While this is still the case with the latest product generation by AMD/ATI and Nvidia, there is substantially more value now. AMD’s 780G and the GeForce 8200/8300 are the first generation of platforms that add component interaction on top of integration, providing a new meaning to “multi-GPU”.
All chipset makers have been trying to upgrade features and increase performance, although the graphics makers AMD/ATI and Nvidia have less interest in furnishing motherboard core logic with true high performance graphics features. This is because they risk cannibalizing part of their discrete graphics business, and because complex graphics increases cost. Since Intel owns the majority of the integrated chipset market, a perfect balance among features, performance and cost is imperative to conquer market share in this high volume segment.
Features
AMD and Nvidia are thus focused on providing as much bang for the buck as possible, which means integrating all the features users want in a desktop PC or HTPC solution, while looking at power efficiency in the sub $100 space for motherboards. At the same time, both firms realized that features have to allow better flexibility and platform control, letting users get the best of both worlds: a decent platform, and modern integrated graphics paired with efficient upgrade paths.
Platform Strategies Everywhere
Clearly, AMD/ATI and Nvidia not only invest into the chipset market because they want to become core logic providers per se, but also because a solid platform strategy helps to bind the customer to a particular platform when it comes to upgrades. The formula is simple: provide all the features that users would expect these days—namely PCI Express graphics with HD video capabilities—and a plethora of interfaces, including Serial ATA with Command Queuing and many USB 2.0 ports. Then close the deal with a differentiator that turns the mainstream platform into a potentially powerful, yet reasonable system, which I referred to as component interaction.
Since AMD/ATI and Nvidia have a strong focus on graphics, both the AMD 780G and Nvidia’s GeForce 8200/8300 come with hybrid graphics features, allowing users to take advantage of multi-GPU features in a way that actually makes sense for the majority of users. This means using the power-efficient integrated graphics for Windows and video playback, and upgrading to one or multiple graphics cards that are only active for 3D-intensive software.
We can dare to predict that an increasing number of platforms will be equipped with integrated graphics in the not too distant future, for the sake of convenience. Let’s first look at what ASRock created, though, out of the two all-in-one hybrid chipsets by AMD and Nvidia.
The Rebirth of Multi-GPU Graphics
The Crossfire multi-GPU graphics mode from AMD/ATI and Nvidia’s equivalent SLI have been around for many years, but neither has had a real breakthrough in the mainstream. Although AMD and Nvidia don’t like it, multi-graphics setups remain a high-end feature. Just look to see how many users have either bought a high-end Crossfire or SLI system right away, or for actually purchased a second graphics card to upgrade graphics performance. Typically it has made more sense to invest into a next-generation stand-alone graphics card instead of creating a two-way graphics solution.
However, multi-GPU graphics is in the middle of a rebirth, going all the way from the high end down to the mainstream and budget segments. The chipset solutions from AMD and Nvidia, together with the two ASRock motherboards we looked at, are perfect examples of how graphics will be handled in the future.
One Graphics Solution to Rule Them All
It makes a lot of sense to integrate graphics features into virtually all PC platforms, since displaying Windows or other types of 2D and simple 3D information is a key requirement for PCs, with very few exceptions. Current integrated graphics are easy to integrate; they offer sufficient performance and a modern feature set to meet the requirements of 2D desktops, basic 3D animation and video playback up to high definition levels.
Looking at applications that aren’t graphics intensive, the integrated solutions we found in AMD’s 780G and Nvidia’s GeForce 8200/8300 mGPU are suitable for almost everyone. AMD’s and Intel’s approach to turn graphics into an integral part of the chipset isn’t just a temporary fad.
One Graphics Approach to Find Them
Many of you will probably complain here, as gamers do want a powerful graphics solution. But that can be accomplished easily: just plug in any discrete graphics card into your system, and the integrated graphics unit will be disabled.
While this has been the case for many years, the approach makes much more sense now: 55 nm and 65 nm fabrication technology allows for integrating a graphics unit into a chipset for a justifiable amount of silicon real estate, making it cheap. Power consumption has been decreasing as well. In the end, the most economical approach for chipset makers is to include graphics into all their products, and let users decide whether or not they want to use it.
One Shot to Bring Them All
AMD and Nvidia have realized that integrated graphics can actually be turned into a business advantage, as Hybrid Crossfire X and Hybrid SLI allow users to actually combine the graphics capabilities of an integrated solution with those of a discrete graphics card. Once a customer buys a platform based on an AMD Hybrid Crossfire enabled motherboard or one using Nvidia’s Hybrid SLI approach, many will at least consider purchasing a matching upgrade instead of getting a different card that simply shuts down the integrated graphics unit.
Combining the integrated graphics unit and a discrete graphics card allows the graphics rendering power of both units to be used, although power does not quite reach the levels of powerful discrete graphics cards. These are left out of the Hybrid option by AMD, although Nvidia allows its platforms to shut down the discrete graphics card when it is not needed. And although the current product generation is limited to hybrid modes running the integrated plus one discrete graphics unit, future products could allow for setting up multi-GPU solutions for 3D scenarios, and only using the integrated unit for Windows display and video.
… and in Proprietary Bind Them
Finally, there is a potential downside to the approach, as it can be designed in a way that excludes other suppliers. Crossfire and SLI are already proprietary solutions, and this will certainly not change in the brave new hybrid world. In the end, AMD and Nvidia will get the opportunity to sell more products thanks to brand dependencies. But let’s look first at what both firms have created.
AMD 780G Chipset: PCIe and SB700
AMD’s website does not provide a lot of information on the chipset, so we had to pull it from some presentations; we already looked at the 780G chipset in March 2008. AMD has positioned the chipset as a low-power solution with powerful video capabilities, to address the HTPC market and multimedia-savvy users. The release was synchronized with the launch of AMD’s Athlon X2 4850. The test results were impressive: the chipset is capable of playing High Definition Blu-ray video with the CPU power of a small Sempron processor (if operated close to 100% processor load).
From a feature perspective, the 780G provides everything you need on a desktop PC for all sorts of media PC solutions. Up to four DDR2-1066 DIMMs are supported by the AMD processors’ integrated memory controller. There are as many as 26 PCI Express lanes that all comply with the fast PCIe 2.0 standard, providing 500 MB/s bandwidth per lane for each of the upstream and downstream directions.
PCI Express Usage
Of the 26 PCI Express lanes, 16 are used to run a discrete graphics card, although it is technically possible to lay out a motherboard with two x16 PCIe 2.0 slots running eight lanes each. Four more lanes are required to connect to the SB700 southbridge, leaving six to be used for peripheral devices. Remember that AMD does not offer an integrated network controller like Nvidia does; as a consequence, one more PCIe lane has to be used for network connectivity.
SB700 Southbridge
Since a two-chip solution to separate the graphics and processor interfaces from the connectivity is very much standard today, we don’t need to spend many words on it. However, we want to point out that AMD uses two 55 nm dies, while Nvidia decided to go for a single chip solution.
We haven’t analyzed the performance of the SB700 south bridge’s USB 2.0 and SATA controllers in detail. Performance levels don’t differ dramatically, and we will follow up in a second part when we also analyze power requirements and performance in hybrid graphics mode, as well as graphics overclocking.
Compared to the aged SB600 southbridge, the SB700 is a more advanced part thanks to the efficient 55 nm manufacturing process. AMD says that the idle power of the SB700 is less than 1 W, but the feature set equals the SB600: it still connects to the northbridge via four PCI Express 1.0 lanes, even though the 780G northbridge could run PCIe 2.0 mode. The SATA controller doesn’t support RAID 5 or multiple RAID arrays on one set of drives as does Intel’s Matrix RAID on all ICH8R, ICH9R and ICH10R south bridges. However, it is the only southbridge part that still offers two fully-featured UltraATA/133 ports for legacy hard drives and optical drives.
AMD 780G Chipset: Flexible Radeon HD 3200 Graphics
Radeon HD 3200 Graphics for DirectX 10
The 780G northbridge features the Radeon HD3200 graphics unit, with its 40 stream processors and 500 MHz clock speed; the RV610 GPU, better known as the Radeon HD2400, was the inspiration. It’s a DirectX 10.0 part, supporting Shader Model 4.0 and OpenGL 2.0. As we found in our chipset review, the graphics unit can easily be overclocked to almost twice the normal clock speed, which provides a significant performance boost.
Yet this isn’t enough to move the 780G’s 3D graphics performance into an area in which it would be suitable for serious gaming, despite graphics performance that is significantly higher than the frame rates we’ve seen on AMD 690 chipsets.
Optional Video Memory is Useless
The integrated Radeon HD3200 graphics unit may be combined with up to 512 MB of discrete video memory, though motherboard makers typically don’t take advantage of this. Cost is the key issue in the integrated platforms market, and every item that isn’t really necessary increases cost and potentially decreases a manufacturer’s stand in the tough battle. AMD says that using dedicated memory results in a graphics performance benefit of 10-15%, which we believe isn’t worthwhile when looking at the overall performance level. Upgrading a Radeon HD3450 card may not turn a 780G system into a racer either, but the investment is much more noticeable than using discrete graphics memory on the integrated unit.
D-Sub, DVI-D, HDMI and Display Port Outputs
The plethora of output options is still unmatched, as Nvidia does not yet support Display Port, nor Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD audio via HDMI 1.3. Both AMD and Nvidia offer two independent display controllers; one runs the analog D-Sub 15 connector and the other powers your favorite digital output. It’s not possible to use two digital outputs such as HDMI and DVI-D at the same time, but you may use the D-Sub output plus any of the digital options to run two displays.
Finally, it’s also possible to add video outputs by plugging in one or more discrete graphics cards. However, you must choose between using multiple displays running on the integrated and discrete graphics units, or putting the two units in Crossfire X mode to increase performance—it’s not possible to do both at the same time.
Hybrid Crossfire X Enabled Through the Driver
If you want to increase the graphics performance of the 780G chipset, you can do so by plugging a Radeon HD2400 or Radeon HD3450 card into the PCI Express slot. All you need to do to enable the hybrid multi-GPU mode is to check the appropriate box in ATI’s driver, and you are done. AMD currently does not support any faster cards running in Hybrid Crossfire X mode.
AMD 780G Chipset: Video, Power and Block Diagram
No Power Savings for Idling Discrete Graphics
We were disappointed to see that the 780G chipset cannot manage the activity of an additional discrete graphics card in an effort to reduce power consumption. While Nvidia’s GeForce 8200/8300 chipset will switch off any HybridPower compatible GeForce 9800 or GeForce GTX 200 graphics card when only the integrated graphics unit is connected to a display, AMD doesn’t support shutting down additional graphics cards when they are not needed. As Nvidia’s GeForce 8200/8300 mGPU is slightly more power efficient than the 780G, AMD loses to Nvidia in the power consumption category once an additional graphics card is plugged in for 3D performance.
ATI Avivo HD
ATI’s Avivo HD feature is ready for hardware decoding of HDCP HD video. The CPU load averaged approximately 35% using all four cores with Cyberlink’s PowerDVD, which was only one per cent higher than the Nvidia GeForce 8200 decoding and decrypting Blu-ray video. However, the AMD 780G is a bit more efficient—most likely due to its 55 nm manufacturing design—as Full HD video playback added an additional 22 W to the idle power of 60 W; Nvidia was 3 W higher.
Chipset Diagram
by Tom's Hardware
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