AMD 780G: Preview of the Best Current IGP Solution
by Gary Key on March 10, 2008 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
H.264 Video Quality- SPIDER-MAN 3
One of last year’s trilogy blockbusters came from Columbia Pictures featuring the MARVEL inspired SPIDER-MAN 3. This movie offers bitrate levels that averaged 14.9 Mb/s to 35.3 Mb/s. In our particular test scenes, we have a close up of Spider-Man and another screenshot of the police on the street from a top down angle. Both screenshots offer an opportunity to compare color, facial details, and black levels.
 780G – Click to Enlarge |
 G35 – Click to Enlarge |
 GeForce 8200 – Click to Enlarge |
 780G – Click to Enlarge |
 G35 – Click to Enlarge |
 GeForce 8200 – Click to Enlarge |
We see small differences in the screenshots, but certainly think in the first screenshot that the 780G and/or GeForce 8200 had better color saturation and details than the G35. The second screenshot is a tossup depending on whether you like the softer look of the 780G or slightly more detail and sharpness in the G35 picture. The GeForce 8200 did not offer as warm skin tones in our opinion but otherwise had the same overall image as the 780G. Our test audience voted 4 times for the 780G, 3 for the GeForce 8200, and 1 for the G35 in the Spider-Man image. The 780G garnered four votes in the police screen shot with the GeForce 8200 and G35 each receiving 2. Both 780G images were slightly closer to the reference image than the G35 with the GeForce 8200 placing in-between both platforms.
The 780G and GeForce 8200 put a major hurt on the G35 with average CPU utilization rates around 24% compared to 84%. The GeForce 8200 had slight increases in the processor utilization rates when implementing LPCM 5.1 or Dolby True HD decoding through PowerDVD Ultra 7.3. LPCM 5.1 audio bitrates averaged 4608 Kbps with Dolby True HD ranging from 2640~4608 Kbps depending on the scene.
During heavy action sequences, the G35 processor utilization rates were constantly above 90% and we did experience some judder at times if not outright pausing. If we changed our audio stream to Dolby TrueHD or 5.1 LPCM, the CPU utilization rates stayed at 97%~100% during the action sequences with average rates being around 87%. Actually, judder was no different from the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio stream so we would suggest sticking with the higher audio quality streams but suggest a processor such as an E6750 for a better viewing experience.
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Gary Key - Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - link
The 790GX features the HD 3300, which is a slight upgrade to the HD 3200 on the 780G. We are told the IGP performance differences will be slightly improved, but until we have the chipset and drivers, it will be difficult to determine if those improvement are meaningful or not. At this time, AMD is quiet about actual specs and capabilities of the 790GX. If you are a very casual gamer, Sims2/UT2004/CoH type of games then Hybrid CrossFire is a decent solution up to 1280x1024 resolution. If you want to run upcoming games and Crysis at an acceptable rate, then discreet graphics is the way to go.At this time, if you want an uATX form factor, the 780G is the best AMD chipset for discrete graphics performance. I have not found any real difference in performance between it and a 770X board with a HD 3870 installed. You need to go up to the 790FX for the best performing chipset with an AM2+ CPU right now. I will update this if we get a performance oriented BIOS for the GeForce 8200 board which may or may not changes its performance capabilities.
Genx87 - Monday, March 10, 2008 - link
Maybe it is late.What is the expected cost and release date of this motherboard?
Gary Key - Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - link
The reader who responded basically answered the supply and price question. :) NewEgg was running a special on the ECS board this week for %59.99 with a rebate. Our information is that all of the launch partners for this board should have supply in the channel by the end of March or early April at worst. The feature sets will determine the prices but AMD was shooting for an average street price of $75 on the 780G. The 780V will be a white box or OEM only SKU for now.The J&W board will not be available in the US or Canada at this time. It is the only board we have in-house that offers the SidePort memory option and with the latest 8.3 drivers, it makes a 5%~10% difference in a few games. AMD is telling us the final 8.4 drivers should allow this option to assist in lowering CPU utilization by a few percent also.
goinginstyle - Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - link
The Gigabyte, ASUS, and ECS boards are available (if in stock) in the Americas at prices ranging from $69 to $99. In Europe and APAC, the J&W boards (along with the others) are available currently. The J&W will be our choice for the more performance oriented user. We expect to see boards from Biostar, abit, MSI, and Foxconn shortly at prices under $100, average MSRP for this chipset should be around $80 once supply is plentiful.goinginstyle - Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - link
Hit the enter button too soon but that information is from another website that will not be mentioned just in case it is a violation of the rules here. I bought the Gigabyte board from NEWEGG last week for $95 and found out today that the 780G chipset shows ENG0752 on it. Any comments on your boards having ENG chipsets?eches - Monday, March 10, 2008 - link
BUT sadly almost useless to me since all my HTPC builds run Linux. It would be VERY interesting to see a comparison in terms of Linux to Windows playback quality/performance since the drivers are bound to make a huge difference here.Also some interesting comments - my Linux HTPC runs an XP2600 (OC to 2.1 Ghz) and only just manages to handle 720p MKV playback. Can a Sempron at 1.8Ghz really manage 720p under Windows? Might be time for an upgrade *grin*
phusg - Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - link
Your hardware should be plenty to playback 720p video. If only something as efficient as CoreCodec's CoreAVC was available for linux. What do you presently use to playback? Is the playback totally smooth?It's also a shame the hardware acceleration of HD video on the newer AGP cards isn't available on the linux side, that would be another cheap way to stretch your hardware :)
eches - Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - link
Smooth at 2.13Ghz, but with some sound sync issues - this is with Xine and all de-interlacing/post-processing disabled (and minimal background processing). And indeed I am awaiting the CoreAVC player for Linux (yes, I could patch MPlayer but I'm also trying to keep the HTPC low maintenance) since this is a quick and cheap way of making the most of this old hardware.And cheers Gary! I look forward to the Linux article with GREAT interest - will you also be taking a look at NVidia cards and doing a quality comparison?
Gary Key - Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - link
We just shipped a 780G board to one of our upcoming Linux editors to test. We should have some initial results in the next couple of weeks. I have not had a pleasurable experience with the Sempron 3400+ doing encoding/decoding work on this board under Vista. It is something I am still working on for a future HTPC article, one that we will recommend/show just how low you can go with the new IGP boards and still have a "well performing" system. Does a Sempron 3400+ and a HD 3450 card for a total outlay of $85 offer better performance on this board than a 4850e CPU only for the same price. This is something we are trying to answer with Intel, NVIDIA, and AMD hardware.eches - Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - link
Sorry I had tacked on a "cheers" at the end of the reply further down - GREAT stuff!"How Low Can You Go?" eh? Sounds very interesting but complex if done properly (i.e. Tests on Vista, XP and Linux; and a need to cover quite a few players in order to do quality/performance comparisons). A look at power consumption would also add an interesting slant - *possibly* putting XP/Vista in a different light when once considers TCO and Linuxs often poor power management.
Personally I was surprised to get a XP2600 to play 720p content and could probably get it smooth without an OC if I used CoreAVC and a dedicated sound card. Given we're talking 6 year old 'junk' hardware here, a free OS etc. thats pretty low!