SPCR

I'm looking out 60 days to my new build and one of the decision points I'm stuck on is P67 vs H67 chipset. As far as I can tell it comes down to FDI support, which means on an H67 based MB I could have DVI/HDMI right on the board.

To me this opens up a number of possibilities, such as driving dual monitors from dual video cards, offloads basic graphics tasks to the CPU vs gaming to an Nvidia based GPU, etc.

My question is with Win7 Ultimate 64-bit what is actually supported? What are the problems with two discrete (non SLI/Crossfire) cards today? Can you determine which card is managing 2d graphics vs 3d graphics?

I'm a minimalist so if I will have zero ability to support this config in Windows or won't get my anticipated benefits then I would assume save the ~.5-1 watt and eliminate MB components by going with the P67.

Thoughts? Experiences?

Thanks!

Hi kurso,

Look Herethe integrated graphics is not very powerfull, less than a 5450.

Kurso wrote:My question is with Win7 Ultimate 64-bit what is actually supported? What are the problems with two discrete (non SLI/Crossfire) cards today? Can you determine which card is managing 2d graphics vs 3d graphics?

I'm a minimalist so if I will have zero ability to support this config in Windows or won't get my anticipated benefits then I would assume save the ~.5-1 watt and eliminate MB components by going with the P67.

Not gonna work. Sure, you can drive multiple displays but you don't get to choose which graphics is used 2D or 3D. By the way, the P67 chipset boards are bound to be more expensive than H67.

Kurso wrote: To me this opens up a number of possibilities, such as driving dual monitors from dual video cards, offloads basic graphics tasks to the CPU vs gaming to an Nvidia based GPU, etc.

My question is with Win7 Ultimate 64-bit what is actually supported? What are the problems with two discrete (non SLI/Crossfire) cards today? Can you determine which card is managing 2d graphics vs 3d graphics?

I'm not exactly sure what you are trying to get at, but as long as you have WDDM 1.1 drivers for each of your video cards it would work fine. Each card would be responsible for the monitor(s) connected to it. If you ran a 3D app on the monitor connected to the integrated Intel video you would get low performance. If you ran it on the discrete card's monitor you would get better performance.

Just make sure your discrete card is relatively new and you should be fine. If the card is old enough that it only has a WDDM 1.0 driver (ie, Vista driver) it wont cooperate with cards using different drivers.

washu wrote:
I'm not exactly sure what you are trying to get at, but as long as you have WDDM 1.1 drivers for each of your video cards it would work fine. Each card would be responsible for the monitor(s) connected to it. If you ran a 3D app on the monitor connected to the integrated Intel video you would get low performance. If you ran it on the discrete card's monitor you would get better performance.

Just make sure your discrete card is relatively new and you should be fine. If the card is old enough that it only has a WDDM 1.0 driver (ie, Vista driver) it wont cooperate with cards using different drivers.

Perfect. That's exactly what I was looking for. I'm considering a tri-monitor setup, one for desktop running of the CPU and two for gaming running of a GTX460.

As to the cost difference mentioned above regarding P67 boards over H67 boards; the impression I have is this is a product marketing decision. The H67 supports FDI where as the P67 does not. But that's where the differences end. The P67 is intended to be used with third party GPUs, hence will have motherboard features (native to the board, not the chipset) in line with the enthusiast market. The H67, with it's FDI support is geared towards on board GPU use and therefor a slightly different market segment. If there are more granular differences between P67 and H67 that I'm not aware of please feel free to correct me.

Thanks

You cant overclock your cpu with H67 (locked memory multipliers) chipset support only 1333Mhz memory, you can't run two PCIe x8 cards off of the CPU and I haven't seen a H67 motherboard with usb3 header on the board.

Kurso wrote:To me this opens up a number of possibilities, such as driving dual monitors from dual video cards, offloads basic graphics tasks to the CPU vs gaming to an Nvidia based GPU, etc.

Integrated graphics automatically switch off once a graphics card is plugged into the system. You cannot have both running at the same time.

ATI experimented on this with Hybrid Graphics, but the most "powerful" card to support this is the Radeon 5450 and it will only work on some AMD chipsets, which rules out Intel processors.

nVidia does something like this with Optimus, but it's only available on Notebooks so far.

Choosing the P67 over the H67 won't get you lower power usage. The graphics are part of the CPU. I wouldn't be surprised, if P67 and H67 are the same silicon, just with a few features (like FDI) enabled/disabled to make some distinction.
The P55 chipset has a TDP of 4.7w, the H55/H57 has 5.2w. That's half a watt. No difference. All Sandy Bridge CPUs have integrated graphics and I would choose the H67 just for convenience. You'll always have a backup GPU, should your discrete card ever break down.