AMD's 785G Chipset - Revolutionary or Evolutionary?
by Gary Key on August 4, 2009 5:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
We have come a long way lately in regards to the ability of modern integrated chipsets to perform a variety of tasks well. Not only do they handle current office and even specialized application software with aplomb, the capabilities now on-board allows the same system to be an HTPC powerhouse or even a casual gaming system for the family.
True, a gaming aficionado would never be caught
dead with one of these systems, but I bet one might just reside down the
hallway as a second system or depending on the motherboard, it might be the
central component in a SFF gaming setup.
That might sound crazy, but the latest IG based boards offer the same
level of BIOS options for overclocking, electrical components, and quality of
their more expensive non-IG counterparts, plus significant more options in the uATX form factor.
This brings us to our next subject. It's odd that the first tangible benefits of the ATI acquisition should come in the form of chipsets, but we'll take what we can get. Since AMD acquired ATI and started aggressively pursuing the chipset market, we have seen decreasingly fewer reasons to buy anything but an AMD chipset for an AMD system. Supporting 8-channel LPCM continues to be the only reason to opt for an NVIDIA chipset over AMD's offerings. The tweaks to the UVD engine are nice, particularly the ability to support acceleration of multiple video streams and detail enhancements on the fly.
No one looking to build a PC capable of light or casual gaming will be disappointed either. While we would still like to see better performance out of all integrated graphics chipsets, the 785G is competitive with the rest of the market. It will play games like Sims 3 or even Left 4 Dead at reduced quality settings, and it can do so better than its closest Intel IGP competitor. The only chipset that comes close in gaming performance is the NVIDIA GF9300/9400 series, but those boards are priced anywhere from $25 to $40 more.
Therefore, the comparison to Intel is an inevitable one. The direct price competitor to the 785G is Intel's G41, a horribly crippled and price reduced version of the G45 chipset. You lose PCIe 2.0 and any sort of H.264/VC1 video decoding abilities, all in exchange for a lower price. It just gets worse from a feature viewpoint when combining the ICH7 Southbridge with it. From this perspective, there's just no real reason to pick the G41 platform over a 785G configuration. Intel is resting on its ability to sell crappy chipsets with really good CPUs, and AMD is relying on a great chipset to sell a, well, pretty good CPU as well.
The AMD 785 is simply superior in our opinion and it receives our full endorsement. Now, which motherboard should you decide to purchase is the question we will answer next.
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Hrel - Saturday, August 22, 2009 - link
You showed Nvidia stats on the first page... I guess you didn't include them cause ATI and Intel can't even compare???Next time include the Nvidia results... would've thought that it'd an impulsory action; guess not.
crochat - Tuesday, August 18, 2009 - link
Gary,You mentioned a motherboard roundup in your conclusion. I thought it would come sooner.
Regards
AlB80 - Sunday, August 16, 2009 - link
1. The A-Link Express II is a proprietary interface developed by AMD basing on the PCI Express Gen2 version 2.0 technology, with additional Northbridge-Southbridge messaging functionalities.2. High data transfer bandwidth (up to 2.5 Gb/s / Lane)
Concillian - Saturday, August 15, 2009 - link
"Remember when ATI made crappy chipsets that no one bought, and all AMD systems were built with NVIDIA or even VIA chipsets? "Yeah, I remember that, thats when they were really AMD chipsets and not ATi chipsets with an AMD label on them. ATi started making good Crossfire chipsets shortly before AMD bought them.
I like AMD as much as the next guy, but let's not be patting them on the back too hard. They tried, failed, then did what any good American businessman would do... bought a struggling competitor to use their IP.
IntelUser2000 - Saturday, August 8, 2009 - link
Gary, you got the clock speed of the G41 IGP wrong:http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=543&...">http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=543&...
G41 and G43 uses a 667MHz core while G45 uses 800MHz.
Notice the differences here: http://global.hkepc.com/1525/page/3#view">http://global.hkepc.com/1525/page/3#view
ClagMaster - Saturday, August 8, 2009 - link
The 785G is just a 780G which has recieved a fine tuning. Which is OK. There are slight improvements in performance over the 780G but nothing to be excited about. 785G Seems to work well with DDR3 memory and Athlon II processors.I have an ASUS M3A78EM 780G Mobo with an AMD BE2400 X2 CPU I use as a secondary computer I keep off-line for private matters. It's a fairly powerful rig for the media applications I run.
The HD 3200 GPU is just as powerful as a Geforce 4200 graphics card. I can play DX8 and DX9 games from the 2002-2004 period (Max Payne, Aquanox, Homeworld2) with acceptable framerates at 1280 x 1024 resolution. I run Windows XP Home.
The 785G is not bad. But if I had a choice between a 785G mobo and a 780G mobo with the 780G costing $5-$10 less, I would buy the 780G mobo. I can still run Windows 7 with the 780G with the HD3200.
ClagMaster - Saturday, August 8, 2009 - link
BTW-This article was not boring. It honestly compared the performance capabilities of the 785G to other chipsets of its class (780G and G41).
Most differences between the 785G and 780G were small and within the combined statistical uncertainty of the benchmark measurements measurements +/-10% (i.e. statistically insignificant). Not very surprising. Most of the larger differences observed were between systems with DDR2-1066 and DDR3-1333 memory systems.
I agree the 785G is a better balanced chipset than the 780G and G41 for multimedia.
I wish Gary would have used an older benchmarking suite so I can compare the performance between current and systems 2-3 years old. I prefer PCMark2005 and 3DMark2005 since these are reliable indicators of performance. This is important to me because I try to make my purchasing decisions on the criteria of having double the performance for the same cost and power consumption.
ClagMaster - Saturday, August 8, 2009 - link
BTW-This article was not boring. It honestly compared the performance capabilities of the 785G to other chipsets of its class (780G and G41).
Most differences between the 785G and 780G were small and within the combined statistical uncertainty of the benchmark measurements measurements +/-10% (i.e. statistically insignificant). Not very surprising. Most of the larger differences observed were between systems with DDR2-1066 and DDR3-1333 memory systems.
I agree the 785G is a better balanced chipset than the 780G and G41 for multimedia.
I wish Gary would have used an older benchmarking suite so I can compare the performance between current and systems 2-3 years old. I prefer PCMark2005 and 3DMark2005 since these are reliable indicators of performance. This is important to me because I try to make my purchasing decisions on the criteria of having double the performance for the same cost and power consumption.
7Enigma - Thursday, August 6, 2009 - link
Gary,Thanks for the article but could you keep in mind for future articles on non-gaming hardware (i.e. IG's, budget GPU's, etc.) to make sure the game description is in line with the actual article? I can tell they were just copied directly from a previous gaming article, so it's a bit silly to see, "We crank up all the details to max", only to see the data chart show 1024X768 with low settings.
:)
AlB80 - Wednesday, August 5, 2009 - link
DMI 10Gb/s each direction, full duplexaka
4 lane PCIe 1.1