AMD 780G: Best Ever Integrated Mainstream Chipset?

Want to talk about one of the articles in SPCR? Here's the forum for you.
vextor
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Post by vextor » Fri Mar 07, 2008 9:45 am

Lawrence Lee wrote:-Cool'n'Quiet issues elaborated (not actually C&Q but Vista's power management at fault)
Im having the same Cool and Quiet issues you had in your review. Can you tell me please how you fixed that problem?

Thank you.

Vextor

Olaf van der Spek
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Post by Olaf van der Spek » Fri Mar 07, 2008 10:48 am

croddie wrote:It can't be the best integrated chipset because you can't use it with the best processors which are currently from Intel.
What about: Core 2 isn't the best processor since it can't be used with the best IGP, which is currently from AMD? ;)
They are both 45nm processors with a thermal design power of 45W.
65 nm sounds better.

Olaf van der Spek
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Post by Olaf van der Spek » Fri Mar 07, 2008 11:02 am

smilingcrow wrote:I was hoping that the discrete VGA card would be disabled when in 2D mode but your power data suggests this wasn’t the case. Maybe a driver issue!
I've read about plans to indeed do this. That would be awesome.

thejamppa
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Post by thejamppa » Fri Mar 07, 2008 12:22 pm

Wow, I am quite impressed. The few driver issues were expected due its very new. However I am very eagerly expecting more mature version of the board with SB750 chipset instead current SB700.

This chipset has a lot potential.

Lawrence Lee
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Post by Lawrence Lee » Fri Mar 07, 2008 2:00 pm

Olaf van der Spek wrote:
They are both 45nm processors with a thermal design power of 45W.
65 nm sounds better.
How dare you point out a typo! :oops:

Lawrence Lee
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Post by Lawrence Lee » Fri Mar 07, 2008 2:01 pm

vextor wrote: Im having the same Cool and Quiet issues you had in your review. Can you tell me please how you fixed that problem?
We didn't... we just discovered it wasn't C&Q but rather Vista Power Management.

Goldmember
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Post by Goldmember » Fri Mar 07, 2008 3:12 pm

smilingcrow wrote:I was hoping that the discrete VGA card would be disabled when in 2D mode but your power data suggests this wasn’t the case. Maybe a driver issue!...
It's a driver issue in the sense that the feature hasn't been included yet. It will be in a near-term Catalyst release, maybe the next one. ATI has a lot on their plate but it's great to see them raise the bar once again! Congrats to them.

Jipa
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Post by Jipa » Fri Mar 07, 2008 3:38 pm

It allowed for resolutions of 800x600, 1152x648, 1280x720 and 192x01080
Just pointing out a slight typo. Nice results indeed, a good base for a blu-ray HTPC.[/quote]
Last edited by Jipa on Sat Mar 08, 2008 2:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

my-pc-is-too-loud
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Post by my-pc-is-too-loud » Fri Mar 07, 2008 4:15 pm

SpaceNerd wrote:
SpaceNerd wrote:The only thing I'm missing (apart from this mysterious driver :wink:) is a graphics driver for Linux. Does anyone know if Catalyst 8.3 works?
Yes, I do :wink: I just installed the Linux Catalyst 8.3 on Ubuntu 7.10. And I'm very pleased to see that both 3D and XVideo work! But the UVD engine is not working (no HD playback support).
yes that is the true issue here - IF AMD does give Linux the UVD engine then this board becomes the HTPC winner, its unlikely that Intel G45 will be able to produce this level of GFX output and it will be much hotter likely (based on upgrading current G35).

I still want to replace my PVR with an HTPC and this chipset does appear interesting for this.

--------------------------------------------

Side note J&W are releasing a board with side-port memory, ie 64mb of ddr2 dedicated gfx memory, wish they would use higher speed memory but this then gets you out of the bottle neck when using X2 v Phenom (HT issue), hopefully other vendors do this as well.

AMD780GGFX is also highly overclockable.....

dhanson865
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Post by dhanson865 » Fri Mar 07, 2008 8:24 pm

MikeC wrote:Thanks KansaKilla... Lawrence did the real work on this one.

We got an email from AMD this morn, btw, about this comment in the review "While we used a dual core rather than a quad core CPU, it shouldn't have made that much difference. 3DMark weights very heavily on the GPU."

Adam Kozak of AMD emailed:

"The real answer is that HT3 in a quad core CPU is 1.8Ghz (vs 1.0ghz on an Athlon) and provides much more bandwidth for IGP type systems. The result is an increase of over 300 pts for integrated in 3DMark06 and this directly translates into better scaling for hybrid mode (~2720)."

The clarification is welcome; thank you Mr. Kozak.

My comment on this is simple: Does the smart casual gamer choose a >$200 quad-core 95W TDP Phenom and $50 for an ATI HD3450 for this <$100 IGP motherboard, or a <$100 45W A64 X2 with a $150 PCIe 16x graphics card?

ps -- All the above is in an editor's note on the last page of the article.
Stellar logic.

Seriously the budget gamer will be looking at Phenom triple-core 8-series "Toliman" (65 nm, triple core) due relatively soon or the Athlon X2 6-series "Kuma" (Phenom based) due sometime this year. They should be much cheaper than the quad core parts and still have higher HT3 speeds than the 45W TDP X2 parts.

Unfortunately the X3 Toliman parts are expected to be 89W TDP but Kuma is expected to be 65W TDP and assuming they don't price the Toliman too close to the Kuma I'll go for the cheaper option.

Forgive me for linking to the somewhat unreliable wikipedia but I like the layout of the tables in their "list of XXXXX processors" articles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fu ... processors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AM ... processors

Of course the long term view is socket AM3. Starting near the end of 2008, AMD is expected to launch a series of 45 nm processors. The ones I'm concerned about are "Heka" for triple-core Phenom processor and "Regor" for Athlon X2. These processors might be available in early 2009.

I'm not going to hold my breath on that and I'm absolutely in the camp of buying a mid range to low end CPU as there isn't much real world advantage to the average user to go quad core or high clock speed.

Especially when you are trying to stay quiet. I want to see low TDP Toliman/Heka but if they don't pull that off I'll fall back to lower TDP Kuma/Regor. All of that assuming I feel like I have money to spend as I already have a few dual core parts in my mix.

nageltass
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neat review

Post by nageltass » Sat Mar 08, 2008 6:35 am

This is what I've been waiting for all along!
Although I would love to see some more testing of it in the future with matured drivers and preferably on a linux setup, since XP already is too bloated for me, and thus I refuse to even touch vista and going for linux on my next comp:(

Also does anyone know when the 790GX is due?
I read on the wiki that it supports "hybrid crossfire" meaning that you can have two cards playing togheter with the IGP with 2x8 PCI Express, it didn't clear my heard on the issue if this means you can choose to run just one card with 16x?

frank2003
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Post by frank2003 » Sat Mar 08, 2008 7:06 am

Another great article, Mike. It has pretty much all the numbers I was looking for in a 780G review. Nice touch comparing the 780g to the 690g.

A couple of comments and questions:
  • - I'm disappointed at the power consumption number when playing Blu-Ray. I would expect the specialized hardware to draw less power than a general purpose CPU when doing the same task. Otherwise, what's the incentive to upgrade unless you want to run something in the background while watching a movie (assuming it doesn't interfere with the movie)?
    - I'm also slightly disappointed that you cannot run Blu-Ray at 1GHz, the absolute lowest possible clock for AMD x2.
    - There was no mention of the NB temperature at idle and under load. What's that 90C temperature for temp3 reported by Speedfan? Could that be the NB temperature?
    - You were comparing the Asus with the Gigabyte. From my experience with 690G boards the Gigabyte drew more power compared to the Biostar. Any chance you would update the comparison numbers with an Asus 780G board?
EDIT: I found the answer to the question on CPU utilization @ 1.5GHz I asked in my original post.

Lostfaith
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Post by Lostfaith » Sat Mar 08, 2008 2:17 pm

very nice article. might have been cool too to include an intel IGP for the comparison's sake.

floepie
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Post by floepie » Sun Mar 09, 2008 8:47 pm

One added bonus of this motherboard that I haven't seen made mention is the fact that the sys fan can be controlled to the same degree as the CPU fan, according to the manual at least. Other Gigabyte boards either cannot control anything besides the CPU fan or fail with other sys fans due to some BIOS oddity.

Does anyone know of any full size ATX boards on the horizon for this chipset?

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Post by Goldmember » Mon Mar 10, 2008 11:49 am

floepie,

I think I saw one recently, can't remember where though! Also, AMD might release the 790GX soon. It's essentially the 780G northbridge with 2 x16 pci-e slots and support for Crossfire X.

lobuni
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Post by lobuni » Mon Mar 10, 2008 1:05 pm

floepie wrote: Does anyone know of any full size ATX boards on the horizon for this chipset?
2 from Asus:
http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?optio ... &Itemid=37

NX3
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Post by NX3 » Tue Mar 11, 2008 1:17 am

I've got the Gigabye 780g (bios F3) and a Asus HD 2400. Seasonic S11 380w, Corsair 2gb, previously Gigabyte 690v mobo.

In XP with the beta cat drivers from the CD the 780g ran fine no problems. Hybrid is Vista only so I had to install that...sigh, with Cats 8.3 of course. Anyway it runs ok but I get the odd driver crash which it survives at desktop and recovers using the IGP only. I've dropped the HD 2400 in and enable hybrid, CoD4 was running pretty nicely. However the desktop crashed more and I had a couple of sudden reboots. During a 12 hour period I had 3 desktop crash but recovered, 2 instant reboots and some other just quite random desktops cauing me to reboot.

With the 780g only Vista disables Aero, in Hybrid it was on. Aero seemed to cause more crashes.

For my Cat 8.3 and hybrid crossfire aren't ready yet to be really used. Also cats 8.3 just with the 780g don't seem that stable as yet but I can live with it. I don't over clock anything, I've got reasonable cooling, its stock vista clean install.

I've got a Sapphire HD 3450 on order as its a bit faster and cooler than the HD 2400 from what I've read. I might just run off that not in hybrid for now. I've feedback to ATI support the faults I've experienced so hopefully cats 8.4 will be an improvement in stability.

Vista power management seems odd to me. I had the desktop idle at 40 for a bit but it usual idles at 52w. With the hybrid setup idle was 69'ish which suggest its not powering down the HD 2400 when not in use. The monitor was connected to the mobo DVI port. I've read that in hybrid connecting to the mobo ports enables the extra card to be powered down when not in use but that doesn't seem to work imo.

52 watts idle isn't bad but the 780g was supposed to use less power than the 690 at idle but that doesn't seem true. However Vista power management doesn't seem to be right to me. As per the review "minimal processor state would be set to 100% instead of the default 5%, effectively disabling Cool-N-Quiet." I found this several times.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to actually get a dialog going with ATI ? Using Cat feedback your comments are passed on but you get no responce.

dsjonz
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Post by dsjonz » Tue Mar 11, 2008 4:55 am

Great post, NX3. Yours is the first real-world 780G report I've read. How are you reading power consumption? A Kill-a-Watt meter? -- Dsjonz

nitram_tpr
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Post by nitram_tpr » Tue Mar 11, 2008 5:18 am

NX3:

Nice review, although from what you are saying it doesn't sound very stable. I'm hoping to build a system based around this mobo, but if it's gonna reboot then I might not bother. I might go for an Intel based system!

The cat drivers on the CD, are they 8.1 or 8.2?
Tom's hardware seemed to have success with 8.1.

NX3
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Post by NX3 » Tue Mar 11, 2008 6:13 am

I'm in the UK, I got a meter from Maplins.co.uk which looks pretty much like the UK version of Kill-a-watt. I've posted my 690v finding on this site here before if anyone wants more details of my setup etc. I've not had time yet to really bottom out some of the issues and get proper readings mainly due to getting to grips with Vista after a clean install and getting everything else setup. I'll do some more conclusive testing on power this week hopefully.

Cats on CD are the 8.2 r45 (I think, the beta crossfires that were going around). Running 8.3 now as thats the 1st version with Hybrid support.

Its quite early version of the bios and driver really so I expect some improvements in the coming months. The 690v/g took a while to get to a stable build. Hybrid for me is a great idea but its not stable, without it I get the odd crash at desktop but it recovers without a restart so its managable.

The issues as I see it are :

1, Stability in Vista, XP was ok but thats gone now so can't test again. This might be Aero desktop, I'll try things out again.
2, Vista Cool'n'quite setting min cpu to 100% randomly
3, The 2nd card when not connected or used doesn't seem to be powered down. This is not conclusive though.

I'll play about some more and will get back though might not be super quick. I have faith in the board a my gigabyte 690v was brilliant in once it had a few updates. I also built a Asus 690g machine and while the mobo bios had more options for me the Gigabyte was a better board.

nitram_tpr
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Post by nitram_tpr » Tue Mar 11, 2008 7:22 am

Where did you get the board from? I'm in the UK and all the normal suspect either don't have it on their stock list or have it as pre-order.

NX3
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Post by NX3 » Tue Mar 11, 2008 9:54 am

Scan had it last weekend, I looked by chance and snapped it up :)

My 3450 arrived today so I'll play with that. 23 quid from ebuyer for a Sapphire branded one.

Update, ignore my previous comments as not stable with Aero off as it wasn't actually off ! It is now so I'll test this and see how it goes for a while. Approx 3 hours no crash so far so seems good.

Power readings. The setup :

Athlon64 x2 4000 (Brisbane), Gigabyte 780G, Pioneer DVDR-110, Seasonic S12 380, WD 160gb hard drive, AMD stock cpu fan, 12v 80cm case fan on low speed. Using the integrated 780g video card on DVI.

Vista Desktop (Aero OFF) idle is 40/41 watts CNQ ON
Vista Desktop (Aero OFF) idle is 50/52 watts CNQ OFF
Vista Desktop (Aero ON) idle is 41/42 watts CNQ ON
Vista Desktop (Aero ON) idle is 50/51 watts CNQ OFF

I quote two figures for the watts as it flickers between then. Interesting Aero doesn't really add any overhead.

As mentioned Vista on power saving mode keeps setting the minimum cpu idle to 100%.

I used Prime95 to try to max out to get a full cpu hammering power usage but I only ever hit about 70% on either cores. So I don't have a full load reading, suggestion on how to archive this are welcome.

With the Sapphire HD 3450

Vista Desktop (Aero OFF) idle is 53 watts CNQ ON

That heatsink is very hot even at desktop, not just in 3d stuff. 3dmark06 scored 1692.

No crash after 5 hours since Aero has been off. So it proves its stable but the in 3D Aero Cats 8.3 aren't stable yet. Hybrid even more so.

nitram_tpr
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Post by nitram_tpr » Wed Mar 12, 2008 12:17 am

Lucky you. Scan currently have it as 'Awaiting ETA from Manufacturer' :(

What is the 3dmark06 score with just the IGP?

£23 for the 3450, bargain, I didn't think they were that cheap!

Nice to see that your system is running stable. Hopefully I'll be able to get mine in a week or so.

NX3
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Post by NX3 » Wed Mar 12, 2008 12:40 am

Some 3dmark06 scores for comparison :

690v mobo, ATI HD 2400, Cats 8.2, XP : 1373
780G mobo, IGP, Cats 8.3, XP : 1132
780G mobo, IGP + ATI HD 2400, Cats 8.3 Hybrid crossfire enabled, Vista : 2000'ish
780G mobo, ATI HD 3450, Cats 8.3, Vista : 1692
780G mobo, IGP + ATI HD 3450, Cats 8.3 Hybrid crossfire enabled, Vista : <coming soon>

nitram_tpr
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Post by nitram_tpr » Wed Mar 12, 2008 2:26 am

NX3 wrote:Some 3dmark06 scores for comparison :
780G mobo, IGP + ATI HD 3450, Cats 8.3 Hybrid crossfire enabled, Vista : <coming soon>
ooooh you little tease ;)

EDIT...

Overclockers.co.uk have the board in stock, trouble is they are asking £7 more than Scan want :(

NX3
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Post by NX3 » Wed Mar 12, 2008 3:44 am

haha.... I just ran out of time lastnight sorry.

Give it a while, Dabs are gigabyte dealers and Aria, sometimes ebuyer as well, bit cheaper than overclockers, should get some stock.

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Post by smilingcrow » Wed Mar 12, 2008 5:58 am

floepie wrote:Other Gigabyte boards either cannot control anything besides the CPU fan or fail with other sys fans due to some BIOS oddity.
I’ve tested numerous Gigabyte LGA775 boards in the last few years and I think they all controlled 2 fans without issue using Speedfan including mATX boards. Which boards gave you problems?

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Post by smilingcrow » Wed Mar 12, 2008 6:06 am

nitram_tpr wrote:Overclockers.co.uk have the board in stock, trouble is they are asking £7 more than Scan want :(
Don’t forget there’s free postage on orders over £20 excluding VAT with Scan if you sign up for an account with AVForums.

nitram_tpr
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Post by nitram_tpr » Wed Mar 12, 2008 6:09 am

I've got a free delivery account via the splendid AVForums.
I would never use OCUK don't like em at all. Bad experiences from back on the Celeron 400 days :(

nutball
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Post by nutball » Wed Mar 12, 2008 10:16 am

What's the situation these days with ATI drivers and driving 1366x768 / 1920x1080 displays at 1:1 without too much messing about?

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