Asus P5Q-EM and G45

dka75 · Post by **dka75** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 2:23 am

Hi

I am looking to build a HTPC, I am looking for an ATX Board with the G45 chipset, (I like the idea of built in graphic) unfortunately it does not seems like there are any ATX Board with G45 available, hence I am looking at uATX boards, will the P5Q-EM board be sufficient to use in a HTPC, I will not play games, will only play movies in H.264.

Will the P5Q-EM let me do this? I have not been able to find any test of the P5Q-EM board with the latest bios, all the tests I manage to find are from April with an early release of the P5Q-EM bios.

After reading about the G45 chipset, I am a bit concerned that the G45 is not good enough, maybe I am better off to buy a P45 board with Nvidia 8600 graphic card ?

Advice and thoughts are much appreciated,

Many Thanks,
//Dan

Greg F. · Post by **Greg F.** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 5:36 am

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813138113

this Biostar board is ATX, does the 24FPS thing, is cheap, and has been glitch free for me. I am sure others will have suggestions.

croddie · Post by **croddie** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 8:35 am

dka75 wrote: will the P5Q-EM board be sufficient to use in a HTPC, I will not play games, will only play movies in H.264.

Will the P5Q-EM let me do this? I have not been able to find any test of the P5Q-EM board with the latest bios, all the tests I manage to find are from April with an early release of the P5Q-EM bios.

After reading about the G45 chipset, I am a bit concerned that the G45 is not good enough, maybe I am better off to buy a P45 board with Nvidia 8600 graphic card ?

There are pros and cons. First what program will you be using to play video. If it's not one of the major commercial programs then G45 is not hardware accelerated. For example if you are using the excellent Media Player Classic Home Cinema you should get ATI or Nvidia.
If you want to be on the Intel platform get the new Nvidia integrated graphics, if AMD then get 780G.
There are some good G45 boards but because of the lack of standard directx video acceleration I can't recommend them for HTPC use.

Firetech · Post by **Firetech** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 1:40 pm

croddie wrote: If you want to be on the Intel platform get the new Nvidia integrated graphics,

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3432

if AMD then get 780G.

or 790GX which can be got in ATX form factor easily.

dka75 · Post by **dka75** » Sun Oct 26, 2008 7:03 am

Thanks guys,

After looking into Nividiaâ€™s offerings, I am now convinced that G45 is not for me, I will investigate what offerings the different systemboard manufacturers have,
I found a few good reviews in the following article,

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ ... ibble-2008

Do you have any experience of the P5N7A-VM board from Asus ?

Thanks,
//Dan

croddie · Post by **croddie** » Sun Oct 26, 2008 1:36 pm

Firetech wrote:or 790GX which can be got in ATX form factor easily.

Higher power than 780G; for a silent HTPC 780G is normally better.

lucas82 · Post by **lucas82** » Mon Oct 27, 2008 3:07 pm

Instead of buying a $135 motherboard wiht video on-board, why don't you buy a $52 motherboard and a $80 video card?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813128338
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814127383

Kreed · Post by **Kreed** » Mon Oct 27, 2008 7:10 pm

Here are two ATX G45 motherboards you might want to consider:

Super Micro C2SEA G45:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... _g45&num=2

Foxconn Concerto G45:
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1595/ ... index.html

bgiddins · Post by **bgiddins** » Mon Oct 27, 2008 7:14 pm

lucas82 wrote:Instead of buying a $135 motherboard wiht video on-board, why don't you buy a $52 motherboard and a $80 video card?

Heat and power consumption may be a consideration.

lucas82 · Post by **lucas82** » Tue Oct 28, 2008 7:05 am

bgiddins wrote:
lucas82 wrote:Instead of buying a $135 motherboard wiht video on-board, why don't you buy a $52 motherboard and a $80 video card?
Heat and power consumption may be a consideration.

The g31 chip has lower power consumption than g45, and the Hd4670 is also economical (at least in idle).

croddie · Post by **croddie** » Wed Oct 29, 2008 3:01 am

I don't think that's true.

lucas82 · Post by **lucas82** » Wed Oct 29, 2008 4:12 am

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/int ... 39-13.html
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article873-page5.html
viewtopic.php?p=424741&sid=8a4463be1da6 ... dc6b47000f
"For info my new basic folding@home rig consumes only 37w idle and 57w under Prime95 load:

CPU - E7200 @ 2.5ghz (7.5 *333) at 0.880v (0.925v BIOS)
Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L iG31 which is a fully functional budget, quiet, undervoltable mATX board with intel GMA X3100 onboard VGA
RAM - single 2GB stick of corsair value DDR2-667
HDD - 60GB seagate momentus 5400.2 2.5 laptop sata drive
PSU - Enermax Pro82+ 385w"

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Wed Oct 29, 2008 4:33 am

bgiddins wrote:
lucas82 wrote:Instead of buying a $135 motherboard wiht video on-board, why don't you buy a $52 motherboard and a $80 video card?
Heat and power consumption may be a consideration.

G33/P35 has the lowest idle power of any Intel desktop chipset. According to Intel running a PCIe video card takes at least an additional 1.5 W at load and 0.15 W idle on a 3-series northbridge. A G45 consumes an extra 3.25 W idle over a G33. A HD 4670 consumes about 8.7 W idle and up to 50 W load.

So a HD 4670 is an extra (8.7 + 0.15 - 3.25 W) 5.6 W idle on a G33/P35 over using a G45 integrated video. This is not accounting for the reduced power on the system memory for not using the integrated video for the frame buffer (which will vary depending on memory speed, voltage, and amount). Expect the actual idle power difference to be pretty negligible.

Even though a HD 4670 might use up to 50W at full 3D load. It's performance/Watt is much higher than a G45, and you can control how much power it uses via software.

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Wed Oct 29, 2008 4:47 am

dka75 wrote:After reading about the G45 chipset, I am a bit concerned that the G45 is not good enough, maybe I am better off to buy a P45 board with Nvidia 8600 graphic card ?

A cheap G31 + cheap video card can be economical. A P35/G33 would be better than the G31 (which is better than P45/G45/etc), but if you really need something small (i.e., without a video card), a GeForce 9300 motherboard would be better than G45/G35. Unfortunately the Geforce 9300 still has quite high idle power usage.

As far as discrete video cards, if a HD 4670 is too expensive you should look at HD 4350s ($40), HD 3450s ($20), or even HD 2400 XTs ($10). The last two probably use less idle power than using the G45 or Geforce 9300 integrated video.

The 8600GT(a.k.a., 9500GT) and most other nVidia video cards use at least twice the idle power of these and the AMD cards have better HD decoding support. I'd only recommend a 8600GT now as a very cheap gaming card (~$25).

lucas82 wrote:Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L iG31 which is a fully functional budget, quiet, undervoltable mATX board with intel GMA X3100 onboard VGA

Intel's GMA naming is confusing, but the G31(G33/Q33/Q35) is a GMA 3100 without the X. The X GMAs are DirectX10. The GMA 3100 is derived from the GMA 950 and is DirectX9 (4 hardware pixel shaders, software vertex shaders). None of Intel GMAs are fast enough to really use any kind of shaders--so it is all pretty pointless. They can handle Vista's Aeroglass desktop and that is about it.

lucas82 · Post by **lucas82** » Wed Oct 29, 2008 7:11 am

QuietOC wrote:
lucas82 wrote:Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L iG31 which is a fully functional budget, quiet, undervoltable mATX board with intel GMA X3100 onboard VGA

I don't know if you realized it, but it's not my computer with the Gigabyte G31. I writed it between quotation marks. (sorry about my broken english, especially about the past tense - I haven't learnd it wery well yet)
That was my point, "A cheap G31 + cheap video card can be economical" - regarding power consumption and price as well.

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Wed Oct 29, 2008 9:16 am

lucas82 wrote:I don't know if you realized it, but it's not my computer with the Gigabyte G31...
That was my point, "A cheap G31 + cheap video card can be economical" - regarding power consumption and price as well.

I agree. I was primarily responding to the original poster. I cleaned up my posts to better reflect that.

Asus P5Q-EM and G45

Asus P5Q-EM and G45

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Re: Asus P5Q-EM and G45

Re: Asus P5Q-EM and G45

Re: Asus P5Q-EM and G45