms mid-October launch and says boards and reviews will show up immediately.

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?optio ... 6&Itemid=1

line wrote:Fudo confirms mid-October launch and says boards and reviews will show up immediately.

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?optio ... 6&Itemid=1

Keep us updated!!

A rumor has it that the next MacBooks will use a flavor of this chipset. People expect them on the 14th, so next week we'll know about that too.

http://www.macrumors.com/2008/10/05/nvi ... tber-14th/

Anyone know if the actual motherboards will be coming out on oct 15th or just the chipset, with the motherboards to follow at a later date?

Can't seem to find much at retailers about it, except this which says to expect stock on the 3rd of november

Apple confirms the October 14 MacBooks launch date.

http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/15670

p5x wrote:Anyone know if the actual motherboards will be coming out on oct 15th or just the chipset

They should come out on the same day, I haven't seen any source indicate otherwise.

The Asus P5N7A-VM manual is now online, for those interested.

http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/soc ... manual.zip

I briefly read it and here is some stuff that I noted.

Chipset:

- The southbridge supports AHCI mode. The most practical meaning to this (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that NCQ and Hot Plug can be handled by standard OS drivers rather than proprietary Nvidia drivers.
- The onboard PATA port is provided by a JMicron controller, suggesting that the southbridge does not natively support it anymore.

BIOS:

- There are 3 fan headers on board: CPU, Chassis and Power, of which CPU and Chassis can be speed-controlled at BIOS level. Each can be assigned one of 3 acoustic profiles.
- CPU undervolting is supported all the way down to 0.85v.

Ports:

- Legacy COM and LPT headers are included.
- There's no mention of Firewire in the manual, as if it were removed from production boards. The space where it would sit on the back panel (just above the eSATA port) is drawn blank.
- DVI: max resolution is 1200x1600 (implying a single-link only interface).
- HDMI: max resolution is 1920x1200.
- DisplayPort: max resolution is not specified. There is no support for audio signals (which Asus blames at the chipset) and no backward compatibility with DisplayPort-to-DVI/HDMI passive adapters.
- DVI and HDMI can't be used at the same time. Whether that applies to DisplayPort too is not specified.

Anandtech review.
Seems like it could become a great product, even though it still have some issues at launch.

Techreport review of MSI P7NGM-Digital
CPUs e2180 and 4850e





Anandtech CPUs Q9300 and 9950BE

QuietOC: They use outdated dual core CPU's, and Anandtech use newer quad core CPU's, you can't compare them.
The biggest difference is that the X4 uses a lot of power, even in idle. The threee other CPU's use less power.

Mats wrote:QuietOC: They use outdated dual core CPU's, and Anandtech use newer quad core CPU's, you can't compare them.
The biggest difference is that the X4 uses a lot of power, even in idle. The threee other CPU's use less power.

That doesn't explain why the G45 verses 9300 power usage being so out of wack.

They use different G45 boards.

If those power numbers hold the GeForce 9300/9400 IGPs look like a complete fail compared to using a discrete Radeon HD 4670.

Anandtech using a Intel G45 + Core 2 Quad Q9450

I don't get your point, the 4670 uses 4 W in idle.
I don't expect the 9300 to use less in idle, do you?
What do you exactly mean by calling it a complete fail after adding a third, different test setup?
Shouldn't we compare it to other IGP's?

Mats wrote:I don't get your point, the 4670 uses 4 W in idle.
I don't expect the 9300 to use less in idle, do you?
What do you exactly mean by calling it a complete fail after adding a third, different test setup?
Shouldn't we compare it to other IGP's?

From TechReport's numbers the Geforce 9300 is using at least 6W more at idle than a G45.

Most people assume an IGP uses less power than a discrete video card. An IGP based on an existing GPU should use slightly less power since it doesn't have to power a seperate memory bus and chips. Unfortunately, the Geforce 9400/9500 cards weren't power efficient to begin with, and with their current high idle power draw the only place the Geforce 9300/9400 IGPs are significant is performance/space.

You base your whole assumption one single review, even though Anandtech shows that the power consumption is equal when in idle and much less than the slower G45 under load.
Don't you think it's a bit too early to draw any conclusions? A difference of 5 - 10 W can easily be totally motherboard model dependant.Hothardware's review shows the difference between two 9300 models.

I still don't get it why the 9300 would be particularly bad, just becase the 4670 is good. All IGP's are bad compared to the 4670, no surprise there.
They're two different products, a motherboard and a graphic card. You still need a motherboard together with the 4670, it is a more expensive solution.

Yeah, I think that MSI Geforce 9300 motherboard TechReport used must be particularly bad as far as power usage.

Mats wrote:They're two different products, a motherboard and a graphic card. You still need a motherboard together with the 4670, it is a more expensive solution.

A fairer cost comparison is a G31 motherboard + 8600GT (<<$100 total). I am not sure about how good nVidia's low-end discrete GPUs are for HTPC duty.

Ok, so now there are two reviews saying that the Asus board uses about the same power as the G45, and two reviews saying that the MSI board uses more power: Hexus claims 7 W more in idle.

ECS GF9300T-A reivew.
Another one.

German review.

Zotac review. Don't believe those power numbers! Didn't check the test configuration though, there may be an explanation.

One reason why we haven't seen any hybrid power solutions for the AMD desktop platform could be that they're aiming for increibly low idle consumption, and that the low and mid range ATI cards are just the beginning.

This pic suggests hybrid power for the 9400, is it just old or what?
Found it in the comments for that German review, it seems like no one knows for sure.

It works obviously on the mobile counterparts, but what about desktop?

Here is another review, this one of the Zotac version.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/1 ... herboard/1

Bit-Tech's idle/load power numbers (Zotac)

GF7100+E4300 50--79 W
G35 + E4300 63--93 W
G45 + E6400 66--103 W
GF9300 + E6400 82--107 W

Guru3D's idle/load power numbers (ECS GF9300TA)

790GX+P9850 97--217 W
GF9300+Q6600 100--155 W

Something looks seriously wrong with the power usage of this chipset.

Also I haven't seen any power numbers with an E7200 or E5200 which seem like the most logical CPU choices for this chipset.

That's why I wrote Don't believe those numbers! about Bit-Tech.

Guru-3D uses an older Q6600, that should make some difference, but I'm not sure how much.

Most of the reviews point in the same direction: MSI and Zotac uses 5 - 8 W more than G45, while Asus is close to identical.

Another review.

QuietOC wrote:Also I haven't seen any power numbers with an E7200 or E5200 which seem like the most logical CPU choices for this chipset.

Techreport is the closest you get for idle power consumption I guess, they used a E2180. E2220 and E7300 are pretty close in idle.

Mats wrote:That's why I wrote Don't believe those numbers! about Bit-Tech.

Most of the reviews point in the same direction: MSI and Zotac uses 5 - 8 W more than G45, while Asus is close to identical.

Okay, my dirt cheap 780G + X2 can idle around 30W.

Almost any Core 2 based chip can idle around 5W per core, and the best system idle power I've seen for this new chipset is 60W!

The G35 and G45 were already failures partly because of their high power usage (yes, Intel does have low power versions a.k.a. GL40/GS45/GM45) and at best this new chipset can match the power usage of what are probably very bad G35/G45 motherboards!

Things can only get better with the 9400, It's not impossible that it will change with future drivers. Anandtech talked about newer drivers within weeks.
I think you should keep your system and upgrade to 45 nm AMD later if you feel like.

Chipset idle powers:

G45 9 W
G35 11 W
G33 5.75 W
G31 7.4 W
G965: 13 W
ICH10 4.5 W (TDP)
ICH8/9 4.0 W (TDP)
ICH7 3.3 W (TDP)

Intel has low voltage versions of several of the above, like the 6 W TDP 945GSE being used in the Atom netbooks.

So comparing to G35/G45 numbers it looks like the MCP7A has about 15-20 W total idle power. The 780G is <1 W idle power (+5 W for the southbridge). Why can't we have AMD chipsets for Intel CPUs? But let Intel or nVidia supply the southbridge chip.