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
Blu-ray Playback: Integrated Graphics Matters Again
We've already established that integrated graphics don't really matter for gaming. Those who are serious about games have a discrete card, those who aren't serious about games are either playing something that doesn't require 3D acceleration or plays well on everything. There is a small group that this doesn't apply to but I'd bet that you can fit the vast majority of users into one of the two aforementioned categories.
Over a decade ago, integrated graphics performance mattered for another very important reason - 2D performance. These days most all IGPs handle basic Windows performance just fine, so if you're not using integrated graphics for gaming, is there any reason to care about one over another?
Video playback emerged as a killer application for integrated graphics over the years, and with Blu-ray's emergence as the de facto high definition media standard the need for some minimum level of IGP performance was established.
CPU utilization during high bitrate Blu-ray playback is prohibitively high, thankfully we now have the transistor budget to include the entire H.264, VC1 and MPEG-2 decode pipeline on GPUs. As chipsets also shrunk in manufacturing process, the hardware Blu-ray acceleration functions also found their way into integrated graphics cores. It started with AMD and NVIDIA but now Intel is on-board.
G45 is Intel's first chipset to include support for full hardware H.264/MPEG-2/VC-1 decode acceleration, including the entire H.264 decode pipeline (CABAC/CAVLAC entropy decoding included). This support puts Intel's integrated graphics on-par with the feature set of ATI/NVIDIA IGPs as well.
It gets even better for home theater PC enthusiasts: G45 continues Intel's recent tradition of including support for 8-channel LPCM audio output over HDMI, a feature that has been around since the G965 days. NVIDIA supports 8-channel LPCM audio output over HDMI with its chipsets while AMD only offers 2-channel LPCM. I recently went through and explained exactly what this feature means but if you're looking to build a Blu-ray compatible HTPC with many speakers, it's a useful feature.
G45 Blu-ray Playback
The first incarnation of G45 had horrible Blu-ray playback issues, it just didn't work. Since then Intel has gone through numerous driver revisions and we're finally at the point where, with the latest drivers (15.11.2.1554) that Blu-ray acceleration just works. It's supremely disappointing that it took Intel this long to fix these issues but they are at least finally taken care of.
CPU utilization, as you would expect, goes down with hardware acceleration enabled.
| Blu-ray Playback with a Celeron Dual Core E1200 | Intel G45 | Intel G35 |
| Dave Matthews - Live at Radio City (VC-1) | 55.5% | 73.2% |
| Crank (MPEG-2) | 37.6% | 53.2% |
| The Simpsons Movie (H.264) | 51.2% | 95.9% |
With a Celeron Dual Core E1200 processor, CPU utilization while playing a Blu-ray movie goes down tremendously, especially during H.264 playback. On faster CPUs the end result is even more manageable:
| Blu-ray Playback with a Core 2 Duo E7200 | Intel G45 | Intel G35 |
| Dave Matthews - Live at Radio City (VC-1) | 31.4% | 44.2% |
| Crank (MPEG-2) | 27.4% | 36.3% |
| The Simpsons Movie (H.264) | 24.9% | 67.6% |
The gap between the hardware accelerated G45 and its predecessor actually shrinks in the lighter load scenarios with a faster processor, but the difference when decoding H.264 is still impressive.
8-channel LPCM but no 24Hz Playback
Intel was extremely forward looking in its support of 8-channel LPCM audio over HDMI back on the G965 chipset; only within the past year have its competitors caught up. As I mentioned before, there's a thorough explanation of what 8-channel LPCM over HDMI means in our recent article here, but if you've got a 6 or 8 channel speaker setup and want to play Blu-ray movies, this feature is quite useful.
I tested 8-channel LPCM on G45 and, as expected, it just worked. Unfortunately there's still no 24bit playback support, which Intel is blaming on the ISVs for not supporting at this time - but technically there's no reason that it wouldn't work on G45 if there was proper driver/software support.
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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).