SPCR

How much more does G35 use at idle than a simmilar G33 board?

I became interested in this because of the recent IGP review at Anand and upcoming E7xxx cpus.
It would be nice to see how much less , if anything, does G33 consume versus its still rare brother G35.

Anyone go any info on this?

I don't have any definite info, but I'm interested in this too - as I want to upgrade my HTPC with an E7200 cpu, but the lack of low-power Intel IGP board options is frustrating.

Did you see this comparison from the SPCR Asus G35 review?
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article785-page5.html

But the 4W difference could just be due to the different boards and the recent Asus s775 boards are known for their higher power consumption.

In the Anandtech G33 comparison from last year, the Asus G33 board was about 2W higher than the Gigabyte G33. So at idle, it looks like there isn't much between the G33/G35 chipsets themselves. The difference comes at load since the G35 is rated 28W TDP and the G33 about 13W TDP.

It's disappointing the Anandtech 8200/780G/G35 review didn't include a Gigabyte G33 board in the comparison. It should have faired a little better than the Asus G35.

With the G33, the best result I've seen so far is an undervolted E2140/Gigabyte GA-G33-DS2R setup idling at ~41W and load ~50W with the Sparkle SPI220LE:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=934

Depending on the RAM/HDD, a Pico and undervolted E7200 should be able to beat this.

As an alternative to an AMD cpu and 780G/8200, I've been considering the combo of G33 / E7200 / Pico and HD3450, but the 3450 will add about 8W at idle / 20W at full load. Not a terrible option, and would perform well, but it won't be especially low-power.

If HD decoding isn't a requirement, another option could be the MCP73 based boards (but it only supports single channel RAM), eg GA-73UM-S2H:
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Mot ... uctID=2689

Otherwise, for a better option, I guess we need to wait for the MCP7A or G45 and see how they compare. The MCP7A paired with an E7xxx cpu could be good solution. MCP7A launch is meant to be this month. Hopefully we'll see some boards soon.

Hmmm...

I would like to finish my server build soon and I'm still experimenting around.

Right now I have G33M-DS2R and a E8200 in it.
I'm using an old 9-10W idle capable Seagate IDE drive so that is presently throwing the results off a bit.

All stock i was at ~60W idle and ~85-90W at load.
Running:
Cpu at stock (c1E and eist also on)

Onboard VGA fixed setting
LPT-OFF
Firewire-OFF
Azalia-OFF
Serial ports-OFF
resulted in 55W idle and 68W load (very big gains in load turning all the unnecessary stuff off!)

further:
turning off EIST and C1E and fixing CPU at 2GHz
vCore at 1.0v
vMCH at -0.15v
vFSB at -0.15v
idle was 53W and load 59W

finally after lowering my 2sticks x 2GB ram at 667 MHz
my final numbers are 50W idle and 57W Load

All this is on a TT Toughpower 750W PSU and with a DVD-RW

Thanks for posting all of this .

Impressive, especially with this PSU/HDD and 4Gb. Do you know the efficiency of that PSU at ~50W? With a Pico and a GP HDD, this could drop 10W+. Those E8xxx cpu's are amazing.

Is 1.0v vcore the lowest stable setting at 2ghz?

I've also been wondering how the G31 chipset compares to the G33 - and the boards are typically lower spec'ed and with fewer components. I guess 1-2W better but probably not a significant difference.

Thanks!
I think i'll make another thread about my config. later today.
As for the PSU It should have good efficiency across the loads.
I bought GP drive for my system but it was DOA, so no go with that one yet.

I tried 0.95v in bios but that would load windows and reset by itself after a while.
This continued all the way till 0.9875v so i just upped it to 1.0v which was the first setting i tried and it is 12h+ load stable
CPU-z shows 0.95v at Bios setting to 1.0v :/

I looked into g31 but bought G33 with solid caps cause i intend to use this setup for my server and solid caps just sound more SOLID.

I have a Pico in my current server so I might try that over the weekend.
TT 750W modular:

Source: http://forums.microsoft.com/WindowsHome ... &SiteID=50

945G - max TDP 22.2 W
G31 - idle 7.4 W, max TDP 15.5 W
G33 - idle 5.75 W, max TDP 13 W
G35 - idle 11 W, max TDP 28 W
X38 - idle 12.3 W, max TDP 26.5 W
X48 - idle 15.1 W, max TDP 30.5 W

So what about south bridge?

G31 uses ICH7, 2.9 to 3.3 W
G33 uses ICH9, 3.4 to 4.3 W
G35 uses ICH8, 3.0 to 4.1 W