The IGP Chronicles Part 1: Intel's G45 & Motherboard Roundup
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Gary Key on September 24, 2008 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Competitive Integrated Graphics?
Since the G45 GMCH is built on a 65nm process, it can be larger than G35's GMCH - and thus Intel increased the number of unified shader processors from 8 to 10.
| 1024 x 768 | Intel G45 | Intel G35 |
| Enemy Territory: Quake Wars | 6.8 fps | 5.6 fps |
| Company of Heroes | 24.5 fps | 16.5 fps |
| Race Driver GRID | 3.7 fps | 2.8 fps |
| Age of Conan | 7.9 fps | 6.1 fps |
| Crysis | 9.3 fps | 7.9 fps |
| Spore | 10.8 fps | 9.7 fps |
| Half Life 2 Episode Two | 40.7 fps | 27.9 fps |
| Oblivion (800 x 600) | 22.7 fps | 14.7 fps |
These shader processors are nearly directly comparable to NVIDIA's, meaning that in terms of raw processing power the G45 GMCH has 1/24th the execution resources of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 280. It gets even worse if you compare it to a more mainstream solution - take the recently announced GeForce 9500 GT for example, it only has 32 SPs - putting the G45 at around 1/3 the clock-for-clock power of a 9500 GT.
Then there's the clock speed issue. While the GeForce 9500 GT runs its array of SPs at 1.4GHz, Intel runs its shader processors at 800MHz. Both Intel and NVIDIA's architectures have a peak throughput of one shader instruction per clock, so while the 9500 GT has 3x the execution resources of the G45 GMCH, it also has 75% clock speed advantage giving it a 4.6x raw throughput advantage over the G45 GMCH.
But how about comparing Intel's graphics core to NVIDIA's IGP equivalent? The GeForce 8200 is NVIDIA's latest integrated graphics core, it has 8 SPs and runs them at a clock speed of 1.2GHz - giving NVIDIA a 20% advantage in raw throughput on paper.
There are many unknowns here however. NVIDIA has special execution units for transcendentals and it's unclear whether or not Intel has the same. There are also times when Intel must relegate vertex processing to the CPU, which can cause strange performance characteristcis. But the point is that Intel's latest graphics core, at least on paper, is competitive to what NVIDIA is offering.
Neither the Intel or NVIDIA solution can hold a candle to AMD's 780G, which has a peak throughput of 40 shader operations per clock compared to 10 for Intel and 8 for NVIDIA. The reason AMD can do so much more is that each of its 8 processing clusters is 5-wide, just like on its desktop GPUs. If there's enough parallel data to work on, each one of these clusters can output five shader instructions per clock. The real world utilization is somewhere between one and five depending on how efficient AMD's real time compiler is and the code being run, but this generally translates into AMD dominating the IGP performance charts even with a lower clock speed than both Intel and NVIDIA parts.
Does this all really matter?
This next point is one that I've quietly argued for the past few years. ATI and NVIDIA have always acted holier than thou because of their IGP performance superiority over Intel, but I argue that they are no better than the boys in blue.
Despite both ATI and NVIDIA being much faster than Intel, the overall gameplay experience delivered by their integrated graphics solutions is still piss poor. Even on older games. Try running Oblivion, a 2.5-year old title, on even AMD's 780G and you'll find that you have to run it at the lowest visual quality settings, at the lowest resolutions (800 x 600, max) to get playable frame rates. At those settings, the game looks absolutely horrible.
In those games that aren't visually demanding, performance doesn't actually matter and all three vendors end up doing just fine. Fundamentally both ATI and NVIDIA want to sell more discrete cards, so they aren't going to enable overly high performance integrated solutions. The IGP performance advantages in games amount to little more than a marketing advantage, since anyone who actually cares about gaming is going to be frustrated even by their higher performing integrated solution.
The area where ATI/NVIDIA deliver where Intel historically hasn't is in the sheer ability to actually run games. In the past, driver issues and just basic compatibility with most games was simply broken on Intel hardware. Intel tried to address much of that with G45.
There is one aspect of IGP performance that really matters these days however: video decode acceleration.
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computerfarmer - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
It is good to hear about new technology, initial issues and how they are worked out.I hope the second part of this article is sooner than the follow up of "AMD's 790GX/SB750" expected chipset review. The AMD announcement was on August 6, 2008, with an expected review to follow.
On September 10th, Gary Wrote:
"An update, DFI decided to proceed forward with their uATX 790GX board. My retail kit arrived today and I will be testing it shortly. Also, based on your comments and others I will show a 4870x2 vs 4870 CF on this platform and compare it to 790FX. The roundup should be up late next week, G45 is up on Monday with 790GX/780G/GF8300/NF750a comparison results.
Sincerely,
Gary "
The recent article on Power Supplies was excellent.
The information is good, but some items appear not to be as important as others.
Now we are still waiting - AMD 790GX/SB750.
erikejw - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
Who cares about if MSI or ASUS have a faster IGP board, compare with NVIDIAS and AMDs boards.It is as useless like running a review of the new Nehalems when they arrive and don't compare them to any AMD chips at all, and we all know that will not happen.
BD2003 - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
Glad to see the p45 is getting quality coverage, I was looking very closely at getting one for my HTPC. Theres a few things I'd like to see touched upon, hopefully in future articles.First, how about a comparison of the post-processing capabilites and quality of the competing solutions? Supposedly intel's "clear video" is supposed to give us the same kind of solution for noise reduction, sharpening, and other postprocessing that nvidia and amd have been offering. Is it an automatic solution that you have no control over like amd, or is there an applet where you can choose how much effect is applied like nvidia?
Also, what about the new revision of intel turbo memory. I always see it mentioned in diagrams and previews, but have never seen it implemented on a board. Does it need onboard flash to function, or is there a PCIE, SATA or USB solution that can be added on to a g45 board in order to enable it? If onboard only, are there any actual boards that have implemented it? My understanding is that its little different from readyboost in vista, but the capability to actually choose whats in the cache is quite interesting to me. On my HTPC, I regularly use the same few apps, and I'd love to get those loading at solid state speeds.
Also, what software is required to enable the hardware acceleration of H.264 and the like? I'm not a fan of using desktop programs like PowerDVD on my HTPC - they often require me to pull out the keyboard which defeats the purpose of an HTPC imo. Can the acceleration be used in Windows Media Center, Mediaportal, or any other HTPC specific software?
Freezebyte - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
Hey, what happened to the preview of the DFI Lanparty P45 T2RS? Its between that one and the Asus P5Q-EM for my new SFF setup I wanna build in the next month.I"ve been hearing lots about discrete video cards not working well or at all in the P5Q-EM. Did you guys run into issues with this or did you not even put in discrete video cards at all? Also, will the Asus support the higher Q9000 series Intel CPU's?
I"m trying to build a decent SFF gaming rig soon, and I wanna know what im getting myself into with either of these boards.
Clart - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
I personally think you should have made price a bigger point, frankly you're comparing the G45 with the 780G, but the 780G boards average at US$80, while you can't get a G45 for less than US$100, plus a could go to newegg and get a 780G+Radeon 4670 for US$145, that's just 15 dollars more!!!Besides when this site reviewed the 790GX there where some criticism about that chipset not actually targeting any specific market, well here is a hint, how about comparing the 790GX with the G45, both cost around 120 dollars.
Is the G45 a good Business board? Really? Well the way I see it a business pc that doesn't care about graphics performance or ou HTPC characteristics would be much better served with a US$66 780G, that's half the price of a average G45 motherboard, or even a US$49.99 740G.
Sorry if I was a little acid, but I'm just tired of IT sites comparing boards that aren't even in the same price range, the only reason I see for this is that Intel can't/doesn't compete in the same price range as the 780G/8200, but if that is the case then IT sites should compare the G45 with the 790GX.
P.S: Gaming in IGPs is not inexistent, ever heard of VALVe? The entire Orange Box runs on a 780G/8200(possibly the G45 also). But I do agree that with cards like the Radeon 4670 out there IGPs loose a lot of their(little?)value for gaming.
CSMR - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
AMD has an advantage in IGPs (less with G45) but a disadvantage in processors. If you care about price and don't care about power consumption/noise/processor performance you should go with AMD. Businesses will care about these things and are not so price sensitive.snakeoil - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
this is pathetic.....pathetic also that intel fanbois think larrabee will change the world and bring world peace.
pathetic
jmurbank - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
"8-channel LPCM but no 24Hz Playback"Is this correct that frequency response will not include 24 hertz. Is this a joke by Intel or by the author. I assume the author is trying to state 24 bit playback.
You should state that hardware MPEG-2/H.264/VC decoding is only supported in Windows.
I prefer AMD processors because they have IGP that works better than Intel's IGP offerings. Also IGP for AMD processors works in Linux while IGP from Intel does not. Intel fans are still stuck with Intel's IGP that are still pathetic.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
My apologies, the two are actually unrelated but I wanted to group them both under the same header.1) 8-channel LPCM is supported
2) 24Hz refresh rates don't work properly currently, this is for video.
Take care,
Anand
CSMR - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
Thanks for the review review, a lot of useful information. Regarding the DG45FC board, voltage changes would be useful; but as you and SPCR have found, in combination with the E5200/E7200 processors it is a very power-efficient choice. You can build a low power but relatively high performance system without any tweaks (SPCR had 35W idle, 45W blu ray, 65W max load).