The IGP Chronicles Part 2: AMD 780G vs. Intel G45 vs. NVIDIA GeForce 8200
by Gary Key on October 14, 2008 12:40 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Binning the Chipsets
Both AMD and NVIDIA offer higher speed versions of their integrated graphics; AMD has the 790GX and NVIDIA has the GeForce 8300. Let's start with the GeForce 8300 because it's the easiest to deal with: this is nothing more than an overclocked GeForce 8200.
The 8200 runs its SPs at 1.2GHz while the 8300 runs them at 1.5GHz. In our tests we had no problems taking any of our GeForce 8200 boards up to 1.5GHz; they all offered the clock speed option in the BIOS. On top of that, the performance benefit wasn't really worth it - have a look:
| Game (1024x768) | NVIDIA GeForce 8200 | NVIDIA GeForce 8300 | GeForce 8300 Advantage |
| Quake Wars | 27.6 | 29.1 | 5% |
| Company of Heroes | 26.2 | 29.4 | 12% |
| Race Driver GRID | 6.7 | 8.1 | 21% |
| Age of Conan | 14.3 | 15.5 | 8% |
| Crysis | 19.4 | 20.2 | 4% |
| Spore | 11.1 | 11.7 | 5% |
With the exception of Company of Heroes and GRID, the GeForce 8300 didn't offer any tangible performance benefits. The average performance increase was 9%, but if you take out GRID you get an average boost of 7%. It's just a quick way to make you part with another $15 as the boards are more expensive than the 8200 versions.
AMD 790GX vs. 780G
AMD's 790GX is a little more difficult to distill. You get a faster graphics core (700MHz vs. 500MHz), but you also get a newer Southbridge (SB750 vs. SB700) that adds RAID 5 support and the new ACC interface to Phenom CPUs that can increase overclocking potential. AMD 790GX boards are also more likely to have some dedicated "Sideport" memory, meaning a small amount of local memory only for use by the GPU to improve performance. With enough processing power, integrated graphics is often constrained by memory bandwidth. Given how potentially powerful AMD's IGP cores are, it makes sense to have an option for more memory bandwidth.
Obviously all of these features drive 790GX prices up higher than their 780G counterparts. 780G boards range in price from $60~$99 while the 790GX boards range in price from $99 to $155 on average. The performance breaks down as follows:
| Game (1024x768) | AMD 780G | AMD 780G + Sideport | AMD 790GX w/ Sideport | 790GX Advantage |
| Quake Wars | 25.2 | 26.4 | 33.1 | 25% |
| Company of Heroes | 41.1 | 41.7 | 55.2 | 32% |
| Race Driver GRID | 28.1 | 28.1 | 36.3 | 29% |
| Age of Conan | 14.6 | 15.8 | 21.4 | 35% |
| Crysis | 26.2 | 26.7 | 35.4 | 33% |
| Spore | 12.8 | 12.6 | 14.9 | 18% |
Both the 790GX and the 780G + Sideport options here have a 128MB local frame buffer in addition to using a portion of system memory for the total frame buffer. Sideport is rare on 780G but much more common on 790GX boards. As you can see, the Sideport memory doesn't do anything for 780G so the real advantage of 790GX is its faster core clock. As for the 790GX itself, the performance advantage over the 780G is nothing short of significant - at 1024x768 we measured an average increase of 29%.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
41 Comments
View All Comments
MrMilli - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link
If you multiply it all out that gives Intel a throughput of 8 instructions per clock for G35, 10 for G45, 10 for NVIDIA's GeForce 8200 (where two are transcendental operations) and 40 for AMD. In terms of worst case throughput however, AMD falls down to 8 per clock (assuming the compiler can't feed the hardware 4 shader ops + 1 transcendental per SP) as does NVIDIA. This worst case rarely happens, but it is definitely worth noting.10 for nvidia => 8 for nvidia
AMD falls down to 8 per clock => to 10 per clock
a1yet - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link
wow finally a video playback comparison :-) TYI have a question one of you may be able to answer ?
In the "Hardware Accelerated Blu-ray Playback Comparison"
(CPU usage) the 780 beat the 790 in 3 of the 6 tests!
With the 790 using up to 9% MORE CPU usage, and in the
other 3 tests. The 790 beat the 780 by only .3% (well within a margin of error)
Up to 9% MORE CPU usage is A LOT!
I want to buy the 790 but this is a disappointment!
Dose anyone know why the 790 uses so much more CPU then the 780.
Is it's HD Acceleration sub-par ?
Heck in the "Crank DB" test all the cards beat the 790.
Please help TY
yknott - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link
Do we know if the Radeon HD4xxx cards support output at 1080p/24fps?I did some googling and can't find anyone who can verify this
Geraldo8022 - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link
"do we know if the Radeon HD4xxx cards support output at 1080p/24fps?"this is exactly what I want to know also.
Screammit - Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - link
I just received a 4670 today to plug into my old PC that i'm slowly converting into an HTPC. In the display modes 1080p/24 is natively listed, but i'll have to get my blu ray drive in before I can truly verify that it works. Sure seems to have support though.Calin - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link
An Intel processor and chipset with an AMD discrete cardSkCom - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link
testing amd ddr 2 and intel ddr 3 is not fer test and amd made the 780 790 for usage with cheap cpu SEMPRON so why use phenom and rise the w power when simply can do the chep cpu psu ram and stillwatch HD movies surf and dissant gaming price perfom AMD 1 CHAMPION
strikeback03 - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link
Checked twice, can't find any punctuation in this post. I have no idea what you are trying to say.fic2 - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link
Apparently using a Sempron takes away your ability to punctuate, spell check or make much sense.Clauzii - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link
He says that by using a Sempron CPU (lower watt than Phenom), it would still be a nice machine for most people, and still be good for movies.